19: "And out of them proceed thanksgivings, and the voice of the merry ones; and I multiply them, and they do not decrease; and I honour them, and they are not small." The decrease is a single symptom only of a depressed, joyless condition, which everywhere in the kingdom of God shall be brought to an end by Christ. Most of the ancient translators (LXX., Chald., Syr.) follow the marginal reading לו, "_to him_" hast thou increased the joy. According to many modern interpreters, לא is supposed to be a different mode of writing for לו. But no _proof_ that could stand the test can be brought forward for [Pg 83] such a mode of writing; nor is there any reason for supposing that לא stands here in a different sense from what it does in chap. viii. 23, and it would indeed be strange that לו should have been placed before the verb. At most, it might be supposed that the Prophet intended an ambiguous and double sense: (not/to him) didst thou increase the joy. But altogether apart from such an ambiguous and double sense, behind the negative, at all events, the positive is concealed; thou multipliest the people, and increasest to them the joy, thou who formerly didst decrease their joy, &c.; and it is to this positive that the words refer which, in Luke ii. 10, the angels address to the shepherds: μὴ φοβεῖσθε, ἰδοὺ γὰρ εὐαγγελίζομαι ὑμῖν χαρὰν μεγάλην ἥτις ἔσται παντὶ τῷ λαῷ ὅτι ἐτέχθη ὑμῖν σήμερον σωτὴρ, ὅς ἐστι Χριστὸς Κύριος; comp. Matth. ii. 10.--In the following words, the Prophet expresses, in the first instance, the nature of the joy, then its greatness. The joy over the blessings received is a joy _before God_, under a sense of His immediate presence. The expression is borrowed from the sacrificial feasts in the courts before the sanctuary, at which the partakers rejoiced _before the Lord_, Deut. xii. 7, 12, 18, xiv. 26. In Immanuel, God with his blessings and gifts has truly entered into the midst of His people. With the joy at _the dividing of the spoil_, the joy is compared only to show its greatness, just as with the joy _in the harvest_; and it is in vain that Knobel tries here to bring in a dividing of spoil. Vers. 3, (4). "_For the yoke of his burden and the staff of his neck, the rod of his driver thou hast broken as in the day of Midian._"