umstance that the whole succeeding sentence together
expresses only one substantive idea, equivalent to: "in the place of
the being said unto them." The place may here be, either that where the
people first received the name Lo-Ammi, _i.e._, Palestine, or the place
of the exile, where they first felt the full meaning of it,--the misery
being a _sermo realis_ of God. Decisive in favour of the latter
reference is the following verse, where the [Hebrew: harC], the land of
the exile, corresponds with [Hebrew: mqvM] in the verse before us.
(According to _Jonathan_, the sense is: "In the place to [Pg 221] which
they have been carried away among the Gentiles.") It is intentionally
that both times the Future [Hebrew: iamr] is used, which is to
be understood as the Present. The difference of time being thus
disregarded, the contrast becomes so much the more striking.--By
"people" and "children" of God, the same thing is expressed according
to different relations. The Israelites were the people of God, inasmuch
as He was their King; and children of God, in as far as He was their
Father,--their Father, it is true, in the first place, not, as in the
New Testament (John i. 12, 13), in reference to the spiritual
generation, but in relation to heart-felt love, similar to the love of
a father for a son. With regard to the Old Testament idea of son ship
to God, compare the remarks on Ps. ii. 7. In this relation, sometimes
all Israel is personified as the son of God; thus, _e.g._, Exod. iv.
22: "Thus thou shalt say unto Pharaoh: My son. My first-born is
Israel." Sometimes the Israelites are also called the _children_ or
_sons_ of God; _e.g._, Deut. xiv. 1: "Ye are children to the Lord your
God" (compare also Deut. xxxii. 19), although not every single
individual could on this account be called "son of God." In this sense,
that designation is never used, evidently because the sonship under the
Old Testament does not rest so much on the personal relation of the
single individual to God,--as is the case in the New Testament,--but
the individual rather partakes in it only as a part of the whole. But
there is an easy transition from the sonship as viewed in the Old
Testament, to the sonship as seen in the New. The former, in its
highest perfection, cannot exist at all without the latter. It is only
when its single members are born of God, that the Congregation can be
regarded and treated as the child of God in the full sense of the word,
and t