being imprudently managed by Rehoboam, lost the ten tribes, who
would never afterwards submit unto the regal family of Judah. Its retrieval, after an intercision made of it in the Babylonish captivity,
‘was ducal, or by an honorary president, with a mixture both of aris-
tocracy and of the power of the people. Upon the ceasing of these extraordinarily called rulers, the aristocracy in the sanhedrin pre- vailed; whereunto succeeded a mixed monarchy in the Asmonans into their power and place; and their interest being ruined by in- testine divisions, Herod by craft and external force intruded himself.
270 THE PROMISED MESSIAH [EXERC. XII.
Neither did his usurpation make any essential change in the rule or polity of the nation, although in his own person he was a foreigner; for even during the turbulent government of the Hero- dians, with the interposition of the Roman arms, the nation, with that which constitutes a people, its laws and polity, was still con- tinued, though the administration of superior rule was not always in the hands of Jews. In this state things continued amongst them until the destruction of the commonwealth by Vespasian, and of the city and temple by Titus; only, as a presage of the departure of sceptre and scribe, the power of judgment as to the lives of men was some years before taken from the sanhedrin, John xvii. 31.
11. By this fixation of rule in general in Judah, we are freed from any concernment in the disputes of learned men about the precise time of the departure foretold; and, indeed, if any thing be more intended in this prediction, but only that the tribe of Judah should continue in a national political state, with government in itself, it will be utterly impossible to determine exactly and precisely upon the accomplishment of this prophecy. Some would fix it on the con- quest of Jerusalem by Pompey, during the time of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus the Asmonzeans, not many years after which the Shiloh came,—which small remnant of time, as they suppose, impeacheth not the truth of the prediction,—for in that action of Pompey, Cicero declares the nation conquered: “ Victa est, elocata, servata,” Orat. pro Flacc. But if this might suffice for the departure of sceptre and scribe, much more might the former conquest by the Babylonians do so; which yet, by all men’s consent, it did not. _ Besides, the na- tion was left free by Pompey unto its own laws and polity, as were many other nations subdued by him. Téy ciAnwmévo ebvav ce wey atrd- vowa 7pie, says Appian, Bell. Mithrid. cap. cxiv.;—“ He left some of the conquered nations free to their own rule and laws,” among which were the Jews. Some fix the period in Herod, an Idu- mean, a stranger to Judah, only a proselyte; on which account we have many contests, managed by Baronius, Scaliger, Casaubon, Bullinger, Montague, Pererius, A Lapide, Cappellus, Scultetus, Rivetus, Spanhemius, and others innumerable.
But granting Herod to have been an Idumean, as he was un- doubtedly by extract, and that nation not to have been incorporated into Judah upon the conquest made of it by Hyrcanus, only that he was in his own person a proselyte, why the sceptre should any more depart from Judah because of his reign, than it did in the days of the Asmoneeans before him, who were of the tribe of Levi, I see noreason. The government and polity of the nation was that of the Jews, whoever usurped and enjoyed the place of supreme rule; asin the Roman empire the rule and government was that of the Romans, though Philip an Arabian, Maximinus a Thracian, and sundry others,
SECT. 11-13.] LONG SINCE COME. 271
foreigners, were emperors amongst them. One would solve the difficulty of the Asmonzans and Herodians by affirming that the supreme power of the nation in their days was in the sanhedrin, the greatest number of the persons whereof it was constituted being always of the tribe of Judah, as the Talmudists constantly affirm. But neither are we concerned herein. The government, as hath been manifested, was still in and of the tribe of Judah, with the fore-men- tioned accessions denominated from it, until the destruction of the country, city, and temple, by Vespasian and Titus; which is all that in the prediction is intended. And that was the precise season aimed at, especially if we suppose, as rationally we may, that °3 TY is to be repeated 2x xomod, and to respect the last clause of the prediction, “And to him the gathering of the nations;” which was accomplished signally before the final ruin of the church and state of the Jews, according as Christ himself foretold, Matt. xxiv. 14.
12. Now, because some fix the departure of the sceptre and law- giver unto the removal of the sanhedrin, it may not be amiss to declare in our passage what that sanhedrin was, and what the power wherewith it was intrusted, and this briefly, because it is a subject that many learned men have laboured in. The name } 730 or primp, “sanedrin” or “sanhedrin,” is taken from the Greek, ovv2dprov. Suvédprov sometimes signifies the place where the senators meet,—the same with Bourcurjpiov; as in Herodian, Yuv%Adov ody obx sig rd ocuvgdes ovvedpioy, GAN sig rod Aidbg rd Kamirwariov— They assembled not in the accustomed council-house, but in the Capitol, the temple of Jupiter.” But most frequently it is taken for “ consessus judi- cum,” an assembly of judges, a court made up of many assessors; whence the areopagum, that is, “the court of judges,” is so called in Aischines. ivedpog is an assessor in such a court; and oby<dpos zixdog is such an assembly of magistrates or princes as they call “corona considentium, ’—such as the sanhedrin was. And this name of sanhedrin, though it be plainly a Greek word, a little corrupted, as is the manner of the Jews in their use of them, is frequently used in the Targum of the Hagiographa; which places are collected by Elias in Tishbi. Some of the Jewish masters would have it to be a word of their own language, whence they invent strange etymo- logies of it, which are some of them mentioned by Buxtorf. Lex. Tal. Col. 1513; [thus] in Aruch, [a manuscript,] they would have it derived from n\31017 ‘Nw, “ haters of gifts,” not knowing, doubtless, that “ doronoth” is a Greek, and no Hebrew word.