Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

SCRIPTURAL TYPES.

1. The material world is full of analogies adapted to the illustration of spiritual things. No teacher ever drew from this inexhaustible storehouse such a rich variety of examples as our Saviour. His disciples are the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city set on a hill. From the ravens which God feeds and the lilies which God clothes, he teaches the unreasonableness of worldly anxiety. The kingdom of heaven is like seed sown in different soils, like a field of wheat and tares growing together, and like seed that springs up and grows the sower knows not how. Again it is like a net cast into the sea, like a grain of mustard seed, and like leaven hid in three measures of meal. When the Saviour opens his lips the whole world of nature stands ready to furnish him with arguments and illustrations; as well it may, since the God of nature is also the God of revelation. The world of secular activity abounds in like analogies, on which another class of our Lord's parables is based; like that of the vineyard let out to husbandmen, the servants intrusted with different talents, the ten virgins, the importunate friend, the unjust judge, the unfaithful steward, the prodigal son, and others that need not be enumerated. Analogies like these, however, do not properly constitute types. Types rest on a foundation of analogy, but do not consist in analogy alone.

2. In the history of God's people, moreover, as well as of the world which he governs with reference to them, the present is continually foreshadowing something higher in the future. This must be so, because the train of events in their history constitutes, in the plan of God, neither a loose and disconnected series nor a confused jumble of incidents, like a heap of stones thrown together without order or design, but a well-ordered whole. It is a building, in which the parts now in progress indicate what is to follow. It is the development of a plant, in which "the blade" foreshadows "the ear," and the ear, "the full corn in the ear." The primal murder, when "Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him," "because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous," was the inauguration of the great conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent—the forerunner of the higher struggle in Egypt between Pharaoh on the side of the devil, and the covenant people on the side of the seed of the woman. This struggle in Egypt, again, foreshadowed the still higher contest between truth and error in the land of Canaan—a contest which endured through so many centuries, and enlisted on both sides so many kings and mighty men; and which, in its turn, ushered in the grand conflict between the kingdom of Christ and that of Satan, a conflict that began on the day of Pentecost, and is yet in progress. This continual foreshadowing of the future by the present is essentially of a typical nature, yet it does not constitute, in and of itself, what we understand by a type in the ordinary usage of the term.

3. A type is a symbol appointed by God to adumbrate something higher in the future, which is called the antitype. This definition includes three particulars: (1.) The type must be a true adumbration of the thing typified, though, from the very nature of the case, the adumbration must be inadequate—a shadow only of the antitype, and not its substance. Thus the paschal lamb was a type of Christ, though there is infinitely more in the antitype than in the type. (2.) The symbol must be of divine appointment, and as such, designed by God to represent the antitype. We must carefully remember, however, that, from the very nature of the case, the divine intention cannot be clearly announced when the type is instituted. The paschal lamb typified "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;" but it was not till centuries after the institution of the passover that God began to intimate by the prophets the approaching sacrifice of the great Antitype (Isa. chap. 53; Zech. 13:7), and the full import of the type was revealed only when the sacrifice of "Christ our passover" had been accomplished on Calvary. (3.) Since the type is "a shadow of good things to come," it follows that the antitype must belong to the future. A pure symbol may belong to the present or the near future. It may represent something that now exists, or is coming into existence, in respect to which concealment is not necessary. Hence we find the sacred writers freely explaining the meaning of the symbols which they employ (Numb. chap. 17; Josh. 4:1-7; 1 Sam. 7:12; 10:1, and the same symbol of anointing often elsewhere; 1 Kings 11:29-39; 22:11, where a false prophet uses a symbol; Isa. chap. 20; Jer. 1:11-14; 13:1-11, and elsewhere; Ezek. chap. 3, and in many other passages; Amos 7:1-9; 8:1-3; Zech. 1:8-11, and elsewhere). The true type, on the contrary, reckoned from the time of its institution, looks forward to the distant future. The high reality which it foreshadows may be intimated by the prophets "as in a glass darkly," but the appearance of the antitype can alone furnish a full explanation of its meaning.

The types of the Old Testament have been variously classified. We propose to consider them under the two divisions of historical and ritual types.

I. HISTORICAL TYPES.

4. The extravagance of a class of Biblical expositors in converting the Old Testament history into allegory typical of persons and events under the gospel dispensation has produced a strong reaction, leading some to deny altogether the existence of historical types. But this is going to the other extreme of error. No man who acknowledges the writers of the New Testament to be true expositors of the meaning of the Old can consistently deny the existence in the Old Testament of such types, for they interpret portions of its history in a typical way. But it is of the highest importance that we understand, in respect to such history, that it has a true and proper significance of its own, without respect to its typical import. It is not allegory, which has, literally taken, no substance. It is not mere type, like the rites of the Mosaic law, the meaning of which is exhausted in their office of foreshadowing the antitype. It is veritable history, valid for the men of its own day, fulfilling its office in the plan of God's providence, and containing, when we look at it simply as history, its own lessons of instruction. We call it typical history because, following the guidance of the New Testament writers, we are constrained to regard it as so ordered and shaped by God's providence as to prefigure something higher in the Christian dispensation.

No careful student of the New Testament can for a moment doubt that David's kingdom typified the kingdom of Christ. There is, indeed, a very important sense in which David's kingdom was identical with that of Christ; for its main element was the visible church of God, founded on the covenant made with Abraham, and therefore in all ages one and indivisible. Rom. 11:17-24; Gal. 3:14-18; Ephes. 2:20. But we now speak of David's kingdom in its outward form, which was temporary and typical of something higher. In this sense it is manifest that God appointed it to foreshadow that of the Messiah. David's headship adumbrated the higher headship of the Redeemer; his conflicts with the enemies of God's people and his final triumph over them, Christ's conflicts and victories. The same thing was true of Solomon, and in a measure of all the kings of David's line, so far as they were true to their office as the divinely appointed leaders of the covenant people. Unless we adopt this principle, the view which the New Testament takes of a large number of Psalms—the so-called Messianic psalms—becomes utterly visionary.

But neither David's kingdom nor his headship over it was mere type. The nation over which he presided was a historic reality, a true power among the other nations of the earth. His leadership also, with its conflicts and triumphs, belongs to true history. It brought to the people of his own day true deliverance from the power of their enemies; and it contains, when we study it without reference to its typical character, true lessons of instruction for all ages.

The declarations of Scripture in respect to the typical nature of the prophetical office are not so numerous and decisive as those which relate to the kingly office. There is, however, a remarkable passage in the book of Deuteronomy, from which we may legitimately infer that it was truly typical of Christ. When God had addressed the people directly from the midst of the cloud and fire on Sinai, unable to endure this mode of communication between God and man, they besought God that he would henceforth address them through the ministry of Moses: "Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die." Exod. 20:19. With reference to this request, God said to Moses: "They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth: and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." Deut. 18:17-19. The essential points of this promise are, that the promised prophet shall be like Moses, one whose words shall be invested with supreme authority; and, especially, that he shall be raised up from among their brethren, and shall therefore be a man like themselves. The promise was manifestly intended to meet the wants of the covenant people from that day and onward. Yet the great Prophet in whom it was fulfilled did not appear till after the lapse of fifteen centuries or more. But in the mean time the promise was truly fulfilled to God's people in a typical way through the succession of prophets, who spake in God's name, and who were men like their brethren to whom they were sent. In these two essential particulars the prophetical office truly prefigured Christ, its great Antitype.