1. The Parables of the Old Testament and the New.
PARABLES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
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CHAPTER I. THE PARABLES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE NEW.
I. The general idea of the Parable; its connexion with Mysticism and Analogy; its relation to the doctrine of unity and development in Creation; its various phases. — II. The limitation and the main purpose of parabolic teaching. — III. The various classes of Old Testament parables; the parable of narrative; the parable as riddle and symbolic vision; the parable as proverb; the parable of figurative poetry. — IV. The interest and lessons of parabolic study.
WHILE the parables of the New Testament have become the household words of Christianity — in their simpler beauty and instructiveness the delight of the child, and in their deeper meanings the theme of endless study and comment, — the parables of the Old Testament have been comparatively neglected. The divine perfection of our Lord’s parables has, perhaps naturally, thrown into the shade the earlier and more imperfect forms of the same kind of teaching in the ancient Scriptures. But yet these older parables may well claim a far more careful study than they have usually received, not only for their own sake, but also as being the germs of that which took from His hands this full perfection. Perhaps, as in other investigations, it may even be found that the general law, which runs through all parabolic teaching, is seen with some fresh clearness of illustration in the greater variety and simplicity, which mark the more rudimentary stages of development. Certainly here, as elsewhere, it will be our wisdom to recognise that the voice, which “spake in sundry times and divers manners through the older prophets,” is the voice of the same God “ who in these last days hath spoken to us in His Son.” If we give our deepest and most reverent thought to the Lord’s own words as “ the words of eternal life,” still we may in right measure obey His command by “ searching the “ older “ Scriptures.”
I. The word which we render “parable “ is used in the Old Testament with a far larger variety of signification than in the New. The original word (Mashal) in the Hebrew (like the word parabole in the Greek) has for its fundamental meaning the “ setting one thing beside another,” with the implied object of comparing the two. Parabolic teaching is, therefore, in all its forms a “teaching by comparison.” This leading conception runs through all the various uses of the word; although the form of comparison, and even the clearness and prominence of the idea of comparison, differ greatly in different cases. The form varies from explicit narrative or allegory to simple metaphor. The idea of comparison, in some cases primary and obvious, often becomes secondary, and occasionally is latent, if not entirely lost. This fundamental character of parabolic teaching affords a striking exemplification of the wellknown maxim of the coincidence of the “ first thoughts” of natural instinct with the “third thoughts “ of mature rational principle. In practice such teaching comes down to us from the earliest stages of thought and literature; and in these is due to imaginative and poetic insight, rather than to philosophical reflection. But, nevertheless, it rests on a fundamental principle of thought, which the advancing knowledge of men brings out with constantly increasing clearness — the conviction of a certain unity ruling, not only the phenomena of Creation, but the laws which govern them, and manifesting itself in different forms through all the kingdoms of the universe, as expressive of the Will, and so of the Nature, of the One Creator. On this unity of law depends the possibility of comparison, while the variety of the forms, in which it embodies itself, results in the exhibition of contrast. The object of parabolic teaching, whether through comparison or through contrast, is to ascend, by virtue of this unity, from the simple to the complex, from the visible to the invisible, from God’s dealings with man in the world of Nature to His subtler and higher sway over the world of spirit. Its analogies (as has been well said) [1] “are something more than illustrations, happily but arbitrarily chosen... the world of nature being throughout a witness of the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing from the same root, and being constituted for that very end. All lovers of truth readily acknowledge these mysterious harmonies, and the force of arguments derived from them.” In a general sense, it is this idea which lies at the root of what is commonly called Mysticism, in its interpretation both of the Book of Nature and of the Book of Holy Scripture. It is easy to show that it has often run wild, in artificial elaboration of arbitrary