The psalmist says of those who hate Zion: "Let them be as the grass upon the house-tops, which withereth before one plucketh it" (Eng. version, "before it groweth up"): "wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom." Psa. 129:6, 7. For the illustration of these words we need a double reference, (1) to the oriental custom of constructing flat roofs covered with earth, on which grass readily springs up; (2) to the division of the year into two seasons, the rainy and the dry, upon the commencement of which latter such grass speedily withers. Another reference to the same oriental roofs we have in the words of Solomon: "The contentions of a wife are a continual dropping;" "a continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike" (chaps. 19:13; 27:15), where we are to understand a continual dropping through of water from the roof, which makes every thing within uncomfortable.
Our Lord's parable of the ten virgins (Matt. 25:1-13) requires for its illustration a knowledge of the oriental customs connected with marriage: the transaction recorded by Luke, where a woman came behind Jesus as he reclined at the table, washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair (Luke 7:37, 38), and the position of John when at the last supper he leaned on Jesus' bosom (John 13:23, 25), cannot be made intelligible without a knowledge of the reclining posture in which meals were then taken: one familiar only with the use of glass or earthen bottles cannot comprehend the force of our Lord's maxim respecting the necessity of putting new wine into new bottles (Matt. 9:17), till he is informed that oriental bottles are made of leather. We might go on multiplying illustrations indefinitely, but the above must suffice. We may affirm, without fear of contradiction, that the study of the Holy Scriptures has contributed more than all other causes to the diffusion among the masses of the community of a knowledge of ancient history and antiquities. To say that a congregation has a thorough knowledge of the Bible is equivalent to affirming that it has an enlarged acquaintance with the ancient world in its spirit as well as in its outward institutions and forms.
7. That the interpreter may make a wise and effective use of all the helps that have been enumerated, he needs especially that sound and practical judgment which is called in ordinary discourse good sense. Investigations respecting the meaning of terms, inquiries concerning the scope, reasonings from the context, the comparison of parallel passages, the use of ancient history, chronology, and archæology—that any one or all of these processes combined may lead to valuable results they must be under the guidance of that sound judgment and practical tact by which the interpreter is enabled to seize the true meaning of his author and unfold it with accuracy, or is at least kept from far-fetched and fanciful expositions where the author's real sense is involved in obscurity.
(1.) This quality of sound judgment will preserve the interpreter from inept expositions for which a plausible reason many be assigned.
Thus, when the Saviour says to Martha, who "was cumbered about much serving:" "One thing is needful," these words have been interpreted to mean one dish—not many and elaborate preparations, but a single dish. A sound judgment rejects at once this interpretation as below the dignity of the occasion, and not in agreement with what immediately follows: "Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." The one thing needful is such a devotion of the soul to Christ as Mary manifested. So the words: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" (John 21:15), have been explained to mean: more than these fish, or the employment and furniture of a fisherman—an ingenious substitution, one must say, of a low and trivial meaning for the common interpretation: more than these thy fellow-disciples love me, which accords so perfectly with Peter's former profession: "Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended." Matt. 26:33; Mark 14:29.
Interpreters who ordinarily manifest sound judgment and skill are sometimes betrayed into inept expositions through the influence of some preconceived opinion. The psalmist says, for example (Psa. 17:15): "As for me, in righteousness shall I behold thy face: I shall be satisfied upon awaking with thy likeness;" that is, with the contemplation of thy likeness, with apparent reference to Numb. 12:8: "The likeness of the Lord shall he behold." This passage is ordinarily interpreted correctly of the vision of God upon awaking in the world to come. And this view is sustained by other like passages: "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Psa. 16:11); "Truly God shall redeem my soul from the power of Sheol; for he shall take me," (Psa. 49:15), where Tholuck well says: "He who took an Enoch and a Moses to himself, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will also take me to himself;" "Thou shalt guide me by thy counsel, and afterwards take me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever" (Psa. 73:24-26)—words that are inexplicable except as containing the anticipation of a blessed immortality with God in heaven; "The wicked is driven away in his wickedness; but the righteous hath hope in his death" (Prov. 14:32); etc. But there is a class of interpreters who, having adopted the maxim that the Old Testament, at least in its earlier writings, contains no anticipations of a blessed life with God after death, are constrained to give to the passage in question the frigid meaning: I shall be satisfied with thy likeness when I awake to-morrow, as if the psalm were intended to be an evening song or prayer; or, whenever I awake, that is, from natural sleep.
(2.) A sound judgment will also keep the biblical scholar from interpretations that are contrary to the known nature of the subject.
A familiar example is the declaration made by Moses of God's view of man's wickedness: "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." Gen. 6:6. The robust common sense of any plain reader will at once adjust the interpretation of these words to God's known omniscience and immutability; just as he will the prayer of the psalmist: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psa. 139:23, 24. The immutable God does nothing which is not in accordance with his eternal counsels. The omniscient God, to whom all truth is ever present, does not literally institute a process of searching that he may know what is in man. But in these and numberless other passages, he condescends to speak according to human modes of thought and action.
When it is said, again, that "the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh;" that "God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem" (Judg. 9:23); that he sent a lying spirit to deceive Ahab through his prophets (1 Kings 22:21-23); that he sent Isaiah with the command: "Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes" (Isa. 6:10); that he made the covenant people to err from his ways, and hardened their heart from his fear (Isa. 63:17), we instinctively interpret these and other like passages in harmony with the fundamental principle announced by the apostle: "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." Jas. 1:13, 14. The Scriptures ascribe every actual event to God in such a sense that it comes into the plan of his universal providence; but they reject with abhorrence the idea that he can excite wicked thoughts in men, or prompt them to wicked deeds.
When it is said, once more, that men are drawn to Christ (John 6:44), or driven to worship the heavenly bodies (Deut. 4:19), we understand at once a drawing and a driving that are in accordance with their free intelligent and responsible nature. Other illustrations of this principle will be given in the following chapter, which treats of the figurative language of Scripture.