bond woman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." The son of the bond woman is men's own righteousness; which is the son of the first covenant, given at mount Sinai, which is Hagar; and Isaac, the son of the free woman, is Christ, as applied to the soul by faith: he is the child of promise, and the son of the free woman: at least this is part of the signification. It is Sarah, the mother of Isaac, that urges the casting out the son of the bond woman; so it is the church in its ministry and ordinances, which is the mother of Christ in the souls of believers, that urges the casting out our own legal righteousness. It is Christ that is the heir of the blessings of the covenant; it is by his merits only that we have a right or title to those blessings; we must cast out our own righteousness, and not have any manner of regard to that, as though that had a right, or as though a right came by that. ["And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight, because of his son."] This signifies how very hard and grievous it seems to persons wholly to cast out their own righteousness, the son of the legal covenant, from mount Sinai, because they are our own works, our own offspring, that are dear to us, as Ishmael was to his father Abraham.

[138] Gen. xxi. 8. “And Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned." This typifies the weaning of the church from its milk of carnal ordinances, ceremonies, and shadows, and beggarly elements. Upon the coming of Christ, the church under the Old Testament is represented as being in its minority; and the apostle tells us that babes must be fed with milk, and not strong meat. Christ therefore dealt with his disciples just as a tender mother does with her child, when she would wean it from the breast. There was a great feast provided, which represents the glorious gospel feast provided for souls when the legal dispensation ceased by the coming of Christ. It may also signify the wean. ing of souls from the enjoyments of the world at conversion, and the spiritual feast which they find instead of them.

[362] Gen. xxii. Concerning Abraham's offering up his son Isaac. God's command to Abraham to offer up his son Isaac, considered with all its circumstances, was an exceeding great trial. Abraham had left his own country and his father's house, and all that was dear to him, and followed God, not knowing whither he went. First, he left Ur of the Chaldees with his father. This was a great trial, but this was not enough. After this he was required also to leave Haran and his father's house there, after he had been there settled in

hopes of a blessing which God encouraged him that he would give him in a posterity. When he came there he found a famine in the land, and was forced to fly the country and go down into Egypt for sustenance; and God appeared to him time after time, promising great things concerning his posterity. Abraham waited a long time, and saw no appearance of the fulfilment of the promise, for his wife continued barren, and he made his complaint of it to God. God then renewed and very solemnly confirmed his promise; but did not tell him that it should be a child by his wife, and therefore after he had waited some time longer, he went in to his maid; but God rejected her son, and he waited thirteen years longer, till he was an hundred years old, before he obtained the sou promised; and then God gave him but one, without any hopes of his having any other. After this, at God's command, he cast out his son Ishmael, though it was exceedingly grievous to him, on encouragement of great blessings in Isaac and his posterity. And now, at last, God commands him to take him and offer him up for a burnt offering. He does not merely call to see him die, though that would have been a great trial under such circumstances; but he is to cut his throat with his own hands, and when he has done so, to burn his flesh on the altar, an offering to God-to that God that carnal reason would have said had dealt so ill with him, after he had lived long enough to get fast hold of his affections; after he was weaned from Ishmael, and had set all his heart on Isaac; and after there began to be a most hopeful prospect of God's fulfilling his promises concerning him. And God gave him no reason for it. When Ishmael was to be cast out, the reason assigned was, that in Isaac, his seed should be called. But now, in seeming inconsistency with that reason, Isaac must die, and Abraham must kill him; and neither one nor the other must know why, nor wherefore; and, as Mr. Henry observes, how would he ever look Sarah in the face again? with what face could he return to her and his family, with the blood of Isaac sprinkled on his garments? "Surely a bloody husband hast thou been to me," would Sarah say to him, as Zipporah said to Moses, Exod. iv. 25, 26.

[7] Gen. xxii. 8. "My son, God will provide a lamb for a burnt offering." This was fulfilled in Christ.

[350] Gen. xxiii. Concerning Abraham's buying, in Canaan, the possession of a burying place. Canaan is the land that God made over to Abraham by covenant; and yet he gave him none inheritance in it to live upon, as Stephen observes; no, not so much as to set his foot on, Acts vii. 5. But the first possession

he had in it was the possession of a burying place, or a possession for him to be in after he and his were dead; which signifies this, that the heavenly Canaan, the land of promise, the rest that remains for the people of God, is a land for them to possess, and abide and rest in, after they are dead: they do not enter upon the possession of it, until after they are dead, and then they are gathered to their possession in Canaan. Therefore it was so ordered that Jacob and Joseph so much insisted on it to be buried in that land.

[161] Gen. xxiv. 15. Rebekah, and Rachel, and Zipporah, Moses's wife, those types of the church, all found their husbands. who were types of Christ, when coming out to fountains to draw water; which typifies this, that Christ is found by believers in a way of the use of the means of grace. The woman of Samaria found Christ when coming to draw water.

[71] Gen. xxv. 22. "And the children struggled together in the womb." I believe this had reference to the spiritual war that is in the soul of the believer, Christ's spouse, between the flesh and spirit: the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary one to another.

[35] Gen. xxvii. 29. "Let the people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee; be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee. Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee." Hence we learn that the prophets themselves may not understand their prophecies, for Jacob thought that this should be accomplished of Esau.

