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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1818 edition. Excerpt:... poem, the Messiah is speaking; first, under the calamities which overwhelmed him declaring his confidence in the divine goodness; then (v. 4. 5.) professing his priestly office; and finally expressing his assurance that God would raise him from the dead, and preserve his body from corruption. An interpretation which is not only utterly repugnant to the genius and construction of the poetic diction of the Hebrews, but does not even correspond with the notion of the Messiah which the Jews have always formed: for their conception of their Messiah was that he would be a most mighty hero, king, and conqueror; but not a priest, or a man conflicting with adverse fortune and numerous distresses. But only let this Psalm be read by any one whose mind is imbued, not with preconceived opinions, but with a just taste in Hebrew poetry; and who is not acquainted with what the New Testament teaches, and ancient and modern interpreters have advanced; and / would lay any wager that he would hardly find a single expression that would strongly induce him, still less oblige him, to think once of the Messiah: while many particulars occur (as I shall shew on v. 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11.) which cannot be referred to Christ without quite torturing their meaning. It can scarcely be told to what wretched shifts those interpreters are put who have got the notion of the Messiah fixed in their minds. But probably nobody would have fallen into this system of interpretation, if two apostles, Peter and Paul (Acts ii. 25--31; xxviii. 35, &c.), had not applied the words of this Psalm to Christ. But how insufficitnt that is to overturn my opinion, on the sense of the Psalm, I need not now spend words in proving. The necessity of that is superseded by the late learned disquisitions of...