112 THE KEY OF MYSTERIES

on the morrow John was standing, and two of his disciples; and he looked upon Jesus as he walked, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.' Of these two disciples of John, one was the Evangelist St. John, who in this passage, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, records the words which with his own ears he had heard from John the Baptist's lips. We notice that the person whose way was to be prepared is called by Isaiah both LORD (that is, הוה the incommunicable name of God) and God.1 He thus distinctly asserts the Deity of the promised Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We now turn to the prophet Micah, who was a contemporary 2 of Isaiah. Micah mentions the name of the place in which the promised Messiah was to be born, and he also declares His existence from past eternity, saying: 'But 3 thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands 4 of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.' That the Jews in Christ's time understood that this passage referred to the promised Messiah is clear from the fact that, when king Herod consulted the chief priests and scribes as to the place

1 Isa. xl. 3. 2 Compare Mic. i. 1, with Isa. i. 1.
3 Mic. v. 2. 4 or 'families'.
PROOF OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST 113

where the Messiah should be born, they answered 'In Bethlehem of Judaea', and they quoted 1 this verse from the Book of the prophet Micah in order to prove the truth of their statement. So also in the Targum of Jonathan, the Jerusalem Talmud, and in the commentaries of the famous Jewish writers, Qimhi, Tankhum and Abarbanel, it is stated that the person here spoken of is 'the King Messiah'. The fact that the Jews do not accept the Lord Jesus as the true Messiah does not at all affect their explanation of the passage. We notice that regarding the Messiah it is stated in Micah's prophecy that ' His 2 goings forth are from of old, from everlasting'. It is evident that these words distinctly assert the existence of the Messiah from everlasting. But this is a declaration of His divine nature, for no one but God exists from everlasting. Thus it is written in the Psalms: 'From 3 everlasting to everlasting thou art God.' Accordingly we see that Micah's statement agrees with that of the Gospel: 'In 4 the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God'.

1 Matt. ii. 1-6. 2 Mic. v. 2.
It is remarkable that, in the most ancient and famous of Egyptian books, when the expression 'his goings forth' occurs, it is explained as meaning 'his birth'. Dr. Budge's edition of the Egyptian text of the Book of the Dead, ch. xvii, lines 30 and 32; and Davis' edition, ch. xvii, line 12.
3 Ps. xc. 2. 4 John i. 1-2.