Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

By the prophet Haggai, again, God says: "Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land." Chap. 2:6. The key to the meaning of these words is given in the following verse: "And I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts." In such a connection, and with such a result, nothing could be more vapid than to understand this shaking of heaven and earth, sea and land, in a physical sense. It is the mighty overturnings among the nations, social, moral, and political, that are here predicted, as Jehovah says by Ezekiel: "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is, and I will give it to him." Chap. 21:27. Compare Isa. 13:13; Jer. 4:24; Ezek. 38:20; Joel 3:16. So when God announces that he "will cause the sun to go down at noon, and darken the earth in the clear day" (Amos 8:9), we understand at once that under this figure he forewarns the covenant people of the sudden approach of great calamity. Compare Deut. 28:29; Job 5:14; Isa. 13:10; Jer. 4:23-28; Ezek. 32:7, 8; Joel 2:31; 3:15; etc. This subject will be further discussed under the head of the interpretation of prophecy.

In the sermon on the mount, the Saviour says: "Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matt. 5:39); but the preceding context gives the scope of this and the other particular precepts that follow, which is that Christ's followers should "resist not evil," that is, by rendering evil for evil. It is the spirit of meekness and forbearance that he inculcates, not a slavish regard to this and that particular form of manifesting it. So when he says: "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away" (ver. 42), he cannot mean, consistently with the scope of the passage and his teachings elsewhere, that we should stultify ourselves by literally giving to every asker and borrower, without regard to his necessities, real or alleged. He means rather to inculcate that liberal spirit which never withholds such help as it is able to give from those who need it.

When the Saviour says again: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee," etc., both the preceding context and the general tenor of the Scriptures teach us that he means what is expressed by the apostle in another form: "Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth." Col. 3:5. To mortify is to deprive of life, make dead. We mortify our members which would seduce us into sin, not by destroying them, but by keeping them in subjection to "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus."

(3.) If the interpreter is liable to err by taking figurative language in a literal sense, so is he also by regarding as figurative what should be understood literally. A favorite expedient with those who deny the supernatural character of revelation is to explain the miraculous transactions recorded in the Bible as figurative or mythical. When David says that in answer to his prayer "the earth shook and trembled, the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth;" that God "bowed the heavens also and came down, and darkness was under his feet;" that "the Lord thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice, hailstones and coals of fire;" that "he sent out his arrows and scattered them, and he shot out lightnings and discomfited them," all acknowledge that the language is to be figuratively taken. Why then, an objector might ask, not understand the account of the giving of the law on Sinai amid thunderings and lightnings as figurative also? The answer of every plain reader would be—and it is the answer of unsophisticated common sense—that the former passage occurs in a lyric poem, where such figurative descriptions are entirely in place; the latter in a plain narrative, which professes to give throughout historic facts with names and dates; that no reader, who had not a preconceived opinion to maintain, ever did or could think of interpreting the passage in Exodus in any other than a literal way, while every reader understands at once that the poetic description in the eighteenth psalm is to be taken figuratively. The attempt has been made to interpret the gospel history as a myth—the embodiment of a system of pure ideas in the garb of history. It is difficult to refute an assumption which has no foundation to rest upon. This mythical theory may, nevertheless, be disposed of in a very short and simple way. The great central truth of the gospel history is the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. If any one would know how the apostle Paul regarded this, let him read the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, where he pledges his veracity as a witness on its historic reality (ver. 15). If, now, Paul so regarded it, Luke, his companion in travel and labor, cannot have taken a different view of it, nor any other of the evangelists. But if the death and resurrection of Jesus are recorded as true historic events, the whole mythical theory vanishes at once into thin air.

(4.) In regard to those prophecies which relate to the distant future, it may sometimes be difficult to determine whether we are to look for a literal or a figurative fulfilment of them. But this subject will come up for consideration in another place.

3. In regard to the different kinds of figures a few words may be in place.

(1.) The term trope (Greek, tropos, a turn) is applied, in a general sense, to figures of words and speech of every variety; but, in stricter usage, to a word or sentence turned from its literal signification to a figurative sense. Quintilian adds (Inst. Orator. 8. 6. 1) that this must be with good effect (cum virtute); that is, it must add clearness, force, or beauty to the thought.

The principal varieties of the trope are the metonymy and the metaphor. The metonymy is founded on the relation of one thing to another. Thus when Abraham says to the rich man: "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them" (Luke 16:29), Moses and the prophets are put for their writings; that is, the authors for their works. "A soft tongue," says the wise man, "breaketh the bone." Prov. 25:15. Here the word tongue is put for speech, the instrument for the thing effected, and this metonymy is joined with a metaphor. (See below.) The synecdoche, in which a part is put for the whole, as the sword for war, is in its nature essentially a metonymy. Rhetoricians give elaborate classifications of metonymies, but they are of little value to the scriptural student, since all are interpreted according to the few simple principles given in the preceding chapter.

The metaphor is founded on the resemblance of one thing to another; as in the examples already given: "The Lord God is a sun and shield" (Psa. 84:11); "I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman." John 15:1. It may lie not in a single word, but in an entire expression, thus: "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" (Acts 26:14); "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see." Rev. 3:18. The metaphor and metonymy may be joined, as in the words already quoted: "A soft tongue breaketh the bone;" or they may blend themselves with each other, as when Nahum says of the princes of Nineveh: "The sword shall devour thy young lions." Chap. 2:13. In this last example, as often elsewhere, personification, which is properly a figure of thought, is added, the sword being represented as a beast of prey. The grand and gorgeous personifications of Scripture naturally clothe themselves in tropical language of inimitable beauty and exhaustless variety. "O thou sword of the Lord," says Jeremiah, "how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge against Ashkelon, and against the sea-shore? There hath he appointed it." Chap. 47:6, 7. The prophet Habakkuk represents God as coming forth in his glory for the salvation of his people: "The mountains saw thee," says he, "and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high: the sun and moon stood still in their habitation." Chap. 3:10, 11. God's promise to his redeemed is: "Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." Isa. 55:12. Metonymies, metaphors, and sometimes personifications—the books of the New Testament sparkle with these figures, and they are used always for effect, not empty show. They are like the flaming bolts of heaven, which rend and burn as well as shine. "Beware of false prophets," says the Saviour, "which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits: do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?" Matt. 7:15, 16. How effectually does he by these metaphors strip off the mask from false teachers! "If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?" 1 Cor. 12:15, 16. Here is personification without a trope. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor. 15:55), here is a majestic personification in metaphorical form.

As resemblance lies at the foundation of the metaphor, it may be called an abbreviated form of comparison, the thing with which the comparison is made being directly predicated of that which is compared. Thus, when we say: A sluggard is vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of those who send him, we have a metaphor, the sluggard being directly called vinegar and smoke. But if we say: "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him" (Prov. 10:26), we have a comparison, and the language ceases to be tropical. The metaphor is thus a more vivid form of expression than the comparison.