Notes, Critical and Explanatory, on the Holy Scriptures

H. P. M The fortress." Calamities are announced at the same time to both kingdoms, as they had combined against Juda. Ephraim shall cease to have strong fortresses, and Damascus shall lose her dominion.

St Jerome understood the text as comparing the consternation of the Ephraimites with that of the Canaanites, who, leaving their ploughs and their produoe, fled before the people of God. P. " As a for- saken bough, and an uppermost branch." The desolate state of the country is strikingly represented by these images. L. " As a forsaken ruin In a forest, and on a mountain peak."

H. P. " Of the rock of thy strength." M P. "Slips." The planting of good plants without favorable results, in oonsequence of the admixture of strange seed, is an image of the disappointment which the nation meets that spoils its good deeds by idolatry. St Jerome thinks that it is said ironically : " Because," he says, " thou hast forgotten God, thy Savior, and hast not remembered thy strong Helper, shalt thou on that account plant a sure plantation, and not rather a strange germ which the enemy shall seize?'1 Or in this way : "Thou hast established in the land My sons, who are born of the stock of My people, to make them strangers and wicked men."

mDriD " hike the tumult" Some MSS. have [IDPO-

The kingdom of Israel is understood by this phrase, as the great body of his descendants was there. The decay of its splendor is represented under the image of a person pining away under disease : as also of a gleaner with a lew sheaves after the harvest.