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is a wide field of thickly-growing corn stirred by gentle breezes under a ripening sun. As the labourers, humming or shouting snatches of cheery song, bind the sheaves, and carry load after load away, they receive friendly salutations from people passing by. Nearly two hundred years before this psalm was produced, Isaiah sketched the pride, impotence and ruin of Israel's foes. They that hate Zion are "as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up" (Isaiah 37:27). The flat roof of an Eastern dwelling is no more the place for vegetation than Jerusalem is a proper field for Gentile and Samaritan ploughers; but so long as there are winds to blow particles of earth into crevices and corners, dews and showers to moisten the drifted dust, and birds of the air to sow seeds, the best cemented housetop is not proof against the appearance of straggling and struggling blades. The enemies of Israel shall be "as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up," which for want of nourishment at the roots dries and dies before it can be pulled: "wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom." Let who will express approbation of the salutations interchanged by Mohammedans when they meet, so long as they do not speak of them as if they originated with Turks and Moors. Such greetings are the remnant, in many countries, of a beautiful primitive custom. The Book of Ruth supplies a delightful glimpse of a harvest field thirteen hundred years before the Christian era (Ruth 2:4). The thought is ridiculous of housetop harvesting occasioning such benedictions. Equally out of question is it for the Church's adversaries to be blessed by God or man.

(E. J. Robinson.)

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KJV: Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:

WEB: Let them be as the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up;