AN EXHORTATION TO OBSERVE THE LAW, ESPECIALLY THE LAW OF THE SABBATH, COMBINED WITH PROMISES. There was much of the Law which it was impossible to observe during the Captivity. Sacrifice had ceased, the temple was destroyed, almost all the ceremonial law must have been suspended; even the command to do no work on the sabbath day cannot have been kept by a nation of slaves, whose masters would certainly not have permitted them to be idle one day in seven.
Still, the spirit of the ordinance might be kept by devoting the day, so far as was possible, to religious observance, as to prayer and to meditation upon holy things. This is now enjoined on the captive Jews, with the promise of a blessing—a blessing in which even the most despised part of the nation, the proselytes and the eunuchs, might participate.