But man dieth and lieth prostrate, The waters are gone off from the lake, And the stream has dried up and wasted away," &c. But why is the unhappy Coniah to be "written childless," when he had children, and left a posterity behind him "for thirteen generations?" It is partly explained in the passage from Jeremiah which we are considering-"no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, or ruling any more in Judah." It is true that Zorobabel, the son of Salathiel, and grandson of Coniah, was governor of Judah, after the captivity; but he sat not on the throne of David; that was cast down; and the "throne of the kingdoms of the heathen erected." Zorobabel was merely a deputy for the great king, the king of Persia. "The sceptre," if we understand it as an ensign of regal authority, had now "departed from Judah." Zedekiah, the uncle of Coniah, when he and his children had been taken captive to Babylon, was, however, left with the title of king, after he had taken an oath of allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, for his perjury, on which occasion he was visited with that severe justice which caused the extinction of himself and all his sons. But respecting this assumption of the regal character, how striking is the language of the divine oracle delivered by Ezekiel, (xxi. 25,) "and thou, profane, wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." This is a general view of the history of the chief magistracy in Judah, till the birth of Christ: it was for the most part, effectually, in the imperial deputy, sometimes in the High Priest, either by appointment or allowance of the sovereign, or in times of distraction, as the result of successful revolt under the Maccabees, indeed, glorious victories were vouchsafed to the poor remnant of Judah; but seldom was there an attempt at independant regal authority, or if effected soon, the destiny of the doom pronounced followed, "I will overturn, overturn it.” Herod's dynasty, granted and upheld by the Romans, can on no account be reckoned as a native monarchy of the Jews, and soon it appeared, without the semblance of any intermediate authority, that they had "no king but Cæsar." During all this period, however, the family of Coniah was preserved, though "written childless,' treated as "a broken idol," "a vessel in which is no pleasure." And, as appears, some branches of the house of Nathan, the son of David, besides, for David is never "to want a seed," to supply a governor over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for ever. But "the kingdom" was Solomon's "from the Lord." Now, however, his only lineal descendant has been "written childless," and amidst all the difficulties felt in this remote age respecting certain minutia in the genealogies of the royal family of Judah, preserved in the New Testament, thus much I think is certain, we have the genealogy of Solomon and Coniah in Saint Matthew, and that of Nathan in Saint Luke. And mark the termination of the royal branch in a solitary virgin! the lineal issue now must fail for ever; Coniah must now of necessity be "written childless" in the genealogies of Israel. The tree of his pedigree is finished. The honours and regal rights of the family must now be transferred to some collateral branch, a female cannot be enrolled among the sons, the first-born sons, of David and of Solomon. Joseph, the son of Heli, her espoused husband, the head of the line of Nathan, must stand for her, as the son of her father Jacob on the tables, to whom by marriage she is to convey the rights of her family. Some writers, however, on the subject, I think with great probability, and evidently supported by the numbering of the fourteen generations, maintain that the Joseph mentioned in Matthew i. 16, as "the husband" or "man of Mary," was, in truth, not her affianced husband, but her father, literally the son of Jacob, and that Joseph, the father, was the only male child or man, through whom the blessed virgin could connect her name, with the genealogy of Coniah and Solomon. Thus Mary stands not in the twelfth generation, as she must have stood if she were the daughter of Jacob, but, as she should do, in the thirteenth generation, as a daughter of that Joseph whom Jacob begat. And thus we have in the fourteenth generation from the Captivity, "the Christ of God,"-" the Holy Offspring of Mary's unpolluted womb," born miraculously, in right of his virgin mother, "King of the Jews" and the prodigy announced to her progenitor Ahaz is accomplished, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel." 66 At the annunciation of his birth, the promise of the kingdom is repeated: "The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." The blessed Jesus, “born of the seed of David according to the flesh," made of a woman," did not, as we all know, during his First Advent, "sit upon the throne of David." But he compares himself, with respect to this matter, to a person of noble birth, who is going into a distant country, to receive the investiture of his royal authority—as the circumstances of the times explain-from imperial hands; and then to return again. That epocha is contemplated in the prophecy now before us and at the time of God's "sending the rod of the Son of David's power out of Zion," we find with astonishment that the family of David upon earth is not extinct; that several branches of it are among that first restoration that finds its way to Jerusalem, and is besieged there by the last enemy. Four distinct branches of the royal house are distinguished as mourning apart, on the discovery that Jesus of Nazareth, whose name they, with their fellow-citizens, held in abomination, is indeed their king. The families enumerated areof David, of Nathan, of Levi, of Shimei. Joseph, the son of Heli, as we have seen, on the anticipation of extinction of the regal house of Solomon, was set down as David's representative and heir. He, we have every reason to suppose, died without issue. The Virgin's Son was rejected, at any rate, and now. "numbered with the dead." But the scribes and genealogists of the family would readily point out the legal heir to Joseph's adoptive rights; he would be, of course, the supposed representative of the elder branch. Nathan's own "inheritance would not be marred," his house would have its representative in another son. And it appears that two other of his sons, Levi and Shimei, or Semei, (Luke iii. 24, &c.) had in similar ways their own distinct inheritances. And these four families of the house of David are now actually in existence, and are hereafter to be manifested among that first restoration, of which we have treated before. We saw reason to conclude that this restoration consisted of a people, not converted to the Christian faith, but now : "In that day shall be a fountain It is at this time that the guilt of that blood which their forefathers so impiously imprecated upon themselves is removed. (Joel iii. 20, &c. Isaiah iv.) |