The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.—Gen. xlix. 10.

The Holy Ghost, by the mouth of the dying patriarch, Jacob, has pointed to the epoch when he, of whom Moses and the prophets did write, should appear. It is worthy our particular attention, that, at the period of time when Jesus came, Judea was still governed by a Jewish king. It is true the power of the royal Asmonean or Maccabean race was destroyed, and Herod the Great had ascended the throne of Israel, yet the sceptre was not departed from Judah. Herod was an Idumean, which nation had, for nearly two centuries, been proselytes to Judaism, and so incorporated and mingled with the Jews, as to be regarded as one people. Judea bowed to the Roman power, yet Herod exercised the regal authority, and was universally acknowledged as the sovereign of Jewry, when Jesus, the prince of peace, the king of Israel, appeared a babe at Bethlehem but no sooner was the Shiloh come, than the sceptre departed from Judah. On the death of Herod, which happened soon after the birth of Christ, Augustus CÆsar divided the kingdom of Judea between Archelaus, Herod, and Philip, the three sons of Herod. Archelaus succeeded to the half of his father's dominions by the title of tetrarch, but not of king; his tyranny and oppression were so great, that, in less than ten years, he was deposed and banished to France by the emperor, who then reduced Judea to a Roman province, and ruled it afterwards by procurators or governors, who were sent thither and recalled at pleasure; the taxes were now paid more directly to the Roman empire, and gathered by the publicans; the power of life and death was taken out of the hands of the Jews, and placed in those of the Roman governors. The Lord, when he is pleased, can make the wrath of man to praise him, and his enemies to minister to his glory. This sentiment we have most strikingly illustrated in the conduct of Caiaphas, who, in the moment he was plotting the destruction of Jesus, and thirsting for his blood, delivered a very remarkable prophecy,[16] the exact counterpart of the one we are now considering, in which he declared Jesus to be the promised Shiloh, who should gather together in one, all the children of God which are scattered abroad, not the nations of the Jews only, but the Gentiles also. Yes, Jesus will seek out and bring his people from the mountains whence they are scattered; in the cloudy and dark day he will bring his sons from afar, and his daughters from the ends of the earth, and there shall be one fold under one shepherd, even the glorious Shiloh.