[406] Gen. xxvii. 18, 19. "And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it, and he called the name of that place Bethel," &c. So, chap xxxi. 13. 45, and xxxv. 14. From hence the heathen Batylia, mentioned by Philo Biblius out of Sanchoniathon. The god Uranus excogitated Batylia, having fashioned them into living stones. Bochart conceives that Sanchoniathon, instead of living stones, wrote anointed stones, D (from the radix D, Shuph, which, among the Syrians, signifies to anoint) which Philo Biblius read D; whence he changed anointed, into living stones. So Damascius tells us, I saw a Batylus moved in the air. The Phoenicians, imitating Jacob at Bethel, first worshipped the very stone which the patriarch anointed. So Scaliger, in Euseb. tells us that "the Jews relate so much, that although that Cippus, or stone, was at first beloved of God, in the times of the Patriarchs, yet afterwards he hated it, because the Canaanites turned it into

an idol." Neither did the Phoenicians worship only this stone at Bethel; but also, in imitation of this rite, erected several other Batylia, on the like occasion as Jacob erected his pillar of stone as a memorial of God's apparition to him. So in like manner both the Phoenicians and the Grecians, upon some imaginary apparition of some god, (or dust, rather,) would erect their Botylia, or pillars, in commemoration of such an apparition. So Photius, out of Damascius, tells us that near Heliopolis, in Syria, Asclepiades ascended the mountain Libanus, and saw many Boetylia, or Botyli; concerning which he relates many miracles. He relates also that these Botylia were consecrated, some to Saturn, some to Jupiter, and some to others. So Phavorimus says, Batylus is a stone which stands at Heliopolis, near Libanus. This stone some also called Ernλny, which is the same word by which the Seventy render Jacob's pillar. Gale's Court of the Gen. p. 1, b. 2, c. 7, p. 89, 90.

[169] Gen. xxviii. 18-22. " And he took the stone that he had set for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it—And this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God's house." This anointed pillar is a type of the Messiah, or Anointed, who is often called a stone or a rock, and is the house of God, wherein the Godhead dwells and tabernacles. He was signified by the tabernacle and temple, as Christ tells us, when he says, "Destroy this temple," &c. And he, we are told, is the temple of the new Jerusalem. This is the stone that was Jacob's pillow; it signified the dependence the saints have upon Christ, and that it is in him they have rest and repose, as Christ invites those that are weary to come to him, and they shall find rest. The Psalmist says he will lay him down and sleep, and awake, the Lord sustaining him. And as the stones of the temple rested on the foundation, so the saints, the living stones, rest upon Christ, building and resting upon that rock. This stone signified the same with the other that he built there when he returned: chap. xxxv. 7: "And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el, because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother." Ver. 14, "And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink-offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon."

[417] Gen. xxxiii. 1-7. As Jacob's family returned to the land of Canaan, after Jacob had been long banished from thence, so it is probable will be the return of the spiritual Israel to God, its resting place, and as it were to the promised land, to the land flowing with milk and honey, to a state of glorious rest, plenty,

prosperity, and spiritual joy, and delights, in the latter days, which is often represented by the prophets as bringing God's people into the land of Israel, and recovering them from foreign lands, where he had driven them. Jacob, at his first entrance, meets with great opposition from those professors who are often in scripture represented by the elder brother, as Cain, and Ishmael, and Zarah, the son of Judah, who first put forth his hand, and David's eldest brother, and the elder brother of the prodigal. But Jacob's meek and humble behaviour towards his opposing brother, to soften and turn his heart, teaches the duty of Christians. Jacob's family was divided into several companies, one going before another with a space between; so the return of the church of God will be by several companies that will come in one after another in successive seasons of the pouring out of the Spirit of God, with a space between. In Jacob's family, the lowest and meanest went first, and afterwards the more honourable and most amiable, and best beloved; so, in the spiritual return of the church of Christ, God will first bring in the inferior sort of people; he will save the tents of Judah first, agreeable to the prophecy, Zech. xii. 7. "The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, do not magnify themselves against Judah." And the first outpouring of the Spirit will be the least glorious, and they that are first brought in are not only inferior among men, but the least pure, beautiful, and amiable as Christians in their experiences and practice. In Jacob's family went first the hand-maids and their ehildren, so this is the blemish of the first children of Christ that shall be brought in at the glorious day of the church, that though they will be true children of Jacob, yet shall they be as it were children of the hand-maids, with much of a legal spirit, i. e. spiritual pride and self-confidence. After these comes Leah and her children, who were more honourable and better beloved than the former; she was a true wife, but yet less beautiful, and less beloved than his other wite; so after the first outpouring of the Spirit there will be a work of God that will break forth, that will be more glorious and more pure than the first. In Jacob's family came last of all the beautiful Rachel and Joseph, Jacob's best beloved and dearest child of all the family; so will it be in the church of God in days approaching. Jacob goes before them all, leads them all, and defends them all; so doth Christ go before his church as their leader and defence.

[126] Gen. xxxvii. 28. "And they lift up Joseph out of the pit." Joseph was here a type of Christ; he was designed death by his own brethren, as Christ was; he was cast into a pit, whereby his death and burial was signified. He was lifted out again,