This prophecy of the bees, and of the shaving of the beard, and of the hair of the feet, can be understood only by those who know that it was a custom to call the swarms of bees together by the sound of a flageolet or pipe, or some other rustic instrument; that the greatest affront that could be done to any man was to cut off his beard; and that the hair on the private parts was called the hair of the feet, which was never shaven but in cases of leprosy, or other unclean disorders. All these figures, which would appear so strange in our style, signify nothing more than that the Lord will, in the course of a few years, deliver His people from captivity. We find the same prophet walking naked and barefoot to show that the king of Assyria shall lead away the Egyptians and Ethiopians captives, without their having wherewithal to cover their nakedness.† † Isaiah xx. The prophet Ezekiel eats the roll of parchment which God had given him; afterwards he eats his bread covered with excrement, and continues to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days, and forty days on his right side, to show that the Jews should want bread, and as a type of the number of years they were to remain in captivity. He loads himself with chains, as a figure of those that they are to wear; and he cuts off the hair of his head and of his beard, and divides them into three parts; the first of these portions is a type of those who are to perish in the city of Jerusalem; the second, of such as are to be slain without the walls; and the third, of those who are to be carried away to Babylon.‡ ‡ Ezek. iv. seq. The prophet Hosea takes to himself a woman who is an adulteress, and whom he purchases for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer and a half of barley, and says unto her: “Thou shalt abide for me many days, thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man, for so shall the children of Israel abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim”;§ in a word, the seers or prophets scarcely ever foretell anything without using a type or sign of the thing foretold. § Hosea iii.