Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

IV. THE QUESTION OF LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE MEANING.

11. On this question expositors are, as is well known, much divided; one class adopting, as far as possible, the literal meaning of the prophetic announcements, the other freely employing the principle of figurative interpretation. A full discussion of the claims of these two methods of interpretation, on which so many volumes have been written, would far exceed the limits of the present work. All that can be done is, to indicate some well-established principles which may help to guide the biblical student in the study of prophecy.

12. We begin by calling attention to the representative use which the Old Testament prophets make of the events of the past history of Israel; that is, to their habit of representing the future under the imagery of this history. When Israel journeyed from Egypt to Palestine through the wilderness of Arabia, God dried up the tongue of the Egyptian sea before the people, guided them miraculously by the cloudy pillar, fed them with manna, made streams of water to burst forth from the rock for their refreshment, and finally divided the waters of the Jordan to give them a passage into the promised land. This primitive history of Israel furnishes for the prophets who lived in later ages a rich treasury of images which it would be absurd to interpret in a literal way.

Thus Isaiah, speaking of the future gathering together of the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth (chap. 11:11, 12), says: "And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river [the Euphrates], and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dry shod" (ver. 15). To suppose that the prophet foretells a literal repetition of the miracles wrought upon the Red sea and the Jordan is unnecessary and most improbable. The meaning is, that God shall remove all obstacles which hinder the return of his people to their own land, as he originally removed all obstacles which opposed their entrance into it. This is, indeed, the very idea of the following verse: "And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt."

Again, the prophet foretells that in the latter day glory "the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence." Isa. 4:5. Here "the figurative reference is to the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire in which the Lord went before the Israelites in the wilderness, and to the glory which rested upon the tabernacle." Henderson. God will give to his church in the latter day that which the pillar of cloud and of fire signified, his glorious presence and protection. A literal repetition of the miracle is not to be thought of.

Once more, God promises to his weary people, on their pilgrimage to Zion, that "in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isa. 35:6, and often elsewhere), with obvious allusion to the miraculous supplies of water furnished to the Israelites in their journey through the Arabian desert to the land of Canaan. The water here promised is the water of life, and not literal fountains in the desert. Upon the same principle are we to interpret the river that flows out from under the threshold of the temple, and flows down eastward to the Dead sea, growing broader and deeper in its course, and imparting life to everything which comes within its influence. Ezek. 47:1-12, and compare Psa. 46:4; Joel 3:18; Zech. 14:8.

13. The same representative use is made by the prophets of the institutions of the Mosaic economy. One of their offices was, to foretell the extension of the true religion over all the earth; the conversion of all nations to the faith of the covenant people, and their peaceful subjection to Jehovah who reigned in Zion. In what form should this be done while the theocracy was yet in full force? The disclosure of God's purpose to abolish this theocracy in the interest of a simpler and more spiritual dispensation, which should know no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, would have been a premature act. It would, so far as we can judge, have led to much error and misapprehension; and it must have had the effect of disparaging the existing economy before the world was prepared to receive any thing better in its place. God, therefore, allowed his prophets to portray the glories of the latter day, when all nations should come to the knowledge and obedience of the truth, under the forms of the Jewish dispensation, with its temple, sacrifices, and solemn festivals.

A striking example is the bright portraiture of two contemporary prophets: "But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people [Hebrew peoples, that is, as Isaiah, all the nations] shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it." Micah 4:1-4, compared with Isa. 2:2-4. The temple at Jerusalem, with its altar and priesthood, was the central point of the old theocracy. There all the sacrifices were to be offered, there was the seat of royal authority, and consequently of public justice, and thither all the males among the people were required to repair three times a year at the great national festivals. Deut. 16:16. A Jew could conceive of the conversion of all nations only in the form of their subjecting themselves to the theocracy, and coming up to Jerusalem for worship and the administration of justice. Accordingly the Spirit of prophecy here represents the mountain of the Lord's house as "established in the top of the mountains," a conspicuous object to all nations, who resort thither for worship, submit themselves to the authority of the great king who reigns there, and thus have universal peace and happiness. To insist on the literal interpretation of these words is contrary to the general analogy of prophecy. It is an attempt to bring back the outward sensuous form of the kingdom of heaven which the gospel dispensation has abolished.

