spiritual point of view. This spiritual dependence is represented under the image of servitude, because at the period, into which Isaiah was carried, Israel followed the power of the world in chains. Again a literal interpretation of Is. xi. 14, “they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines towards the west, they shall spoil them of the east together; they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey them," would be a direct contradiction, on the one hand, to ver. iv.," he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked ”—(the people of such a king are not appointed to make war after the manner of David; and the fact that, according to the announcement of the prophets, the nation was to become utterly defenceless before the coming of Christ-Vol. i. p. 578—is a sufficient proof that the allusion could not to be anything of this kind in the kingdom of Christ)—and on the other hand to the prophetic anticipation, which is especially obvious in Isaiah, that the neighbouring nations mentioned here would be entirely destroyed before the coming of Christ by the empires which were afterwards to arise, and would entirely lose the importance which they possessed previous to the rise of these imperial powers. In this passage the idea of the victorious power of the kingdom of God is clothed in imagery, taken from the circumstances of David's times. A literal interpretation of Is. lxvi. 23, where all flesh is represented as coming from month to month, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, to worship at Jerusalem, would not be in harmony with chap. xix. 19 (Vol. ii. 238), Zeph. ii. 11; Mal. i. 11 (“ in every place incense shall be offered into my name, and a pure offering:" Michaelis, "sicut olim in uno loco"), and Deut. xii. 5, 6 (Vol. iv. p. 166). In such cases as these, the figure is always to be sought for in those points, in which the idea can be proved to have been suggested by something within the range of the prophet's vision.

4. Other passages contain within themselves the proof, that they cannot be understood otherwise than figuratively. Thus, even if we were to look altogether away from history and the testimony of Christ, we could not regard Elijah the prophet, whose coming is predicted by Malachi, as meaning the literal Elijah, as the earlier Jews and some of the moderns have

done, but must necessarily understand it as meaning a prophet, who would come in the spirit and power of Elias. For we could not attribute to the prophet so abnormal a thought as this, unless it were impossible to find any safe analogies, on which to found the figurative interpretation. So, again, the literal interpretation of Is. liii. 12 is proved to be untenable, from the simple fact that worldly triumphs are not obtained by the deepest humiliation, and the worldly rulers do not confer upon their subjects the forgiveness of sins and justification. The literal explanation of the last nine chapters of Ezekiel is disproved by chap. xlvii. 1—12, where the spiritual meaning is very conspicuous. That Edom is a figurative term, employed to denote the enemies of the kingdom of God, in Is. xxxiv and lxiii., is evident from the whole context, where the judgment predicted is represented as falling upon all the nations of the earth. Very often a literal explanation leads to romantic ideas, which a sound exegetical feeling at once detects as at variance with the sacred Scriptures; for example in Is. ii., where, according to the literal reading, Mount Zion is to be raised upon the top of the loftiest mountains of the earth, and in Zech. xiv. 10, where the mountains of Judea, with the exception of those in Jerusalem itself, are said to be turned into plains.

5. In distinguishing between the figure and the fact, we must never lose sight of the general character of each particular prophet. It is undeniable that, although in many respects they all see the truth in a figure, yet in the case of some the figure bears a much greater resemblance to the fact, and the covering is much more transparent, than in that of others. Several of the Jewish scholars noticed this (see the passages quoted by J. Smith; also Maimonides, c. 45), and attempted to make a classification of the prophets accordingly. In Isaiah, for example, much more could be said in defence of a literal interpretation of such a description as that contained in Ezek. xl.—xlviii., than in the case of Ezekiel himself.

6. Sometimes the figurative character is expressly pointed out, and the clue is given to the literal meaning which lies beneath it. Thus Zechariah (chap. x. 11) explains the figurative expression, "they pass through the sea," which is borrowed from the deliverance from Egypt, by adding the words, "the

affliction." In Is. ii. the figurative view is suggested at once, by the frequency with which mountains are employed to represent kingdoms; and in Ezek. xl.-xlviii., by the fact that the temple is undoubtedly used elsewhere as a symbol of the kingdom of God.

