Language of Prophecy

 •  20 min. read  •  grade level: 11
As much is often essayed to mystify prophecy on the score of its language, it may be well here to notice the subject a little.
The fact is that all language is more or less figurative, more especially where it is poetic or impassioned. History, if it be not a dead chronicle, abounds with figure; but none the less does it aim, or at least profess, to give nothing but the truth: Simple language is distinguished from figurative, though both styles are freely used and understood readily in all compositions, as well as in oral address and ordinary conversation. Carnal and spiritual are the true correlatives, as also literal and mystical, but these respectively apply to the sense of what is said or written, rather than to the diction. Allegory, parable (or its abbreviation in proverb), and symbol, again, are varieties of form in which truth may be conveyed, but they ought not to be confounded with figurative language. A symbol may be a material object, actually existing, and applied morally; or it may be made up by combining in one a variety of existing objects, so as to give God’s moral view of what is thus revealed, as the four beasts or Gentile imperial powers of Daniel 7, the fourth of which re-appears in Revelation 11-19. But symbolic language is exceptional, and seems limited to prophecy during the times of the Gentiles. It is in no way characteristic of prophecy in general. In every case what was conveyed was real, not artificial: when accomplished, it is history from the divine side. It must never be forgotten, however, that whatever the form or figure employed, the subject matter referred to in prophecy is not ideal but real, any more than in the rest of Scripture. It may be a fact or a place, a person or a people, a time or a state of things. Simple language may be used alone, or with figures to impart vividness, as in all speech; or symbol may be the method, as sometimes in Ezekiel and Zechariah, and yet more in Daniel and the Revelation; but what is conveyed is a reality, and not a figure. Poetical elevation is not uncommon, any more than figurative representation; and only in an exceptional way, as in Daniel 11, have we the revelation of events successive in relation to each other, though with gaps first and last, for which room is carefully made in the terms of the prophecy itself, before the grand terminus of all, the conflict of the close, in which figures for the first time “the king” in “the land,” as distinct from him of the north and him of the south. “The King” it is as idle to confound with Antiochus Epiphanes as with the Pope or Buonaparte. It is the final catastrophe, ending where all the visions of Daniel, and we may say generally of the prophets, do end, in the coming Kingdom of the Messiah. As they have one divine authority, so have they one glorious, consummation, when He takes His great power and reigns. Thus, as all prophecy looks to that end, none is of private or isolated interpretation. It is the Spirit glorifying Christ, when He shows the things that are to come.
The Revelation, as it is the latest, so it is by far the most elaborate, of all prophetic books, consisting throughout of visions, in which symbolic objects fill a larger place then anywhere else in Scripture. Still it is to be observed that the prophet conveys literally what he saw in the plainest language. The objects and acts in the scenes which he in the Spirit saw, and the words announced to his ears, are given with precision. The symbols we have to study and comprehend in the light of general usage and of the particular context; for symbolic forms, though less pliant than the ordinary expressions of thought, are, like the rest, modified by their associations; and the Holy Spirit alone can guide rightly in this and in all else of Scripture; as common sense does in the affairs and intercourse of natural life. Save in the symbolism which forms a comparatively small part of prophecy, its language differs only in degree from that of Scripture generally, and must be interpreted on exactly the same principle. Indeed even the symbolic portion finds its counterpart in the types not only of the Pentateuch, but of Scripture history as a whole. The form may vary according to divine wisdom but one mind and purpose will be found to pervade all. Every scripture is inspired of God; and as Christ is the image of the invisible God, and He alone declared the Father, so is He the object of all revelation and others only appear as related to Him.
The late Dr. P. Fairbairn (Prophecy, 86), who sought to allegorize the prophetic word, contends that, if Genesis 3:1515And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15) is to be read literally, “it speaks merely of the injuries to be received from serpents on the one side, and of the killing of serpents on the other: and any member of Eve’s future family, who might have the fortune to kill a serpent, should by so doing, verify the prophecy.” But no spiritual mind could tolerate such an interpretation, no fair mind allow the relevancy of the argument. Jehovah Elohim addressed the tempter, and winds up His sentence by the words (so pitiably travestied for controversial purposes) which, understood in simple faith, have comforted believers from that day to this. It is burlesque, not argument, and utterly vain to maintain that Israel means the church, or that Jerusalem means the New Jerusalem, which is the desired conclusion. Nor is there the slightest force in explaining away the bearing of Isaiah 40:33The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40:3), which was accomplished in the Baptist’s ministry preparing the way of Jehovah as Isaiah 53 was in Messiah’s humiliation and atonement. But all that these scriptures say is not yet fulfilled, and cannot be till His second advent in power and glory, which will, make good every word which the allegorical school dissipate into thin air. The rejection of the herald and of his Lord has suspended very important parts of both predictions as of prophecy in general, which wait “that day,” when Jerusalem’s heart shall hear what is spoken, and rejoice that her warfare is accomplished and her iniquity is pardoned: then the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. Even the first prophecy, like the great mass, awaits that day for its full effect in the execution of judgment on the Serpent. For prophecy, as the rule, lets us see the glorious end of God when Christ takes His great power and reigns. We may and ought to see what faith alone can see now; but the future King of glory will be the public display to every eye.
