the thousands of Judah, if tins dignity which is not otherwise to be despised, and which far exceeds thy proportion and measure, be compared with that dignity exclusively thine own, by virtue of which thou art by no means the least, but altogether the greatest among the princes and thousands of Judah, sc., that from thee shall go forth for Me, HIT!?, one icho is to be (gui sit) the Ruler in Israel. A similar mode of expression occurs in 2 Sam. vii. 19 ; Isaiah xlix. 6. The greater honour obscures and absorbs the less. — y5j 'loiSa, a land of Judah. The land or district is put by Synechdoche,1 for the township, as in Luke ix. 12, fields for cantons : Judah was the tribe of the Messiah. Both words supply the place of Ephrata in the Hebrew. The LXX. have in Joshua xv., either between ver. 58 and 59, or between ver. 59 and 60, the following passage : QIX.U xai 'EffaSa* a'yrjj sctr! BrfiXis/j, x.r.X. — Theko and Ephrata, which is Bethlehem, etc. If this passage (instead of having fallen out of the Hebrew text from coming betwreen two which have the same ending), be redundant in the Septuagint, it affords a proof, that, at the time when the land of Canaan was divided amongst the tribes of Israel, Bethlehem was not even reckoned among the cities ; Cf. John vii. 42. It must, hoAvever, have been so reckoned as early at any rate as the reign of Rehoboam, as we learn from 2 Chron. xi. 6. Micah addresses it in the masculine gender, with an implied reference to D'SPN, thousands, families, Cf. ""S?^, 55 %^-'«r f^ou, my thousand, i.e., my family, in Judges vi. 15. Wherefore St Matthew7, after putting iXcc^/or?;, least, in the feminine gender (to agree with y/j, land, understood), mentions, instead of the thousands themselves, the princes of thousands (for vK a thousand, family, etc., and f)1PS> a chief, leader, etc., are cognate words) over whom he places one prince (iyou'Asvov), even Christ : nor does he so much give the prefer ence to this city or thousand over the other cities or thousands of Judah, as to the Prince who came forth thence, over the other Princes of Thousands. — IK tot TAVP JggXgutfgra/, FOR from thee shall go forth) The LXX., as wre have seen, have, from the Hebrew IK ffo\J MOI e^&svffi-rai, from thee shall go forth FOR ME, a reading which is followed by the Codex Basiliensis
1 See Explanation of Technical Terms in Appendix. — (I. B.)