7. In prophecies, which have not yet been fulfilled, the boundary line between the figure and the fact is always to be drawn according to the analogy of faith. On this ground, as Theodoret (on Ezek. xlviii.; opp. ed. Hal. ii. p. 1045 sqq.) has conclusively shown, all those explanations of the prophecies relating to the future are to be rejected, in which, through a false adherence to the letter, such doctrines are maintained as the future restoration of the exclusive privileges of the Jewish nation, the rebuilding of the temple, the renewal of the Levitical ceremonies, and consequently a return to the "beggarly elements," which the Church has left behind it. Those passages, which speak of the return of Israel to Zion in the Messianic times, must be regarded as figurative, because Zion always means the seat of the kingdom of God. And under the Old Testament it was merely the local sanctuary, which gave to Zion this central importance. That the sanctuary would lose its importance, when the Messiah came, was expressly declared by Jeremiah, in chap. iii. 16. With His coming the kingdom of God received a new centre, and the temple bore the same relation to Him, as the shadow to the substance. This is also the case with such passages as announce the coming of the converted heathen to Zion, passages which cannot be literal, for the simple reason that, if they were, we should be compelled to maintain, in opposition to the evident fact, that their fulfilment belonged exclusively to the future. Isaiah (chap. ii. and lxvi. 23), Micah, and Zechariah speak of Zion, as being without exception the only place of salvation for the heathen world, so that whoever does not come to Zion can have no part in salvation itself (compare Zech. xiv. 17-19); from Zion alone goeth out the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and whoever does not fetch it thence is excluded altogether; Zion is the only place of prayer for the whole earth, and therefore the only place, where any one can have part in God himself. These consequences of a literal interpretation ought to be well considered, before any one resolves to adopt it. v. Oettingen has made a perfectly vain

effort to escape them. We have but one of two alternatives in this case, and all attempts at reconciliation, or at steering a middle course, must be regarded as unscientific. If Zion be once understood locally, in direct contradiction to the New Testament, where the temple, Jerusalem, and Zion, all assume a spiritual character, it will also be necessary to go a step farther, and to conclude that the end will come back to the beginning, that the clear and decisive declaration of the Lord in John iv. 21 will lose its force, and that the Church will relinquish its universal character (see my commentary on the Revelation i. p. 558). A preference for literal interpretation leads eventually to a renewal of the early error of the Jewish Christians, which has long been overcome and rejected by the Church; and the fact cannot be concealed, that there are many, who not only approach it, but have reached it already.

8. Just as the prophets and their contemporaries were not always able to distinguish the figure from the literal meaning, by means of the marks alluded to; so are we also not always in a position to make this distinction with certainty, in the case of prophecies that are still unfulfilled. We must take care therefore, that our conclusions do not go beyond the marks we possess. And since history has proved, in connexion with that portion of prophecy which is already fulfilled, that many things are literal, which must have appeared figurative, and others again figurative, which must have appeared literal, before the fulfilment took place; there are many instances connected with unfulfilled prophecy, in which the question can be decided by history alone. IV. Another result of the state in which the prophets were at the time of their prophesying, is the obscurity of the prophecies themselves previous to the fulfilment. This obscurity is the consequence of the three peculiarities mentioned above.-1. The prophets generally had clear visions of only a few detached portions of the great future. Their prophecies need to be dovetailed together, and the fragments assorted, so as to form a perfect whole. This is not a difficult thing for us to do, since history has shown us, how each particular feature is to be arranged; and even those who were living before the fulfilment, as we have already seen, were not left without any directions as to the manner in which the arrangement should be made. At the

same time, it must have been a much more difficult task for them, and the prophets themselves may frequently have failed. That it was a difficult matter, for those who were without the light of fulfilment, for example, to combine together the passages which proclaim a Messiah in glory, and those in which he is represented as coming in humiliation, is evident from the fact that it was this which led the Jews to resort to the fiction of a double Messiah.-2. Obscurity must in many instances have been caused by the fact, that the visions of the prophets, as a rule, were abstracted from the relations of time, and that things are in consequence connected closely together, which the historical development has proved to be far removed from one another. The prophecies, for example, in which the deliverance from the Babylonian captivity and the redemption by Christ are represented as continuous, might easily lead to the conclusion, that the two events would also be historically connected (see the remarks on Mal. ii. 17, and the introduction to Zechariah). From the fact that the weak commencements and glorious end of the Messianic kingdom are combined together in the prophecies, even John the Baptist and the apostles, previous to the outpouring of the Spirit (Acts i. 6), were unable to arrive at any other conclusion, than that the coming of Christ would be closely connected with the setting up of the kingdom of glory.-3. A still greater cause of obscurity was the figurative character of the prophecies. We have seen, it is true, that even apart from the fulfilment, there were not wanting marks, by which the figurative and literal might be distinguished; but, notwithstanding this, it must have been very difficult and frequently impossible to make this distinction, where the particular prophecies were concerned. The members of the Old Testament stood in precisely the same relation to the prophecies generally, in which we stand to those which relate to the future development of the kingdom of God. Still greater misconceptions would also of necessity result from the figurative character of the prophecies, when the difficulty of interpretation inherent in them was increased by the fact, that the commentators themselves approached them with a carnal mind and a desire to find their cherished hopes confirmed by the predictions they contained. The national pride of the Jews led them to despise the means within their