FINAL CONFLICT AND DELIVERANCE 449
these actions will be brought home to the heart and con science of the Jewish nation in that day, and they will then acknowledge that both directly, by delivering Him into the hands of the Gentiles, and indirectly, on account of their sins, it was they who pierced Him.
(ct) "And they shall mourn for (or over } Him" vesaphedhu alav not only with the ordinary " mourning," as those who mourn for the dead (in which sense the verb
- JQD, saphad, is generally used), but with a deep and intense
mourning, namely, " as one that mourneth for his only son " (or, literally, " with the mourning for an only one "), and " they shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born." Mourning for an " only son " was proverbial as descriptive of the magnitude of the grief, as we read in Jer. vi. 26: "O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth^ and wallow thyself in ashes : make thee mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation And again in Amos viii. IO: " 1 will make it as the mourning for an only son"
But not only on account of their proverbial use to ex press the intensity and bitterness of the sorrow and grief, are these names " the only one " and " first-born " introduced here in connection with Israel s mourning over the Messiah whom they had pierced, they are peculiarly appropriate designations of Him who is " the First-born of every crea ture," and of whom the apostle exclaims : " We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth And He is not only the " first " and " only-begotten " as the Son of God, in relation to the Father, but as the Son of Man, and more particularly in relation to the Jewish nation. He was their child of promise upon whom the hopes and expectations of the nation had been centred through the centuries. He is the " only One " whom this nationally barren woman, who was betrothed unto Jehovah, had brought forth, as it were, miraculously, by the power of God. And it was ordained that He should be " the First-born among many brethren," first and fore most to them who, according to the flesh, are " His own," 29
