of course, in the suffix only, not in the noun. Others suppose that the
plural stands here simply for the singular. Now, there are, it is true,
three cases in which such does apparently take place:--the first, when
a definite individual out of the multitude is meant,--when accordingly,
not the _number_, but the general idea only is concerned;--the second,
when a noun in the plural gradually loses its plural signification,
because the etymology and original signification have become
indistinct;--the third, when the plural stands for the abstract. Not
one of these cases, however, is applicable here. Those interpreters
have most plausibly removed the difficulty who understand [Hebrew:
mvcativ] to be really a repeated act of going forth, and refer it to
the Old Testament doctrine of the Angel of the Lord. Thus _Jerome_:
"Because He had always spoken to them through the prophets, and became
in their hands the Word of God." _Tremellius_ and _Junius_: "The goings
forth, _i.e._, the declarations and demonstrations of, as it were, a
rising sun; He from the very beginning revealed and manifested Himself
to all created things, by the light of His word, and the excellency of
His works; just as the rising sun manifests himself from the moment of
his rising, by the light and its effects." _Cocceius_: "I cannot,
however, be persuaded to believe that the plural [Hebrew: mvcativ] is
here used without emphasis. For the Son has not gone forth from the
Father, like a man from a man, who begins to exist only when he is
brought forth from a man, and when he goes forth, ceases to be brought
forth and to go out. In all the days of eternity, the Son proceeds from
the Father, and is the eternal [Greek: apaugasma tes doxes autou]." But
this circumstance is, in general, against this explanation, that the
contrast with the going forth from Bethlehem, which is completed in one
act, does not admit of the mention of a manifold going forth, and that,
in this contrast, the arising, the origin of the existence of the
Messiah, can alone be thought of; while, more specially, _Jerome_, [Pg
488] _Tremellius_, and _Junius_, who, with _Piscator_ also, limit the
going forth to the relation to created things only, are contradicted by
[Hebrew: mimi evlM], by which the going forth is placed beyond the
beginning of creation; and _Cocceius_, by the fact that the [Hebrew:
mlaK ihvh] in the Old Testament, differently from the [Greek: Logos] in
the New Testament, appea