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"Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth," Judges xvi. "And the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and said unto her, Entice him, and see wherein his great strength lieth, and by what means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him: and we will give thee every one of us eleven hundred pieces of silver." By these eleven hundred pieces of silver are expressed the number of years from the betrayal of Samson to the betrayal of the Saviour Jesus Christ: for from the time of the promise in Eden until the coming of the Messiah was two thousand and seventy years, to which must be added the four hundred years' affliction endured by the Seed, at the end of which the exodus took place. From the exodus to the crossing of the river Jordan was forty years, and from the crossing of the river Jordan unto Samson was two hundred and ninety-seven years, and Samson judged Israel twenty years. The sum of all these is two thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven years; then add the eleven hundred years represented by the figure, and the number will be found to be three thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven years, which corresponds very closely with the chronology of Daniel, varying but three years from it. It must be remembered that these bounds were also set by the number of the children of Reuben, and Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, the variation in this case being but two years from that of the chronology of Daniel: hence the records multiply in which to look for the coming of the Saviour into his ministry. In the riddle the seven epochs of time are typified by the seven days of the feast, and during the seventh day the solution was given, even as, by the figure, the ministry of the Saviour, which occurred during the seventh epoch, appears to carry with it the true solution.In the betrayal of Samson the four times are typified by the four attempts of Delilah to accomplish his destruction. In these figures the seven epochs are also typified by the seven locks of hair, and the seven green withes that were never dried, which correspond with a time and times and the dividing of a time. The history of Samson bears out the harmony and concord of the interpretations thus far given. According to the riddle the presence of the Seed in the great work is indicated by strength and sweetness: the first relating to that portion of his manifestation in the flesh, in which he overthrew all his enemies, embracing the time from his advent in the days of Abraham until he entered upon his ministry ; and the second term relates to the time of his ministry when his enemies fled from before him, and during which the grand consummation of his labors took place. //∞\\ |