Those whose theory it is that all prophecy is ideal, have to face the fact that a vast deal given out by the prophets has been fulfilled literally. Ignorant self-will denies in vain what is patent. Its accomplishment is plain in Nineveh and Babylon, in Tire and Sidon, in Edom and Egypt, as well as in the Medo-Persian and the Macedonian powers, to say nothing of Rome; above all, in Israel before the Assyrian and Chaldean captivities, and in the subsequent partial return of the Jews to be dispersed again, as they were by the Romans, still more terribly after the Cross and the rejected gospel. In the predictions simple language, figures, and symbols were employed as God saw fit; but the cities, the nations, and the lands were known historically, as the changes were punctually accomplished; and many an unbeliever has been arrested by this evidence, to learn still better and deeper things from God’s Word, even Christ and His redemption.
Take an example of symbol in Ezekiel 17. The parable is as determinate as if the prediction had been couched in literal terms. The scripture itself interprets the first great eagle as the king of Babylon, the second as Pharaoh. By the breaking off the topmost twig of the cedar of Lebanon, and placing it in a city of traffic was meant the king of Babylon putting down Jehoiachin and carrying him captive to Babylon. By the taking of the seed of the land to become a vine of low stature, we are to understand his setting Zedekiah (for so Mattaniah was new named by the conqueror) to be his vassal king in the land. The king of Egypt, though typified by a great eagle with great wings and much plumage, is not said to be of long pinions, nor with feathers of various colors like the king of Babylon. Yet Zedekiah breaks his oath, and turns for aid to Egypt against Babylon, to the destruction of his kingdom by Jehovah’s decree. The manner of conveyance differs from that of history; but the parties in view, and the results of the action, are no less certain, fixed, and exclusive. If there are general lessons in divine prophecy, so there are in inspired history. Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh-Hophra (the Apries of the Greeks, and perhaps Psamatik III of the Egyptian monuments) are here intended, and none else. So it is with the two deposed Jewish kings
But it has been contended with no small assurance that Ezekiel, referring to Isaiah 2, connects it with circumstances which oblige us to understand the elevation of the sacred mount spiritually, and as verified in what has already been, and not in what is to be. The reference is dim to moderate eyes, without disputing that the elevation of Moriah is of a moral kind. But the evidence is certain that the glorious promise is future in both chapters. In the tender young twig from the highest branch of the lofty cedar is undoubtedly meant the Son of David, and not Zerubbabel. Yet it is not the first advent, but the second, which is in the perspective of the prophecy. It is the Kingdom, and in no way the church. Never will the “little stone” expand into the great mountain that fills all the earth till the blow is struck on the toes of the image of the Gentile powers, and breaks them all into pieces, like chaff to be swept away by the wind. The lowly condition of Messiah is no doubt pointed out here, but yet more the power and glory of His Kingdom, when He is set, as He will be set, on His holy hill of Zion. The church, on the contrary, is unfaithful to her calling, if she be not a despised pilgrim and stranger here below, as He was, till she joins her coming Bridegroom in the air, before she appears with Him, when He appears to fulfill His glory over all the earth, as He will in that day. Symbolic language therefore is no more vague than any other.
Again, the attempt to turn the prophetic style and diction into an engine for setting one prophecy in opposition to another is unworthy of a Christian. Isaiah. 56:7; 8:60; 66:21-23, are in no conflict with Isaiah 56:3-5; 65:17; 66:1-33Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. 4For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; 5Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 56:3‑5)
17For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. (Isaiah 65:17)
1Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? 2For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word. 3He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations. (Isaiah 66:1‑3), any more than Jeremiah 3:66The Lord said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot. (Jeremiah 3:6) with Jeremiah30:18-22; 31:31; 33:15-22. Such objections spring from ignorance; for evidently the statements arrayed, one against another, are quite consistent, and teach distinct truths. So Ezekiel’s last vision, where the temple is so important on earth, in no way contradicts John’s last vision of the New Jerusalem on high, wherein is no temple. These cavils are a fair sample of the follies of spiritualizing, which confounds heaven with earth, and sets prophet against prophet, and even the same inspired men against themselves. It is too sad to find such teaching in a believer, set forth and accepted with no small blowing of trumpets, though worthy only of an infidel. But it may be for the very reason the more instructive a warning against false principles of interpretation. Nor is it prophecy only that is misunderstood. The error substitutes Jewish for Christian relationship to our Lord, destroys that bridal separateness which is enjoined on the church (2 Corinthians 11:22For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:2), and so forth), and consecrates desires and ways of undisguised worldliness to the dishonor of God and His word about us.