There is another celebrated passage in Zechariah (14:16-21) which is intensely Jewish in its costume. After describing the judgments of God upon the nations that have fought against Jerusalem, the prophet goes on to say: "And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem, shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso will not come up, of all the families of the earth, unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. In that day there shall be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts; and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts." The prophet's care to include "all the families of the earth" in this ordinance is very noticeable. Whatever nation refuses to observe it shall have no rain. But, recollecting that for Egypt this can be no punishment, he appoints for that country the plague instead of the absence of rain. Is it so, then, that in the last days all the families of the earth are to go up year by year to worship at Jerusalem? If so, they are to sacrifice also; for the prophecy is a homogeneous whole, of which, if the beginning is to be understood literally, so is the end also. The reference is to the peace-offerings of the people, on which, after certain prescribed portions had been burned on the altar, the offerer feasted with his friends; and a special provision is made for the multitude of these sacrifices. "Every pot in Judah and Jerusalem," as well as "the pots in the Lord's house," "shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts," that it may be used for boiling the flesh of the peace-offerings, precisely as we find done in the days of Eli. 1 Sam. 2:13-16. But all sacrifices are done away for ever in Christ. Heb. 10:10-18. This part of the prophecy must clearly be understood figuratively, and therefore the whole. The future reception of the true religion by all nations is foretold under the symbols of the Mosaic economy, with its ritual, its yearly feasts, and its central place of worship. For this principle of interpretation we have the warrant of the New Testament. Did the law of Moses prescribe a literal priesthood with literal sacrifices; believers, under the new dispensation, are a spiritual priesthood, presenting their bodies as "living sacrifices." Rom. 12:1; 1 Pet. 2:5. Did the Mosaic economy have a central metropolis, a literal Zion, whither all the tribes went up; believers in Christ have come to the spiritual "Mount Zion" which this shadowed forth, where the great Antitype of David reigns, that all nations may resort to him, and he may teach them his laws.

Upon the same principle, as well as for other very obvious reasons (see chaps. 42:15-20; 45:1-8; 47:1-12, and the whole of chap. 48), Ezekiel's minute description of a New Jerusalem, with its territory, its temple, and its Jewish appointments (chaps. 40-48), is to be understood not literally but figuratively. This temple has also its Levitical priesthood, its altar, and its sacrifices (chap. 43:13-27), all which are done away in Christ. There are other passages kindred to the above which it is not necessary to consider separately, as they all come under the same general principle of interpretation.

14. In the classes of prophecies that have been considered, the principle of figurative interpretation can be maintained upon solid grounds. But it would be wrong to press it as of universal and exclusive application. Where no reasons to the contrary exist, the literal interpretation, as the most natural and obvious, deserves the preference. To draw the limits between the literal and the figurative in prophecy is difficult, and in some cases impossible. In this respect it has pleased the wisdom of God that a vail should rest on some unfulfilled predictions which his own hand alone has power to remove. There are two questions, especially, respecting which interpreters have long been divided, and will probably continue to be divided, till God himself shall decide them. The first is that of the literal restoration of the Jews to the promised land; the second, that of our Lord's personal reign on earth during the promised age of millennial glory. To enter upon the full discussion of either would require a volume. We must dismiss both with some brief hints.

15. The original promise to Abraham included the grant of the land of Canaan to him and his seed "for an everlasting possession." Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 15:18; 17:8; 26:3; 28:13. It is expressed in the plainest terms, the boundaries of the promised territory are defined, and the nations inhabiting it enumerated (Gen. 15:18-21); in a word, every thing indicates the literal as the true interpretation. The remarkable words of the Saviour: "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24), have had a literal fulfilment in the awful judgments which they foretell; and it seems reasonable to believe that the promise implied in the last clause, "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" shall have a literal fulfilment also in their repossession of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The wonderful preservation of the Jewish nation through so many centuries of dispersion points in the same direction. All these things, taken in connection with the numerous and very explicit prophecies of their captivity and dispersion for their sins, and their subsequent restoration upon repentance (Lev. chap. 26; Deut. chaps, 28-30: 1 Kings 8:46-50; Isa. chaps. 6, 11, 66; Jer. chaps. 30, 31; Ezek. chaps. 36-39; Hosea 1:10, 11; Joel. chap. 3; Amos chap. 9; Micah 7:8-20; Zeph. 3:8-20), seem to warrant the expectation of a literal fulfilment hereafter of the promise made to Abraham that his seed should inherit the land of Canaan for ever.

