"All the host of heaven shall waste away; And the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, And all their host shall fall down, As the withered leaf falleth from the vine, As the blighted fruit from the fig tree. For my sword shall rush drunk from heaven; Behold, upon Edom shall it descend, Upon the people under my curse, for vengeance." "I will cover the sun with a cloud, And the moon shall not give her light. Ibid., xxxiv. 4, 5. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, Saith the Lord, Jehovah. And I will grieve the hearts of many nations, When I bring thy destruction among the nations.”. Is Israel to be punished for its sins? Ezek. xxxii. 7-9. "I look to the earth, and lo! emptiness and desolation; I look to the mountains, and lo! they tremble, I look, and lo! there is not a man, I look, and lo! Carmel is a desert, For thus saith Jehovah; And the heavens above be black, Because I have spoken, and I will not repent; I have purposed, and I will not recede from it." — Jer. iv. 23-28. Is it to be restored to favor? The language inti mates no less than a new universal creation. “I am Jehovah, thy God, That rebuketh the sea, when his waves roar Jehovah of hosts is his name. I have put my words in thy mouth, And have covered thee with the shadow of my hand, To establish the heavens, and to found the earth, Is. li. 15, 16. Again; the inflictions of divine displeasure are set forth in figures drawn from the doom of Sodom; "Upon the wicked he will rain lightning; Fire and brimstone and a burning wind shall be the portion of their cup." Psalm xi. 6. "It is a day of vengeance from Jehovah, A year of recompense in the cause of Zion. And her dust into brimstone, And her whole land shall become burning pitch. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; Is. xxxiv. 8 - 10. He who undertakes to read the prophetical writings without a constant remembrance, and a frequent application, of the fact last illustrated, can often do nothing but err. The attempt to reduce the specimens which remain to us, of the Hebrew poetry, to their several classes, is one from which I refrain. It could only be accomplished in the one or the other of two ways; by the proposal of a new nomenclature, or the reference of these specimens, severally, to a place under one or another of the divisions of modern science. The former would be a useless labor; the latter an impracticable one. Rhetorical criticism, as an art, is, of course, subsequent to that of writing, to which it refers; and when, in rhetorical treatises, it assumes the form of a science, it is but a collection of remarks, digested in the form of rules, on such characteristics in the work remarked upon, as have been found on experience to please or displease. Our doctrines of criticism and schemes of rhetoric have been formed wholly on classical and modern models. The former are substantially applicable to Hebrew composition; because essentially the same sort of beauties, in thought and expression, satisfy, and the same improprieties offend, in all climates and times. But the latter are not so applicable; for the more extended forms of expression of thought, the shapes of combination and composition into which it may be moulded, have no such permanent fashion. The Jews, from the operation of similar causes, had lyrics, elegies, and didactic poems, as well as we. But they had no drama, through the whole course of their history; and to call Job or Solomon's Song a dramatic poem, is merely a torture and abuse of terms. Specimens of the amatory, pastoral, and descriptive classes, might, not without propriety, have been assigned by Lowth to their respective heads, in his attempt to designate the Hebrew poems by the recognised terms of modern art; and he might have ranked, under the denomination of the satire, many of those poems, for which, deviating, in this instance, from the artificial systems of the schools, he has provided a separate place, giving the name of prophetical poems to the class which they constitute in his arrangement.* * "Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews"; Lect. 20. LECTURE XXXIII. THE ALLEGORICAL AND OTHER ERRONEOUS METHODS OF INTERPRETATION. NATURE OF ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. · OCCASION OF ITS USE BY EXPOSITORS OF SCRIPture. -ORIGIN OF THE METHOD IN THE PAGAN SCHOOLS. ITS ADOPTION BY THE EGYPTIAN JEWS, ESPECIALLY BY ARISTOBULUS AND PHILO;- ITS USE BY CLEMENT, ORIGEN, JEROME, AUGUSTINE, — AND, IN IMITATION OF THESE FATHERS, BY THE MODERN CHRISTIAN CHURCH. NOT FAVORED BY THE JEWS OF PALESTINE AT THE CHRISTIAN ERA. - THEORY OF DOUBLE SENSES. OCCASION OF ITS BEING DEVISED. - OBJECTIONS TO IT. THEORY OF TYPES. NOT KNOWN TO THE ANCIENT JEWS, IN AN APPLICATION TO THEIR EXPECTED MESSIAH. - EXAMPLES OF ITS APPLICATION. JEWISH CABBALISTIC SYSTEM. EXAMPLES. THEORY OF THE PROPHET'S IGNORANCE OF THE SENSE WHICH HE UTTERS. - INFERENCE FROM THE WHOLE VIEW, RESPECTING THE TRUE METHOD OF INTERPRE TATION. -- THE subject of part of my last lecture, — namely, that of the forms of figurative expression in use among Jewish writers, naturally conducts to an inquiry, which, in some of its aspects, has particular application to the writings of the Later Prophets; though, in others, it relates equally, or more, to other parts of the Biblical collection. For a general rule, it is well understood, that, when we undertake to interpret a writing, we undertake to ascertain the sense, which the writer had in his own mind, and designed perspicuously to convey to other minds, by language used in its common acceptation. In studying other books besides the Bible, no one thinks of taking any other course. And this kind of interpretation, when applied to the Bible, takes the name of literal or historical interpretation. There is a different method, which that collection of books has been thought by many to demand, and which goes by the name of allegorical interpretation. In respect to this, two things need to be carefully borne in mind. In the first place, allegorical interpretation is not the interpretation of allegories, any more than the interpretation of any other figure would rightly take its name from that figure; any more, for instance, than the explanation of an hyperbole could be properly called hyperbolical interpretation, or the just exposition of irony, ironical. If the writer or speaker tells us, that he means an allegory,* or if the author of the narrative declares, that such was the speaker's purpose,† or if, in any other way, the fact is sufficiently indicated, then to interpret the language on that supposition, is to interpret it literally, just as much, as if, instead of allegory, only metaphor or simile had been used. On account of this ambiguity, it were better that the word literal were disused, and historical adopted in its place. The latter, it is true, has not the advantage of immediately suggesting the sense, which, in this connexion, has become appropriate to it; but it is the only other technical word to which we can have recourse, and its meaning has become sufficiently well fixed by use. Again; allegorical interpretation is not the use of the words of another, whether containing narrative, doctrine, or something else, to illustrate, in an allegorized application, a sense of one's own. If I wish to frame an allegory to convey the better my own thoughts, just as if I wished to frame a simile or metaphor for that purpose, I may as freely have recourse to something which actually exists, or has occurred, or has been said, as to some figment of my own invention. I do not * E. g. Matthew xxiv. 32. E. g. Matthew xiii. 3. |