... if they would persist in their transgressions of the law, notwithstanding all the chastisements they experienced while living in Yahweh's sight upon His land, He would bring upon them a punishment of seven prophetic times' duration, or 2,520 years.

Exposition of Daniel.

33 And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.

While circumcision obliged Israel to keep the whole law, in which there was an annual remembrance of national offences, it gave them through that law only a tenant at will occupancy of the land of Canaan; and that not to the extent which pertains to its everlasting possession.

This appears from the words of Moses, as it is written,

"If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law, ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it " (Deut. 28:58, 63).

The condition of their tenancy was their good behaviour. If they served God according to the law of the land He had given, He would bless them in their basket and store; but if they served other gods, He would let in the worshippers of those gods upon them, and expel them from the country.

Israel has rebelled, and therefore they are in dispersion, until the time appointed shall come to remember the covenant made with the fathers, and, therefore to remember the land (v 40-42).

Elpis Israel 2.2.

43 The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.

Israel's dispersion and Palestine's desolation may be taken as a leading example-one so palpable as to defy being overlooked. A man must be in the deepest depths of ignorance and darkness who does not know of the scattered Jews and their down-trodden land. And it does not require a very wide range or acquaintance with human life to know how impossible it is to forecast the fortunes of a land and people: and how peculiarly improbable it was that a land situated so advantageously and constituted so favourably as the Holy Land should experience the "desolations of many generations."

This is a matter known and read of all men. There are many many others, not so generally known and read, but all exhibiting the same illustration of perfect fulfilment of what God has made known by the prophets. But they are all of a class requiring a loving and docile attention for their full and convincing discernment. They are not of the kind that sceptical criticism would demand. They are not a string of dates and particulars in advance. They are not an almanac of disconnected items.

God could have given us a complete calendar of futurity to the minutest detail; but such would not have been consistent with the objects of His dealings with a race of sinners. Those objects require that He should advance as far as is necessary for Him to be found by modesty and reverence and faith-and no farther. This He has done in many condescending and kindly ways, though with majesty and firmness. Among those ways has been the disclosure of futurity in a variety of matters that leave no room for doubt when attention is adequately applied.

Seasons 2. 57