that, on the contrary, they shall judge the world. In like manner we read in Exod. xix. 6, in the description of the _reward_ for faithfulness: "And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation;" comp. ver. 5: "And now if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, ye shall be a property unto me out of all people." In reference to the exalted dignity and glory, holiness occurs in Deut. vii. 6: "For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself out of all the people that are upon [Pg 20] the face of the earth." When the company of Korah said: "All the congregation, they are holy" (Numb. xvi. 3), they had in view, not the moral holiness but the dignity--a circumstance which is quite obvious from words added: "And in the midst of them is the Lord." And so Moses likewise speaks of the dignity in Numb. xvi. 7: "Whom the Lord shall choose, he is the holy one." In Rom. i. 7; Heb. iii. 1, holiness is declared to consist in being loved, called, and chosen by God.--As regards the fulfilment of this promise, it has its _horas_ and _moras_. It began with the first appearance of Christ, by which the position of the true Israel to the world was substantially and fundamentally changed. It was not without meaning that, as early as in the apostolic times, the "Saints" was a kind of _nomen proprium_ of believers, comp. Acts ix. 13, 32. We are even now the sons of God, and hence even already installed into an important portion of the inheritance of holiness; but it has not yet appeared what we shall be, 1 John iii. 2. But the beginning, and the continuation pervading all ages, viz., God's dealings throughout the whole of history, whereby he ever anew lifts up His Church from the dust of lowliness, afford to us the guarantee for the completion, which is, with graphic vividness, described in the last two chapters of Revelation.--"_To be called_" is more than merely "to be;" it indicates that the _being_ is so marked as to procure for itself acknowledgment.--The words: "_Every one that is written to life in Jerusalem_" anew point out that judgment will go before, and by the side of grace. The meaning of חיים is, according to the fundamental passage in Ps. lxix. 29, "not living ones" (_Hoffmann_, _Weiss._ i. S. 208), but "life." In Revelation, too, the book of life, and not the book of the living ones, is spoken of "To be written to life" is equivalent to being ordained to life, Acts xiii. 48; comp. my Comment. on Ps. lxix. 29; Rev. iii. 5. Life is not naked life,--a miserable life is, according to the view of Scripture, not to be called a life, but is a form of death only--but life in the full enjoyment of the favour of God; comp. my Comment. on Ps. xvi. 11, xxx. 6, xxxvi. 10; xlii. 9; lxiii. 4. The Chaldean thus paraphrases it: "All they that are written to eternal life shall see the consolation of Jerusalem, _i.e._ the Messiah." Comp. Dan. xii. 1; Rev. iii. 5, xiii. 8, xx.