meanings, or in a luxuriant and subtle exuberance of fancy, reading its own fantastic ideas into that which is seen or recorded literally, and then drawing them out again, as if they were indications of actual law or absolute truth. It is still easier to denounce or ridicule its frequent tendency to ignore or explain away the plain and visible fact, from incapacity to discern its value, or to fit it into a preconceived system of ideas. But there is, nevertheless, a reality of truth and beauty underlying it, which these extravagances cannot destroy, and which the criticism of so-called common-sense is as incapable of discovering, as the dissecting knife or microscope of unveiling the secret of organic life. To the Divine Eye it may well be that all being and all fact are symbolic, as clearly exemplifying the great general laws of God’s Will and Nature, and suggesting the analogies, which bring all the exhibitions of these laws into various degrees of connexion. So far as man can enter into the depths of the Divine Wisdom, his mysticism reveals something of this universal truth.. So far as he fails, and tries to eke out the imperfection of his knowledge by arbitrary fancies of his own, he falls into the errors and extravagances, which have brought the very name of Mysticism into excessive discredit. In soberer and more thoughtful use, it is this same idea, which is the fundamental principle of Butler’s “ Analogy of Nature,” and of later works which have trodden the same path of reasoning, and have in some instances gone so far as to assert, not analogy, but identity, of natural and supernatural law. For by “ Nature,” in this sense, is meant the whole physical and human order of things, as cognisable by our own observation; and the principle of analogy simply compares the laws thus discovered with the great truths of “ Natural and Revealed Religion “; guiding us, on the one hand, to the conception of the world unseen, of the future life, of the perfection of the moral government of God; and, on the other, to faith in the reality of miracle, and the supernatural culmination of the great natural law of Mediation in our Lord Jesus Christ. “ The things that are seen “ are taken as witnessing of the things “ that are not seen,”— so far, at least, as to argue that all proceed from one Author.
“ The kingdom of heaven “ (as in the parables of our Lord) is recognised as having its plain, though imperfect, manifestations before the eyes of men on earth. But modern thought tends, it would seem, to work out this fundamental idea with far greater thoroughness. Philosophic induction toils, slowly but surely, after the rapid intuitions of imagination. What appeared once to be only the dream of the mystic, or the irresistible tendency of poetic fancy, is now recognised as a solid scientific truth. There lie before us the three great kingdoms of the universe — the kingdom of inorganic matter, the kingdom of organic life, the kingdom of humanity — all in contact with one another, but each separated from the others by barriers which as yet our science cannot pierce. Not only do we trace unity of law ruling the infinite variety of each of these kingdoms, but we cannot but infer some unity underlying the divisions between them. The laws which rule any one realm must have analogy, if not identity, with those which rule the others; for the Supreme Creative Power, whatever it is, must be One throughout, though fulfilling itself in many ways. Its action in the lower spheres may well, therefore, in any case be a parable — a true but imperfect type — of its more mysterious operation in the higher. If we discern in any form the existence of an evolution of higher from lower forms, and of the growth of differentiated variety from simplicity of primordial germs^ and if, at the same time, we believe (as both religion and sound philosophy teach us to believe) in the Supreme guidance of this development by a Divine Mind, then the conviction of this far-reaching analogy becomes continually stronger.
We not only conclude that it would naturally be, but we see that it actually is. Everywhere we watch the process of a gradual development which preserves continuity; and we learn increasingly how instructive is the study of the great laws and forces of being through their simplest and crudest exemplifications.
It is clear that in this we have the rationale of parabolic teaching. It is but an extension of the general principle from the seen to the unseen, when we, as Christians, learn from our Master’s lips to believe that the natural order of humanity presents similar types of the supernatural order of the kingdom of Christ, in this world and in the next. Unity underlying variety is the watchword of modern science; and it is the belief in this which is the justification of all teaching by parable. But this teaching by comparison takes many forms.
