s, the passage is parallel to
the following:--"In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the
children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together,
going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God. They
shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward, saying, Come,
and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall
not be forgotten."[57] Both passages refer to the same event--the
restoration of Israel. The exercise of confessing the name of God,
corresponds to that of joining to him in a perpetual covenant. The verb
([Hebrew: yadoh]--[Greek: exomologeomai]) in the Hebrew, when connected
with the name of God in different other passages, has the same import.
An instance from the Psalms is found in these words:--"Save us, O Lord
our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks (confess)
unto thy holy name."[58] The ground of the Psalmist's encouragement to
utter this prayer was, that the Lord remembered for his people his
covenant; and it could not be for less than that they should, after
their recal, take hold on that covenant, that he made supplication that
they should be gathered from the heathen. The verb in the Greek by which
the Seventy translate the Hebrew term, we should conclude, must
therefore sometimes have the same force. But that it frequently has in
the New Testament that signification, is manifest from the connections
in which it stands in portions of it that shall now be considered. We
read, "Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision
for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers; and
that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For
this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles;"[59] and conclude
that the vow here quoted from the Psalms, which should be adopted by the
people of God in the presence of the Gentiles, was, that they would
Covenant with him. It was the promises of that covenant, of which
circumcision was a sign, that Christ came to confirm. The Gentiles could
not glorify God for his mercy without cleaving to it; and it was by
believers making manifestations of attachment to that covenant, of which
Covenanting was one, that the Gentiles should be brought, in a manner
more or less explicit, to adhere unto it. Before proceeding farther, we
take the record of the infamous transaction between the chief priests
and captains, and Judas,--"And they were g