THE RAINBOW:

A Magazine of Christian Literature, with Special Reference to the Revealed Future of the Church and the Clorld.

THERE

me.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1868.

THE ISRAELITE AND HIS KING.

RE is a remarkably interesting narrative in the first chapter of the gospel according to John: let us read it. "The day following, Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me ? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall sec heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

The first thing to be noted here is the artlessness of the record. Nothing can be more natural. It secures confidence as obviously related just as it occurred. You see the men, and you hear their conversation, which, though brief, is very earnest, and touches subjects of profound and everlasting import to mankind. There are places, too, introduced about which undying interest clusters: Galilee, Bethsaida, Nazareth, Heaven! Andrew and Peter, the former having brought the latter, had come to Jesus on the previous day. Probably the two brothers were with Jesus when he went forth into Galilee, and met Philip. Belonging to the same little town,

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[Sept. 1, 1868.

Andrew and Peter would be intimately acquainted with Philip. But Philip had another friend, one Nathanael, and he hastens to communicate to him the joyful intelligence-"We have found him of whom Moses, in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph."

Philip's heart is full of the great discovery, and he will not keep it to himself. All Israel is deeply, profoundly interested in it. The Messiah has come; the long promised, long expected ONE. What visions of national glory appear before the mind of Philip! What a glorious revolution in the condition of the favoured people, and what defeat and disaster to the arms of Imperial Rome! No longer shall she be mistress of the world; she must retire abashed and broken before the invincible prowess of the daughter of Zion, to whom God, by his servant Micah, had promised "the first dominion."

But Philip is startled and surprised by the unexpected objection of his friend Nathanael. "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” You are surely labouring under a strange mistake, Philip. Nazareth, of all places in the land of Israel, is just the very last from which any great or good man could spring, far less our glorious Messiah.

Dr. Morison's note on Matthew ii. 23. vividly epitomises the cause of this proverbial contempt of Nazareth. "And he (Joseph) came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth. The construction is somewhat complicated in the original, inasmuch as, instead of in a city, the evangelist's expression is to or into a city. The idea, however, is obvious,-And having come to or into a town called Nazareth, he settled there. Nazareth was an insignificant Galilean town or village, never mentioned in the Old Testament Scriptures, or in Josephus. It lay, nestlingly, among the hills that constitute the southern ridges of Lebanon, just before they sink into the plain of Esdraelon. It derives all its significance from its connection with Christ.- -That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene the expression by or through the prophets should be noted. indicates that the evangelist is not referring to any one prediction in particular. He is rather gathering together several prophetic statements, and translating their import into the peculiarly significant phráselogy of his own time and locality. To be called a Nazarene was to be spoken of as despicable. Galilee, in the days of the evangelists, was the Boeotia of the Jews. And the Galilean element of contemptibility was regarded as reaching its climax, or rather its bathos,—its inmost and utmost intensification, in Nazareth. When Nicodemus said to the chief priests and Pharisees, Doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and know what he doeth? he got cast in his teeth the scornful retort, Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look; for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. (John vii. 52.) And even the ingenuous Nathanael, when accosted by Philip, who said to him, We

Sept. 1, 1868.

THE ISRAELITE AND HIS KING.

