[394] See the Hulsean Lectures for 1833, (The Law of Moses viewed in connexion with the History and character of the Jews, with a defence of the Book of Joshua, &c.) by Henry John Rose, B.D.
[395] 2 St. Peter i. 21.
[396] 1 St. Peter i. 11.
[397] "With the idea of a Prophet," (says Gesenius in his Hebrew Lexicon, on the noun,) "there was this necessarily attached; that he spoke not his own words, but those which he had divinely received; (see Philo, t. iv. p. 116, ed. Pfeifferi,—προφήτης γὰρ ἴδιον μὲν οὐδὲν ἀποφθέγγεται, ἀλλότρια δὲ πάντα ὑπηχοῦντος ἑτέρου); and that he was the messenger of God, and the declarer of His will. This is clear from a passage of peculiar authority in this matter, (Ex. vii. 1,)—where God says to Moses,—'I have made thee a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.'" ... Elsewhere, (speaking of the Hebrew verb, 'to prophesy,') Gesenius has the following remarkable statement:—"The passive forms, Niphal and Hithpael, are used in this verb; from the Divine Prophets having been supposed to be moved rather by another's powers than their own." (Just as if the Oracles of God were not express on the subject! viz. "No prophecy ever came by the will of Man; but, [because they were] borne along (φερόμενοι) by the Holy Ghost, spake those holy men of God."—2 St. Pet. i. 21.)
Προφήτης, in fact, means 'an interpreter' rather than 'a prophet,' (for which, in our popular sense, the Greek is rather μάντις:) hence the use of the words προφήτης, προφητεύω, προφητεία in the New Testament, e.g. 1 Thess. v. 20. 1 Cor. xi. 4: xii. 10. Rom. xii. 6, (where see Wordsworth.) See also 1 Cor. xiv. 1, 3, 4, 5, &c.: in all which places, the προφήτης was what we should rather now call a preacher. But then, the expounding of God's Word is the special function of the preacher's office from which he takes this name.—The reader is referred to Blomfield's Glossary, Agam. v. 399, and to Liddell and Scott's Lexicon; (in both of which, some important references are given:) also to Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament, pp. 22-26.
[398] See above, [pp. 2-5].—The reader will find an interesting passage based on this analogy, in the [Appendix (F)].
[399] Analogy, P. ii. c. vii.—The same thing has been more fully expressed in a volume of Sermons which deserves to be far better known than it is:—"I suppose that if there is one portion of the Old Testament which a discriminator would set aside as less needing to be reckoned inspired than other parts, it is the Historical; the books which are strictly narrative. Now it may seem to have been providentially ordered, in the purpose of meeting this view, that these books are made to bear on them most peculiarly the stamp and the claim of Inspiration. For they do not profess to be so much the account of what Man did, as what God did in ruling men, and guiding human events. They are a history of a providential course of events, and, (which is the point,) as seen from the providential point of view. They are a history written not on Earth, but above the skies. Events are spoken of therefore in this view. A man's obduracy is recorded thus,—'God hardened his heart.' A king numbers his people; it is recorded as a thing suggested in the spiritual world. In fact, the historic volume of the Old Testament is a history of the secret springs of things; it is a narrative of things which none but God Almighty could know; not Man's Word therefore at all, but God's."—Sermons, by the Rev. C. P. Eden, pp. 153-155. Several other extracts from the same suggestive volume of a very excellent Divine, will be found in the Appendix.
[400] Eccl. iii. 14. So Deut. iv. 2: xii. 32. Rev. xxii. 19.
[401] See the [Appendix (G)].
[402] Hooker's Eccl. Pol., B. 1. c. ii. § 2