amatorium_; it signifies "to allure by tender persuasion." There is to be a repetition of the proceeding of God, by which He formerly, in Egypt, allured the people to Himself, and induced them to follow Him into the wilderness, from the spiritual and bodily bondage in Egypt. After the sufferings, there always follows the alluring. God first takes away the objects of sinful love, and then He comes alluring and persuading us that we should choose, for the object of our love. Him who alone is worthy of, and entitled to, love. He is not [Pg 255] satisfied with the strict prosecution of His right, but endeavours to make duty sweet to us, and, by His love, to bring it about that we perform it from love. After He has thus allured us. He leads us from Egypt into the wilderness.--The words, "I lead her into the wilderness," have been very much misunderstood by interpreters. According to _Manger_, the wilderness here is that through which the captives should pass on their return from Babylon. But one reason alone is sufficient to refute this opinion,--namely, that on account of the following verse, by the wilderness (the article must not be overlooked), only that wilderness can be understood which separates Egypt from Canaan. Others (_Ewald_, _Hitzig_), following _Grotius_, understand by the wilderness, the Assyrian captivity. _Kuehnöl_ has acquired great merit for this exposition, by proving from a passage in _Herodotus_, that there were, at that time, uncultivated regions in Assyria! The same reason which militates against the former interpretation is opposed to this also. To this it may be further added, that, according to it, we can make nothing of the _alluring_. The Israelites were not _allured_ into captivity by kindness and love; they were driven into it _against_ their will, by God's wrath. _Moreover_, what according to this interpretation is to be done with the משם in ver. 17? Did, perhaps, the vineyards of Canaan begin immediately beyond Assyria, or does not even this rather lead us to the Arabian desert? It is certain, then, that this desert is the one to be thought of here, and, in addition, that it can only be as an image and type that the prophet here represents the leading through the wilderness, as a repetition of the former one in its individual form; inasmuch as it was, substantially, equal with it. For they who returned from the Assyrian captivity could not well pass through the literal Arabian desert; and the comparison expressed in the following verse, "As in the day when she went up from the land of Egypt," shows that here also a _decurtata comparatio_ must take place. But, now, all depends upon determining the essential feature, the real nature and substance, of that first leading through the wilderness; because the leading spoken of in the verse before us must have that essential feature in common with it. The principal passage--which must guide us in this investigation, and which is proved to be such by the