that these two arguments reciprocally strengthen each other. The first and second periods were far more glorious than the third, which could not therefore fail to have the conclusion most desired, after so long a cessation of both the Promise and the Kingdom.1
In the Treatise on the birth of the Lord JESUS, published A.D. 1749, by Dr S. J. Baumgarten* in the name of the Academy of Halle, my Gnomon is openly assailed in three places.
In the first place, after refuting the opinion of William Read ing, who concluded from the right of Jesus Christ to the Jewish kingdom, that Joseph had had no sons before his birth, he says (p. 20), that I appear to maintain the same vieiu. I however only showed (p. 10, Sec. IX.) that Jesus must have been re puted to be the first-born of Joseph, just as much as He was reputed to be his Son. I said nothing there concerning His right to the kingdom.
The second passage, which occurs soon afterwards, runs thus : — " They double and wonderfully increase the difficulty, who consider that Phaidaiah has been passed over by St Matthew, so as to make Zorobabel the grandson of Salathiel, and the great grandson of Jechoniah ; a view which has found favour with many interpreters, although Phaidaiah is expressly called (1 Chron. iii. 18, 19) the brother of Salathiel, and the son of Jechoniah. This opinion, however, is far more tolerable than that put forward by Matthew Hitter, in the third chapter of his dissertation on the true meaning of the words which composed the inscription on our Lord's Cross (Syntagmata Her- meneutica, pp. 361-363). Bengel, however, in the eighth and fourteenth pages of his Gnomon, has gone still further, declaring that the Abiud of Matthew is the same with the Hodaiah or Hodauihu mentioned in 1 Chron. iii. 24, as the tenth from Zorobabel. By which immense leap, he has so far pleased him self, as seriously to think that Matthew has purposely and
1 " Post tantam promissionis regnique pausam," i.e. after the voice of pro phecy had been so long silent, the royalty of David's throne remained so long in abeyance. — (I. B.)
2 A Lutheran divine, historian, and philologist of the Academy of Halle; born 1706 ; died 1756. His works were very numerous.— (I. B.)