uttered by the lip, seems peculiarly applied to set forms of words used in public worship. The Prophet Isaiah, speaking of the introduction of the true worship into Egypt, says, ' In that day shall five cities in the land of Canaan speak the lip of Canaan;' that is, as appears by the context, adopt the forms of public worship used by God's church in Palestine. The Prophet Zephaniah, speaking of the final conversion of all the nations of the earth, says, 'In that day I will turn to the peoples a pure lip, that they may all of them call upon the name of Jehovah;' where a pure lip evidently signifies a form of worship purged of all corruptions. It is used very remarkably in Ps. xii. 4;— Our lips are our own.' The subject of that Psalm is free thinkers; their learning, audacity and final excision. The Psalmist drawing these gentlemen to the life, makes them say, what they are heard to say daily, 'Our lips are our own;' that is, we have a right to choose our own way of worship; to worship what we please, or not to worship at all, if that should best please us, &c."

That the word rendered speech, (marg. words) furnishes no objection to the sense which we have assigned to the word lip, is evident from its frequent application to the ten commandments or words, in which cases it must denote doctrines rather than the language in which they are expressed. Indeed the Hebrew has another word

for language or dialect, which it expresses by the organ of speech, the tongue.

But if there be no difficulty in our way arising from the terms in which the historian has described the nature of the unity which prevailed among the builders of Babel, which was miraculously confounded; is there none in the object which they proposed to themselves by the project which they undertook? or, rather, Is there not some evidence in the narrative that their object was the maintenance of uniformity in an idolatrous creed and worship which they had formed for themselves; and that the design of the Divine interposition on the occasion was the frustration of the impious scheme, which was effected by disunion sown among them?

It seems improbable that their object should have been to provide for themselves a security in case of another deluge by building a tower of great height; for such a tower, however large its dimensions, could have held but a few of the assembled multitude; besides which, a "plain" was a most improper spot for the erection of such a fabrick for such a purpose. The words may reach," which our translators have introduced into verse 4, are not in the original Hebrew, as the Italic letter in which they are printed indicates; and if these words be omitted, we may read the clause, " Go to, let us build us a city and a tower with its summit to, or on

account of, THE HEAVENS,* and let us provide for ourselves there, lest we be scattered abroad on the face of the whole earth." The object of the builders seems to have been twofold; a provision for their civil accommodation, by erecting houses for themselves where they might live together and promote mutual safety and comfort, and also a provision for maintaining the ritual of worship to their Triune Deity the heavens, which they had substituted for the worship of JEHOVAH ALEIM.

That the object of the conspirators at Babel was of an idolatrous nature, derives support from the character of its leader Nimrod, of whom we read in the preceding chapter, that he was mighty one in the earth," chap. x. 8; and in ver. 9, that he was a mighty hunter before the

.ה-שמים *

a

†The antediluvian and the post-diluvian corruption appears to be identified in character. Apostacy, or persecution, or both, must, I conceive, be implied in the word rendered "Giants" by our translators in chap. vi. 4. This rendering they appear to have adopted from the LXX. version yıyavtes I transcribe the passage: "There were Giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of old men of renown."

The radical meaning of the word ", from which is derived the plural noun ›, rendered “ Giants," is to be fallen, to fall off, desert, or to fall upon and assault. Both these notions may be included in the descriptive noun used in the passage I have transcribed; for apostates from the true religion are generally, if not always, persecutors, by word or deed, if from

Lord; so that his character became proverbial in after times. Now though Dr. Jennings in his Jewish Antiquities patronizes the literal sense of the word hunter, and thinks that Nimrod's skill and courage in the destruction of wild beasts are mentioned as having been the means of raising him to pre-eminence among his cotemporaries, just as the principal heroes of heathen antiquity are celebrated on the same account; yet when I consider that his conduct seems to be stigmatized as rebellion against Jehovah, and

their rank or numbers they have power to become such. "The carnal mind is enmity against God."-As this account of the state of mankind is preceded by a judicial declaration that God's Spirit should "not always strive with man," and is followed by a prediction of the general deluge; it cannot be doubted that moral evil is intended to be described. And as there is no moral evil in gigantic stature, and no reason why marriages between "the sons of God," THE ALEIM, or the descendants of Seth, the professors of the true faith,—and the daughters - of human nature in its then fallen state, and without regeneration, or the misbelieving daughters of Cain,should be productive of children of gigantic stature, it should seem that bodily dimensions are not the direct object of the noun. These descendants of the , apostates and persecutors, seem to be the Nimrodians of the antediluvian period, persons who had deserted the faith of Adam and of Seth, and who, in process of time, became the avowed persecutors of the true religion in the persons of its professors. Comp. ver. 11. Aquila renders the word, as it occurs in Gen. vi. by eπittovtes, and Symmachus by Biao Comp. Num. xiii. 33, and Ecclus. xvi. 17. Των αρχαίων γιγαντων οι απεστησαν, the old Giants who fell away. Is not the pagan fable of the Giants' war derived either from the antediluvian or the post-diluvian apostacy?

that the term employed usually refers to oppression as practised against mankind, and often to persecution of the faithful; and when I add to this evidence the tradition of the Jews on the subject, I am led to a persuasion that the crime of Nimrod was opposition to the creed and persons of the worshippers of Jehovah. I can discover no appropriate sense in which a hunter of wild beasts can be called "a mighty hunter before the Lord." The phrase cannot be taken in a good sense; and if in a bad one, what crime is supposable in the act of freeing the earth from the monsters which would have ravaged it? The Targum of Jonathan B. Uzziel explains the character given to Nimrod thus: "He (Nimrod) was a mighty rebel before the Lord: even as it is proverbially said-From the creation of the world there hath been none so mighty in hunting and rebellion before the Lord as Nimrod." To the same purpose is the Jerusalem Targum on the text; "He was mighty in hunting and transgression before the Lord: for he was a hunter of the children of men in their speech (or profession,) bidding them forsake the judgments (or religion) of Sem, and cleave to the judgments (or religion) of Nimrod." That the word which is translated "a hunter," is often used to denote a persecutor, will appear from the following passages among many others: Jer. xvi. 16; Lam. iii. 52, iv. 18; Prov. i. 17, 18; 1 Sam.