the occasion of the opening of the prophet's eyes by the Spirit of God to behold the future glorious Temple, which in Messiah's time shall be established in Jerusalem as an House of Prayer for all nations, and to which even the Gentile peoples which are " far off" shall flock, bringing their worship and their offerings.
The incident recorded in John xii. 20-33 ma y m a sense be regarded as parallel to this. There the coming of Andrew and Philip to our Lord with the touching request made in the first instance to the latter of these two disciples by the Greeks who came up to Jerusalem among those who came up to worship at the feast: " Sir, we would see Jesus," took our Saviour's mind to the time when " all men," without distinction of race or nationality, shall be " drawn " unto Him, and to the only possible way by which this could be brought about. In the temple of His preresurrection body, as the Son of David, there was no room for these poor Gentiles. The Son of Man must be lifted up: except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. So here the appearance in Jerusalem of these strangers takes the prophet's mind from the Temple they were then building, over the second outer court of which when com pleted there was the inscription put up in Greek and Latin:
"No stranger may enter here on pain of death"[1] to the
- ↑ The interesting discovery in 1871 by Clermont-Ganneau, the learned Oriental archaeologist (the same who discovered and translated the inscription of the Moabite Stone), of the block of stone with the Greek version of this inscription, which was actually built into the wall or enclosure of the Second Temple, separating the "Court of the Gentiles" from the "Court of the Women," is now well known. I have myself more than once seen and examined the block with the inscription on it, which, with many other precious archaeological treasures, is now in the Constantinople Museum. The actual words of the Greek inscription upon which our Lord Jesus and Paul most probably looked more than once, read, translated, thus .\ " No stranger born may enter within the circuit of the barrier (rpv<t>6.KTov) and enclosure (7repi/3o\oC) that is around the sacred court (rd lepbv). And whoever shall L-e caught there, upon himself be the blame of the death which will consequently follow." Josephus (Antiq. xv. n. 5), speaking of the enclosures, or Courts of the Temple, which he describes as very spacious and surrounded by cloisters of much grandeur, says: "Thus was the first enclosure. In the midst of which, and not far from it, was the second, to be gone up by a