16. That Christ will come again in glory to raise the dead, change the living, and judge all nations, is a fundamental article of the Christian faith. But the doctrine "that the fleshly and sublunary state is not to terminate with the coming of Christ, but to be then set up in a new form; when, with his glorified saints, the Redeemer will reign in person on the throne of David at Jerusalem for a thousand years, over a world of men yet in the flesh, eating and drinking, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage, under this mysterious sway" (Brown on the Second Advent, who correctly states the fundamental principle of the system), cannot lay claim to an irrefragable basis of scriptural teaching. The arguments relied on by its advocates are drawn in part from the very passages that have been considered above (Micah 4:1-4; Zech. 14:16-21). How little support the theory derives from these passages, when fairly interpreted, we have seen. Nor is it favored by the references to our Lord's second coming in the gospels and epistles, for they clearly connect it with the final consummation of all things.

Our Saviour says: "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." John 5:28, 29. He plainly represents these two resurrections as simultaneous; nor is there in the record of his words any hint of a partial resurrection ages before the reign of death in this world shall close. The resurrection "at the last trump" to which the apostle Paul refers (1 Cor. chap. 15; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 2 Thess. 1:7-10) is universal. It expressly includes all the dead in Christ and the change of all Christ's living disciples. If nothing is said of the resurrection of the wicked, it is because the apostle has in mind only the "resurrection of life," and has no occasion to speak of the simultaneous "resurrection of damnation" which the Saviour himself connects with it. This resurrection at the last trump is also the annihilation of the reign of death; for when it happens, "then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." 1 Cor. 15:54. But "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," and "then cometh the end." 1 Cor. 15:24-26.

The Saviour teaches, moreover, that his personal presence on earth is inconsistent with the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." John 16:7. It is expedient, doubtless, because the dispensation of the Spirit is better adapted to our present state of flesh and blood than his personal presence could be. This dispensation of the Spirit must, from the nature of the case, be continued in its full force throughout the millennial era, when the generations of men will succeed each other as at present. But the New Testament knows nothing of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit existing contemporaneously with Christ's personal reign on earth. Its constant doctrine is that the salvation of men is effected by Christ's intercession in heaven conjointly with the gift of the Holy Spirit on earth.

The passage mainly relied upon by the advocates of this theory is the twentieth chapter of the book of Revelation, which speaks of the first and second resurrection. But the first resurrection there described cannot be identical with the resurrection described by Paul at our Lord's advent. The resurrection described by Paul includes in express terms all the righteous, whereas this first resurrection of the Apocalypse is restricted to a certain class, namely, the martyrs and confessors for Christ's sake (ver. 4), while the rest of the dead live not till the thousand years are over (ver. 5). Then there is a general resurrection (ver. 11-15), which, from its very terms, includes the righteous and the wicked; for among the books then opened is "the book of life." The risen dead are "judged every man according to his works," and all whose names are not found in the book of life are cast into the lake of fire. At the same time death and hell (Hades), personified as two enemies of the human race, are cast into the lake of fire, and thus "death, the last enemy, is destroyed," and "death is swallowed up in victory." 1 Cor. 15:26, 54. This is the resurrection which takes place upon our Lord's advent at the last trump, not a thousand years after his advent; the resurrection and judgment, when the wicked "shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." We venture not to interpret the meaning of the first resurrection, believing that it is one of the mysteries which God alone will reveal in its fulfilment. But whether it should be taken literally or figuratively, after the analogy of the resurrection of the two witnesses (chap. 11:11), it does not seem reasonable to build upon this obscure and difficult passage a doctrine respecting our Lord's pre-millennial advent and personal reign on earth which is so decidedly at variance with the general tenor of Scripture.