does not sprout forth out of Him, but through Him. In Zech. iii. 8 the Lord brings his servant _Zemach_; in Ps. cxxxii. 17, it is said: "There I cause a horn to sprout to David," and already in the fundamental passage, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, which contains the first germ of our passage, David says: "For all my salvation and all my pleasure should He not make it to _sprout_ forth."--As the words "Sprout of the Lord" denote the heavenly origin of the Redeemer, so do the words פרי הארץ the earthly one, the soil from which the Lord causes the Saviour to sprout up. These words are, by _Vitringa_ and others, translated: "the fruit of the earth," but the correct translation is "the fruit of the _land_." The passages, Num. xiii. 26: "And shewed them the fruit of the land;" and Deut. i. 25: "And they took in their hands of the fruit of the land, and brought it unto us, and brought us word again, and said, good is the land which the Lord our God doth give us,"--these two passages are, besides that under consideration, the only ones in which the phrase פרי הארץ occurs; and there is here, no doubt, an allusion to them. The excellent natural fruit of ancient times is a type of the spiritual fruit. To the same result--that הארץ designates the definite land, that land which, in the preceding verses, in the description of the prevailing conniption, and of the divine judgments, was always spoken of,--to this result we are led by the fact also, that everywhere in the Old Testament where the contrariety of the divine and human origin of the Messiah is mentioned, the human origin is more distinctly qualified and limited. This is especially the case in those passages which, being dependent upon that before us, maybe considered as a commentary upon it; in Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, where the Lord raises a Sprout unto _David_, and Zech. vi. 12, where the man whose name is _Zemach_ (Sprout) grows up out of its soil; comp. Heb. vii. 14, where, in allusion to the Old Testament passages of the Sprout--the verb ἀνατέλλειν is commonly used of the sprouting forth of the plants (see _Bleek_ on this passage)--it is said: ἐξ Ἰούδα ἀνατέταλκεν ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν, _Bengel_: _ut germen justitiae_; farther, Mic. v. 1 (2), where the eternal existence of the Messiah, [Pg 16] and His birth in Bethlehem are contrasted with one another; Is. ix. 5, (6), where the words: "Unto _us_ a child is born, unto _us_ a son is given," are contrasted with the various designations of the Messiah, according to His divine majesty. This qualification and limitation which everywhere takes place, have their ground in the circumstance that the Messiah is constantly represented to the covenant-people as their property; and that He, indeed, was, inasmuch as salvation went out from Jews (John iv. 22), and was destined for the Jews, into whose communion the Gentiles were to be received; comp. my Commentary on Revel. vii. 4. "The Sprout of the Lord," "the fruit of the land," is accordingly He