Wesley Corpus

-a word of the very same import. It is therefore here very properly rendered “shapen; ” nor can it be more exactly translated. But “the word "nor" properly signifies, warmed me.” You should say, literally signifies. But it signifies conceived me, nevertheless. And so it is taken, Gen. xxx. 38,39,41, &c.; xxxi. 10. “Nay, it signifies there the act of copulation. So several translators render it.” (Page 132, 133.) And several render it otherwise: So this does not determine the point either way. It must therefore be determined by the sense. Now, for what end did Jacob put the “pilled rods before the cattle P” That the lambs might be marked as the rods were. And when is it that females of any kind mark their young? Not in that act; but some time after, when the foetus is either forming or actually formed. Throw a plum or a pear at a woman before conception, and it will not mark the foetus at all; but it will, if thrown while she is conceiving, or after she has conceived; as we see in a thousand instances. This observation justifies our translators in rendering the word by conceiving in all those places. And indeed you own, “David could not apply that word to his mother, in the sense wherein you would apply it to the cattle.” Youtherefore affirm, “It means here, to nurse.” (Page 134.) You may as well say it means to roast. You have as much authority from the Bible for one interpretation as for the other. Produce, if you can, one single text, in which tri signifies to nurse, or anything like it. You stride on : (1) “The verse means, “In sin did my mother nurse me: ’ (2.) That is, ‘ I am a sinner from the womb: (3.) That is, ‘I am a great sinner:* (4.) That is, ‘I have contracted strong habits of sin.’” By this art you make the most expressive texts mean just anything or nothing. So Psalm lviii. 3: “‘The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, telling lies.’ That is, My unjust persecutors in Saul’s court are exceedingly wicked.” If this was all David meant, what need of "1, “are alienated?” and that from the “bowels” of their mother? Nay, but he means as he speaks.