maker,
Peace-maker; only, that on the ground of Ps. lxxii., he mentions the
cause instead of the effect. He had, moreover, the stronger reason for
designating the bearer of peace as the bearer of judgment, [Pg 96]
because, in his time, the want of judgment had evidently produced the
absence of peace, and the general confusion, misery, and destruction.

"As in Gen. xlix. the Patriarch sees a light rising at a far distance,
and spreading its brightness over the darkness of centuries, so in
Ezekiel also, the same ray of glorious hope lightens through the dark
night of confusion and unutterable misery in which he sees himself
enveloped."

_Kurtz_, S. 266, has altogether denied the connection of the passage in
Ezekiel with Gen. xlix. These two passages are, as he thinks,
altogether different, inasmuch as Ezekiel announces destruction and
desolation which shall continue until He comes to whom is the judgment,
while Gen. xlix., when understood of a personal Messiah, announces
dominion which shall continue until Shiloh comes. But Ezekiel does not
contradict Gen. xlix. 10. He gives only the supplement necessary for
preventing this passage from being considered as a permission to sin,
and from becoming a support of false security. Ezekiel, too, assumes a
continuation of the dominion. If that were not concealed behind the
destruction, how could "the coming of Him to whom is the judgment" be
pointed out as the limit of that destruction? The tree indeed is cut
down, but the root remains in its full vigour.

When Jacob announces that the sceptre shall not depart until Shiloh,
the prince of peace, cometh, he can thereby mean only that it would not
depart _definitively_; for, otherwise, he would have belied his own
experience. From the way by which the Lord had led him, he had
sufficiently learnt that God's promises to sinful men must be taken
_cum grano salis_; that they never exclude the visitation of the elect
on account of their sins, and that it is only in the end that God will
bring all to a glorious fulfilment. When he went to Mesopotamia, God
had said to him, "I am with thee, and I will keep thee in all places
whither thou goest," Gen. xxviii. 15; and yet the deceit which he had
practised upon his father and brother was recompensed to him there by
the deceit of Laban, and he was obliged to say, "In the day the drought
consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from mine
eyes," Gen. xxxi. 40. When he came from