2 Kings 10

2 Kings 10:27

a draught-house] Here the Masorets put a more cleanly word, in their Keri, in the margin, to be read, then is the Cetib, written in the Text; as if they would prompt to the Holy Ghost a more manerly speech. And so Deut. XXVIII. 30. Jer. III. 2. Lesse marvaile then if they deale so with the words of Rabshakeh, Esay XXXVI. 12. And in Zechary speaking of Jerusalems destruction, and womens usage by soldiers, grosse to speak, the Text telleth the terme to be seene, the margin what they would have read. And in Jer.

XXXI. 38. they leave a blanck in the Text with the vowel points underneath, and place the head letters in the margin of a word which they suppose to be wanting. Some various Readings seeme to be in the Hebrew Text. See the learned Annotations on Jer. IX. 8. and on chap. XVII. 13. And some learned seeme to grant some superfluous insertions, as Jer. LI. 3 in the word bending; and Jer. LII. 19. in the word Cauldrons.

See the Annotations on those places. Yet some other learned men assert the sacred Text to be absolutely entire and perfect without the least default or defect; without altering a syllable, letter, or situation of a letter; holding the margin-reading to be given with equal authority, as the other which is in the Text; and serving to expound it. And the vowels, and accents to have been ab origine in the Text, and so of equal authority with it. Insisting upon the Jews care for preservation of the Text, in numbering the letters in every Book, and naming the middle letter in it, and the middle letter in the Law, or Books of Moses. And this done not only by the Masorets that lived five hundred years or more after Christ; but also by those ancient Masorets that are called the men of the Great Synagogue, and succeeded next to the last Prophets of the Old Testament, of whom the Jewes make Ezra to be one. And that in his time the whole number of the letters were reckoned, in all the Law to be 600045. in the Prophets 815280.

See more in my Observations on Eccles. IX. 4. and on Ier.

XXXII. 12.