Sometimes (as in the origin of almost all metaphorical and poetical language) this comparison takes place between different kingdoms of creation — as between the world of inanimate things and the world of life, or between the realm of instinct and the higher realm of reason. Such (to take only Scriptural examples) are the fable of Jotham (Judges 9:7) of the trees choosing a king; or the parables in (Ezekiel 17:3, Ezekiel 19:2,Ezekiel 24:3) of the eagles, the lioness, and the seething-pot; or the command of Solomon (Proverbs 6:6), “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise”; or the remonstrance of Isaiah 1:3), ’The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” Sometimes the comparison is confined within the field of human action, showing how the same great principles of wisdom and folly, good and evil, are involved in the most trivial and the most important acts, extending from the lowest to the highest stations of life. Such is the parable of Nathan (2 Samuel 12:1-4), exposing the horrible sin of David by comparison with a homelier form of the same cold-hearted selfishness; or the cunning parable of the widow of Tekoa (2 Samuel 14:4-8), inducing the king to condemn in private life the course which he was himself pursuing in regard to the royal house. Such, again, is the lesson conveyed, directly or by implication, in a large number of proverbs, which illustrate by simple specimens of particular action the general laws of human nature and life.
Sometimes (as constantly in the parables of the New Testament) the comparison is between the dealings of God with man, and the dealings of men with one another; or between the workings of God, in the outer sphere of the visible world and in the inner sphere of spiritual experience, within the narrow limits of this life and in the eternity beyond the grave. Such is the principle of Isaiah’s parable of the Vineyard (v. i); of all the frequent comparisons of the relation of God to His people with the relation of a parent to his children, or a king to his people; of the many parables illustrating the dealings of God with the soul, from the influences of the physical laws of His Providence on the body and the visible life. Of these classes, it is obvious that the last is the highest and most instructive form of teaching. But in all the principle is the same. Whatsoever is done, the Lord is the doer of it. Therefore it is that the simpler laws of Nature illustrate the subtler laws of humanity; therefore the countless acts and thoughts of individual wills are ruled by a few great principles; therefore the actions of God have a perfect unity in their dealings with the body and soul of man, and are, in some degree, set forth by the actions of man, as ** made in the image of God.” Accordingly, it is not surprising that, if we take the principle of comparison in its widest sense, it may be almost said to pervade the whole of Scripture, and embody itself in a thousand various shapes. n. The conception of this fundamental principle of parabolic teaching leads naturally to an understanding, first of its limitation, and next of its main purpose.
It is clear that, since the different spheres of being, which the parable brings into comparison, have indeed a general unity, but have also special and distinctive characteristics, the comparison instituted must always be necessarily imperfect. The type will contain at once less and more than the anti-type — less, because, as coming from a lower sphere, it cannot represent the subtler and more spiritual characteristics of the higher — more, because it is apt to have certain features of its own, which may not be preserved in that with which it is compared. It is like a lower organism in comparison with a higher organism of the same great family — having only crude and imperfect indications of certain organs, to which the higher organism gives full perfection of usefulness and beauty, and yet having some organs of its own, which in the higher cease to be useful, and sink into a rudimentary or residual character. This limitation of the completeness of comparison is inevitable, and therefore derogates in no sense from the perfection of the wisdom of the parable. Probably, as the fulness of that wisdom increases, the limitation will be less narrow, because deeper insight will pierce more surely into the common heart of things. But, even if that wisdom be the perfect wisdom of our Lord Himself, some such limitation must still remain.
We may even sec that it subserves the intention of the parable. For if the type were as comprehensive and subtle as the anti-type, it would also be as difficult to understand; and, accordingly, the value of parabolic teaching, as leading from the simple and intelligible to the complex and mysterious, would be impaired, if not lost.
It is of great importance to keep this limitation in mind. Even in the parables of the New Testament it has been too much forgotten by interpreters, as notably in the parables of the Unjust Steward and the Unmerciful Servant. Men have insisted that every detail of the parable shall have something to correspond to it in the reality: they have resolved to find every spiritual feature of the reality shadowed out in the parable. Accordingly they have glided into a fanciful style of interpretation, in which (to use well known language) “ anything can be made to mean anything.” But in the parables of the Old Testament, which are far less perfect in form and in closeness of comparison, the caution is still more needed.