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have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, instantaneously retorted, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? (John i. 46.) So utterly despicable was Nazareth. So thoroughly did the idea suggested by the word Nazarene run down into the idea that is embodied in the word despised or despicable. The very name, indeed, of Nazareth was suggestive of insignificance. In Hebrew it meant sprout-(Nêzer). And, remarkable to note, this same Hebrew name, with all its inherent insignificance of import, is the designation that is prophetically given to the Messiah in Isa. xi. 1., where he is represented as a lowly Sprout or Sucker from the stump of Jesse. The stately tree of the great royal house had been cut down to the ground; and thus, when the Messiah appeared, he had to grow up as an humble sprout—a Nêzer-from the roots of Jesse. Hence when he professed to be the long-promised Son and Heir of David, his profession was treated with the utmost scorn. The very fact that he grew up at the Galilean Nazareth-a town that was but as an insignificant sprout by the side of other towns, and that was inhabited only by insignificant peoplepeople who were extremely poor and extremely illiterate-was sufficient reason, in the estimation of the great body of the chief priests, and scribes, and Pharisees, why he should be despised and rejected. Hence, when it was predicted by the prophets that he should be despised of the people, despised and esteemed not, a reproach of men, a proverb to men, a root out of a dry ground (see Psa. xxii. 6-8; Isa. liii. 2, 3, 4; Psa. lxix. 11, 19, &c.), their prophecies were but a peculiar way of saying, He shall' be called a Nazarene. In the fact, therefore, that he was brought up at Galilean Nazareth, we have, at once, a fulfilment of the prediction that he was to be, not a lofty branch on the summit of the Davidic tree, but as a lowly sprout from the roots of Jesse, and at the same time a corresponding fulfilment of all those other and kindred predictions that depict the meanness of his outward condition, and the consequent and involved contempt that was poured upon his head and broke his heart. (Psa. lxix. 19, 20.) This interpretation of the evangelist's reference to what was spoken through the prophets is much to be preferred to the interpretation espoused by Calvin, Grotius, Wetstein, and others, who suppose that in the word Nazarene there is a covert reference to the word Nazarite, which means a separated, holy, self-sacrificing one. Jesus, it is true, was, when viewed in a lofty plane of things, a Nazarite indeed; though, when viewed in a lower plane, he came eating and drinking, and acting in all such matters as men in general, and not as a Nazarite. But whether we view him in the one plane, or look at him in the other, there is no connection whatsoever between the word Nazarite, or more properly Nazirite, and Nazareth. In English they are similar; but in Hebrew they are radically different."

LSept. 1, 1868.

How does Philip answer Nathanael's objection? By an argument on God's independence of the moral reputation of places in working out his glorious designs? He might have done so, for the history of his nation is full of illustrative examples, and the ingenuous Nathanael would have listened attentively. But Philip adopted a shorter and better course than this. He said briefly, earnestly, like a man who is certain that he is not mistaken, "Come and see." Neither, on the one hand, take my word for this great news, nor, on the other, allow the degraded name of Nazareth to prevent your examination of this great matter for yourself—" Come and see." The objection was wisely answered, the counsel wisely given. It cannot be denied that a well-conducted argument is a mental treat to the intellectual listener; but all men are not intellectual; and the best way of overruling prejudice against Divine truth is to urge men to examine it for themselves-not commentaries upon it, not arguments in its favour, but itself, its facts, doctrines, promises, professions, and actual power as verified by the experience of millions. In a word-Come to Christ yourself, and see who and what he is. Whenever and wherever men adopt this counsel, the result is as satisfactory as it was in the case of Nathanael of Cana of Galilee.

For Nathanael instantly took his friend's advice and went to Jesus; and he did well-to go to Jesus is the first step towards a glorious destiny; but if he was surprised at Philip's information, a still greater surprise awaited him in the Lord's words: " Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" Happy is the man "whom the Lord commendeth!" Approbation from his lips is praise indeed—a certificate of character which needs no human endorsement. He who knows what is in man declared Nathanael free from guile-fraud, deceit, subtlety; an honest, truthful, upright, sincere, ingenuous man, and a true Israelite waiting for the promised Messiah, as is abundantly manifested by what immediately follows.

A very beautiful thing comes out here. Nathanael does not affect humility, though he was humble, as all genuine men are. In the surprised question which he puts to Jesus, "Whence knowest thou me?" he fully admits that his character was correctly expressed. The Lord's reply to this question was a joyful revelation to Nathanael, and remains on the sacred page a source of joy to all who love the Saviour. "Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee." The foliage of the fig-tree formed a delicious shelter from the heat. Milton supposes that the fig-leaves mentioned, Gen. iii. 7, were the foliage of the banian, or sacred fig of India, (Ficus religiosa, or F. Indica,) which, with his usual learning and grandeur, he thus describes :

"There soon they chose

The fig-tree, not that kind for fruit renowned,