Granted that prophecy in each case exceeds what history can tell. This is an essential constituent of its character. It is a vast system of divine prediction, the center of which circle is Christ, and Christ assuming by God’s gift the government of the world with Israel nearest to Him at the end of this age. If the prophecies, even about races supposed to have vanished, were exhausted, every one might be made of its own interpretation. But it is not so. They look expressly onward to “that day.” Their partial accomplishment is the pledge of all that remains to be fulfilled. Faith, accepting the part, assuredly awaits the whole.
Unbelief, over-looking the divine mind, works evilly in two forms. Some are too instructed to deny the tallying of facts with the words of the prophets. Starting with the assumption that prediction is impossible, they essay to prove that the alleged predictions must have been written after the event. Hence the importance of knowing when the prophet wrote; for, this once clear, their inspiration by God flows from the correspondence of word and fact, which is confessed. There is another class however, who, if they could, would pare down or eliminate all exactitude, and reduce the word of prophecy as much as possible to general principles and ideal forms, without definite line or historical issue. Vagueness of interpretation is so complete that even in the Apocalypse distinct prediction is nowhere, unless there remain enough Protestantism to discern Romanism in Babylon.
It is vain to reason from the curse on “the Serpent,” or the raising up of “David” in the future (Ezekiel 34), against a strict and full accomplishment of prophecy. All who are worthy of consideration agree that the context demands the great enemy in the one case, and the great King of Israel in the other; all repudiate a lowering literality, with which the surrounding words are incompatible. There is a genuine as well as a spurious literalism, with figures interspersed, as in Isaiah 2 or 40, which none but adversaries urge in their efforts after allegory. As vain is it to argue the discrepancy of Isaiah in his later chapters, which await the days of the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; as do the passages cited from Jeremiah, and yet more obviously Ezekiel. That Revelation 21 is symbolical is true, as it treats of a heavenly object; whereas all the others speak of Israel and the Gentiles on the earth in plain terms, with figures here and there. Scripture is perfectly consistent. The fault is in the confusion of its mis-interpreters. Israel and Judah mean the two houses or families of Jacob’s posterity, and none other; Zion and the mountain of Jehovah’s house, mean the seats of the throne and the temple respectively in the land, and the Gentiles are the nations of the earth, distinct from Israel here below, and from the church and risen saints generally on high. The attempt to spiritualize these objects is a mere dream, which no idealist among the Christians at least has ventured to act on consistently. For the theory is that all these objects distinguished in prophecy are the Christian church now, or in the future, under the gospel. What? Israel, Judah, Jerusalem, and the New Jerusalem, Zion, Moriah, and the blessed Gentiles too! Can any scheme to interpret be more despairing or grotesque? It is really the aim of the enemy to discredit and destroy the true force of the prophecy, and thus of God’s Word altogether. The result is little but cloudland, as it would be wholly, if it were applied logically throughout.
If it had been drawn from an induction of Scripture that prophecy is not mere history anticipated, but admits of a perspective, and that an accomplishment may be true and not complete, that only the manifested Kingdom of our Lord in a day yet to come will exhaust it in its opening, its establishment, and its results, no sober Christian could rightly deny this. But the principle is false; for as the rule, prophecy sets forth divine intervention, not in grace, as in the gospel, but in judgment and power, as in the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ. There are common grounds of mercy and exceptional hints, which were fulfilled in part, and justify the gospel meanwhile, as the New Testament shows. But prophecy cannot be fulfilled as a whole till Christ be glorified in Israel and their land, the center of earth’s promised blessing, of which it speaks abundantly. Incredulity avails itself, not only of extravagant spiritualizing on the part of erring Christians, but of fulfillment not yet complete, to deny what has been really accomplished. Let us search and see how that part was accomplished, and thus learn what to expect for the future. That there were great moral principles, that there was a manifestation of God’s ways and glory, is most true; but these are actual facts before all eyes. All this we shall find in the light of the New Testament; not less, but far more, we may surely expect for the day when every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him, whatever the peace, joy, and blessing, and glory that follow.
