The numbers that shall thus be converted to the Lord exceed all calculation or conception. As the drops of " dew" issuing from " the womb of the morning," so will be the progeny that shall be born to him, innumerable : there may be but " an handful of corn cast on the top of the mountains ; but yet shall the fruit be as the woods of Lebanon, and as the piles of grass upon the earth m." Thus powerfully did his word and Spirit operate in the early "youth" of the Church; and thus shall they operate to the very end of time : and it is worthy of par- ticular observation, that the very first verse of this psalm, with the explanation given of it by the Apostle, was that which pierced the hearts of our Lord's murderers, and subdued three thousand of them at once to the obedience of faith".
David now proceeds to speak of Christ as,]
2. A Priest—
[As Christ was to offer a sacrifice for the sins of his people, he must of necessity be a priest. But from the Levitical priest- hood, which was confined to the tribe of Levi, he was of neces- sity excluded, because he was of the tribe of Judah. There was however a priesthood of another order, the order of Mel- chizedec ; and to that he was solemnly consecrated with an oath. What that priesthood was, we should never have known, if it had not been explained to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the Mosaic history, Melchizedec is briefly mentioned, with- out any account of his predecessors or successors in his office0 : and this was particularly overruled by God, in order that he might be a type of Christ, whose priesthood was from ever- lasting (in the divine counsels,) and everlastingly to continue in himself alone. Now at the time that the Levitical priesthood was in all its glory, David foretold, that it should be super- seded, (and the whole Mosaic economy with it,) by a priesthood of a higher order ; a priesthood, which Abraham himself, and all his posterity in him, acknowledged, and which, on account of the solemnity of its appointment, and the perpetuity of its duration, was of a far higher order p.
Is it inquired, What sacrifice he had to offer ? we answer, His own body, which " through the eternal Spirit he offered without spot to God." And, having offered that sacrifice once for all, he now intercedes for us within the veil ; and will come again at the end of the world to bless his redeemed people, and to make them partakers of everlasting blessedness.
But it is foretold yet further, that he was also to be,]
3. A King0-—
m Ps. lxxii. 16. n Acts ii. 34—37.
0 Gen.xiv. 18—20. p Read Heb.vii. 1—28.
<i Some, to reconcile ver. 5. with ver. 1. suppose that in ver. 5. David ceases to address the Messiah, and directs his speech to the