BY LOWTH, BLAYNEY, NEWCOME, WINTLE, HORSLEY, ETC. IN FIVE VOLUMES. VOL. V.-THE MINOR PROPHETS. BY WILLIAM NEWCOME, D.D., BISHOP OF WATERFORD; AND A New Edition. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG & SON, CHEAPSIDE; TEGG, WISE, & CO., LOWER ABBEY STREET, DUBLIN. MDCCCXXXVI. ADVERTISEMENT. THE Editor of this Edition, in apologizing for the delay attending its publication, has only to refer to the anxiety he felt, that so valuable a work might be presented to the public without those "numerous errata" which the Rev. T. Hartwell Horne complains of as defacing the former octavo Edition. He has also carefully compared every reference to the works of Blayney and Horsley, and has introduced very many additional Notes and Illustrations, which cannot fail to render the present Edition more acceptable and useful to the Biblical Student. J. HARRISON. Hoxton, July 13, 1836, PREFACE. GOD raised up a succession of prophets among his people for many wise and gracious purposes. They were not only designed to retain the Jews in the worship of the one true God; but to spread the knowledge of him among the neighbouring nations, by the fame of their predictions and miracles. They were a barrier against those prevailing kinds of superstition which consisted in the supposed evocation of departed spirits, and in consulting imaginary local deities, for the purpose of gratifying the natural thirst which all mankind have for the knowledge of futurity. And though the answers which God occasionally vouchsafed to the high priest, by a voice from between the Cherubim, were greatly subservient to these ends; yet was it expedient that prophecy should pervade the whole body of the people, and that events should be foretold which from their nature could not be the object of inquiry by the sacred oracle, or at a time when idolatry was so general that these solemn applications to God were wholly neglected. It must also be observed, that the attestations given by the prophets to the Mosaic law, their instructions and exhor B |