In the first, the apostle is expressly arguing with the Jew from Romans 2:17, and charging home his guilt notwithstanding his privileges; as he had dealt with the Gentile in the latter half of had dealt with the Gentile in the latter half of Romans 1, and in the first half of Romans 2 with the speculative moralist, who might pique himself on being no longer an idolater. In order to afford any show of reason, the text in question should have been an address to Gentiles treating them now as Jews; whereas it is to the Jew strictly and exclusively, to show that his privileges can in no way screen him if ungodly, and that he only is an accepted Jew who is so inwardly. There is not a thought accordingly of calling believing Gentiles, Jews.
Nor is there any satisfactory ground in Galatians 6:26; and this is the more in point because the apostle does say that Abraham’s two sons, and their mothers, contain an allegory; not the language of the prophets, but the person and facts in Genesis. “Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to the Jerusalem that now is; for she is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother,” the critical text rejecting the word “all.” The truth is that this scripture disproves the hypothesis, instead of giving the least warrant to construe Jerusalem of the church. Our mother, says the apostle, is “the Jerusalem that is above.” The note to page 3 has shown “the Israel of God” to mean those Israelites who now believe the gospel, and so to give no license to call Christians, Israel, or to read Israel in the Old Testament into Christians. The general body of believers are distinguished from this special class,” the Israel of God,” in the verse itself.
In the last, or Hebrews 12:2222But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, (Hebrews 12:22), the apostle contrasts with Sinai (the mountain of the nation’s responsibility under law, with its associations of judicial terror and gloom) Mount Zion to which the Christians had come, no less conspicuous as the seat of royal grace, which was won for the true king of God’s choice in the past, after man’s choice had fallen by Philistine hands instead of working deliverance; Jehovah’s resting place for ever, for there He will surely set His King, upon His holy hill of Zion. But the epistle proceeds in the next clause to distinguish it from the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, as well as from myriads of angels, a general assembly, and from the church of firstborn ones, with which last the hypothesis identifies Zion. Any intelligent Christian has only to weigh the passage in order to be satisfied that those addressed are here said to have come (of course by faith) to the entire circle of what is to be blessed in the coming day, rising up from Zion to God, Judge of all, and thence coming again to the blood-sprinkling, that speaketh better than Abel for the earth, when curse shall yield to peace and glory. No disproof of the traditionary confusion can be conceived more complete or decided.
There is another consideration which must strike every unbiased mind. The restoration of Israel is so plainly intimated in the very scriptures which declare their ruin and scattering, that some of the allegorizing school admit cordially, not Arabia, and answereth to the Jerusalem that now their conversion only, but their return nationally, though truly renewed, and for such peace and glory in their land as they never had of old. Now this is to give up their false principle. For were it to The stand logically, it is hard to conceive how on that principle God could predict His gracious purpose of restoring, in the latter day, Israel for blessing in their land under the Messiah and the new covenant. Taken in their plain and uniform meaning, the prophets are full of that blessed expectation for Israel in divine mercy, but not without hints here and there of grace toward the Gentile, sometimes during their eclipse, as in Isaiah 65:1-21I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name. 2I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; (Isaiah 65:1‑2) and Hosea 1:1010Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. (Hosea 1:10). Yet these texts afford no pretense for the identification, but the contrary.
It is full of interest to observe the spiritual skill which was given to the apostles Paul and Peter in quoting from Hosea. The former, in writing to the saints in Rome — chiefly Gentiles — applies, not only Hosea 2:2323And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God. (Hosea 2:23), which predicts the future recall of Israel, but also Hosea 1:1010Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. (Hosea 1:10), which reveals the actual call of Gentiles, not to be His people as Israel shall be by-and-by, but to have the blessed title of Christians now, “Sons of the living God.” Mark the singularity of the phrase “in the place where it was said unto them Lo-ammi, it shall be said unto them, ‘sons,’” and so forth. It was among the nations while the Jews are not recognized as such. The latter, in writing to the Christian Jews scattered in Asia Minor, applies only Hosea 2:2323And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God. (Hosea 2:23). The mass of their unbelieving brethren forfeits any such privilege now, however surely to be made good to those that repent at the last, as God declares it will when the prophets are to be fully accomplished. Those who now believe anticipate that blessing (with much more peculiar to Christianity), “who were once not a people, but now God’s people; who were not objects of mercy, but now obtained mercy.” Only in the verses following it is carefully shown that, instead of being sown in the earth, never more to be rooted up, but to flourish forever in the bright kingdom of Messiah here below, they are called to follow Him in present rejection and reproach and long-suffering, “as pilgrims and stranger” until His appearing in glory. This is the present calling of the Christian.