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THE CYCLE OF SEVENTY WEEKS BETWEEN ABRAHAM

AND MOSES.

(See Plate 2, Figure 7.)

HAVING thus advanced to this point, I now proceed to speak of a further discovery which, in the Lord's goodness, I have, as I believe, made with regard to our Cycle.

The annals of Israel, as a nation, began from their deliverance out of Egypt, from which point to the casting off of the Jews, we have already traced a threefold septenary period. But be it remembered that the history of God's chosen people, viewed simply as a family, began considerably earlier than this, namely, with Abraham; and having seen that Seventy Weeks was the appointed dispensational period with Israel as an organized nation, is it not reasonable to suppose that it was equally so in the times of the Patriarchs? Accordingly, if we trace the period from Abraham's birth to the Exodus*, when it will be remembered our threefold period began, we shall find that this too was A CYCLE OF SEVENTY WEEKS, which added to the three cycles before named, makes a FOURFOLD PERIOD from the birth of the patriarch down to the casting off of his seed after the flesh. And here I would just say, in passing, that when I shall come to treat more particularly than I have yet done of this present age,-this break in which we ourselves are standing at present in the history of Israel, we shall find that this too, like the above, is a fourfold period. This belongs, it is true, to a future part of our subject; but I just touch on it here, because it tends so to strengthen what I have stated above, inasmuch as there is a moral propriety in the fact of the time of the Lord's ancient dealings with his elect, earthly people being thus commensurate with the period of their dispersion.

To return then to consider this period as we find it in Scripture. In Genesis xii. 4, we read that Abraham was 66 SEVENTY AND FIVE YEARS OLD when he departed out of Haran to go into

* In Plate 2, Figure 7, this is the first of the four Cycles coloured red the fifth from the top.

Canaan ;" and then in Exodus xii. 40, 41, in the Septuagint version, which all the best critics agree in considering as the true translation of this passage, it is written, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, and of their fathers, which they sojourned in the land of Canaan, and in the land of Egypt, was FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS,"-which last period being added on to the above seventy-five years, makes up, from Abraham's birth to the Exodus, just five hundred and five years, that is, FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY YEARS, or SEVENTY WEEKS, with fifteen years in addition. This addition, of course, will at first sight appear to stand in our way, and to lengthen our cycle beyond its due limits. But so far from interfering at all with what it is my object to prove, it falls in, in a most remarkable way, with what I have before stated as to the existence of periods in Scripture which the Lord in his record of time has passed over as blanks in the moral history of man. Such, as we have seen, were the seven intervals of servitude-such the time of the Babylonish captivity—and such too, I doubt not, is the period in question. And now let us consider what period this was. It was, I believe, the interval between the birth of Ishmael and the weaning of Isaac-THE TIME OF THE BONDWOMAN AND HER SON. And that this was fifteen years, the overplus period, we gather from the following facts. Abraham, at the time of Ishmael's birth, was eighty-six (Gen. xvi. 16), and when Isaac, the son of promise was born, a hundred years old, (see Gen. xxi. 5,) which makes an interval of fourteen years between these two events. Then, if we allow for another year between the birth and the weaning of Isaac, we come to the conclusion which we desire to reach, we have the fifteen years exactly. And now, as to the principle involved in this fact. Faith, we must recollect, was the peculiar and distinctive characteristic of the dispensation in which the patriarch lived. The promise of

*"In Exodus xii. 40, we read, 'The sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.' But this is not true; for it was only four hundred and thirty years from the calling of Abraham, two hundred and fifteen of which elapsed before the going into Egypt. (Compare Gen. xii. 4; xvii. 1, 21; xxv. 26; and xlvii. 9.) The following is the verse as it appears in all the manuscripts and editions of the Samaritan Pentateuch, confirmed by the Alexandrian manuscript. of the Septuagint: Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, and of their fathers, which they sojourned in the land of Canaan, and in the land of Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.' This is the true reading, and removes all doubt and obscurity."-Horne's Introduction, vol. ii. p. 265.

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blessing through Isaac, the child of Sarah, the free woman, had been secured to Abraham and his seed by the immutable counsel and oath of the living God. But in the interval between the going forth of the promise and the birth of the child of promise, we see Abraham losing sight of the blessing, and failing entirely. At the suggestion of Sarah, with a view to secure to himself, in his own way, what God had promised before, he takes Hagar to wife; and thus Ishmael, the fruit of this union, comes before us in Scripture as the sad witness of the Patriarch's folly and distrust of the truth of the unchangeable God. Here then at once was an infringement upon the order of God-here the spirit gives way to the flesh-faith to unbelief. It was, in fact, as we gather from Galatians iv. 21-31, the law in a figure finding its way into this household of faith, and thus for a time breaking the happy link of communion between God and his people. Hence it is that we are given to trace with such accuracy the years between the birth of Ishmael and that of Isaac, to know the moment exactly when Abraham failed, and when, at the manifestation of him who was a Son to him indeed, (Gen. xxi.), he regained his original strength. And this did not take place till the day of that feast which he made when the true heir of the blessing was weaned, and when the bondwoman and her son were fairly cast out.*

Surely this is all most important, because, judging from analogy, we know that this space of time must of necessity, in the very nature of things, have been a break in Abraham's history—a blank-which goes, in one sense, for nothing in the general order of time under the eye of the Lord.

Here, however, before I proceed further, I must answer an objection which may be urged as to the above statement. It was, it may be said, within the above interval that Abraham entertained the three angels, and also interceded for Sodom; which

* With regard to this period, there is one thing very remarkable. It is this-the time that the Jewish nation were under the Sinai Covenant, of which Hagar is the type, (Gal. iv. 22..31,) was fifteen hundred years—that is, if in addition to the threefold period of Seventy Weeks, we take the years of Jubilee into account. (See page 109.) And so, answering to this, the time of the bondwoman and her son was fifteen years. Here surely I should say is an analogy between the fifteen years of Abraham's failure and the above period of Israel's bondage-one being the multiple of the other.

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