Jer. xxxiii. 6 — 9. Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and J will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth. And I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as at the first. And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me ; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me. And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them : and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it.
THE more fully the subject of the restoration and conversion of the Jews is considered, the more im- portant it will appear. The prophetic writings are full of it ; and the obscurity of those writings arises in a great measure from the gross perversion of them, of which even pious ministers have been guilty, through a long succession of ages. Those whose office has been to interpret them, have almost universally ap- plied them spiritually to the Gentiles; overlooking the plain literal meaning of them, as addressed to the Jewish people : and by this means, not only has the attention of the Christian world been drawn from the Jews, but it has been drawn also even from the pro- phecies themselves, because of the impenetrable veil that has been cast over them.
That the passage before us relates to that subject, no one can entertain a doubt. And that it has never yet been fulfilled, is equally clear ; not only because the ten tribes of Israel are combined with Judah, but because the effects which are here announced as to be produced by the event, were never, in any degree, produced by the return of the Jews to Babylon. The different nations of the earth were never led to fear and tremble by reason of the goodness and prosperity which were then procured unto the Jewish nation.