It must be sufficient to trace out in them a general likeness, without feeling disappointment if we find the points of difference many and striking. It may not, indeed, be unreasonable to conjecture that both analogy and difference have their own ’lessons to convey. We know the One God better, when we see that He works under one great law eternal, but in many and various ways. With this very limitation is closely connected the main use of the parable itself. Our Lord in a celebrated passage (Matthew 13:10-17) — purposely, as we may suppose, couched in startling language — declares that His parables were intended to be a test between those who “ seeing see not, and hearing hear not, neither understand,” “ because their heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed,” and those whose “ eyes see, and ears hear,” and to whom therefore “ it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.” It is manifestly implied that to the one class they would only be stories of obvious beauty, with perhaps a vague suspicion of some secret meaning, into which it was too much trouble to search; to the other they would suggest and stimulate that earnest inquiry, which could pierce to the very centre of their meaning. But it is hardly less manifest that they must have been intended to draw His hearers from the former to the latter class, by arresting attention and suggesting deeper thought. It is impossible to believe that the parable of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son could have failed to force on even the most careless some general conception of their significance, although, no doubt, that conception might stop short of the deeper portions of the whole meaning. Yet this is by no means all that the parable is designed to do.
It has been well said that it is the characteristic of poetry to discover likenesses in things seemingly different; of philosophy to discover distinctions in things seemingly alike. The one process belongs to the bright flashes of imagination; the other to the “ dry light “ of thought. The office of the parable is, first, to stimulate the one process, and then to lead on to the other; or rather, first, to impress on the imagination the sense of likeness, and then to draw the mind on to that full comprehension, at once poetical and philosophic, in which both likeness and difference are seen in their true relation.
Thus — to take the examples given above — the parable of the Good Samaritan at first sight simply enforces the beauty of charity, as a ruling principle of life, by a lesson drawn from a signal and touching example; next, it may lead on to the conception of our Lord Himself as the true Samaritan, healing, clothing, and succouring the stripped and wounded nature of humanity: but it will not yield its full lesson, until it induces us to pass from the points of likeness to the points of difference, in which the anti-type, as a redemption won by the unspeakable suffering and death of the Redeemer, rises infinitely above even the type of mercy presented in the parable. The parable of the Prodigal Son, in the context in which it appears, leads directly to the conception of the Fatherly love of God; yearning over His erring and repentant children, restoring them at once to a free exuberance of blessing, from which the narrow souls of their brethren recoil in perplexity. But here also deeper thought may well bid us pass on to the contemplation of the Divine love, as doing that which the father in the parable could not do — as calling out repentance in the soul of the sinner himself, and giving him the new heart which cries, “ I will arise and go to my Father.”
Hence, no doubt, it is that our Lord so often grouped parables together in delivery (as in
These examples have been chosen from the New Testament. For, although the same characteristics indeed exist in the parables of the Old Testament, they are there far less distinctly traceable, simply because in them this form of teaching is far less fully and harmoniously developed. It is, therefore, well that before examining them we should clearly understand and illustrate, by more striking as well as more familiar examples, the principle, the limitation, and the main value of parabolic teaching.
III. Proceeding to such examination of the larger and vaguer use of the word “ Parable “ in the Old Testament, we shall find that its parables fall naturally into certain distinct classes.
{a) There is, first, the class of what we commonly know as parables, — that is, explicit narratives, intended to illustrate some general law of human life, and to bring it home in special application to the actual occasion. To this class belong, first, the parable of the highest and most perfect form, drawn, like our Lord’s parables, from actual life; such as (for example) the parable of Nathan; next the fable, drawn from the realm of fancy, of which there is no instance in the New Testament, but of which the fable of Jotham in the Old Testament is a wellknown example; lastly, the allegory, closely akin to the true parable or fable, and, except that it bears upon its face a certain artificiality, and a constant significance of some implied meaning, hardly to be distinguished from them. Of this we have some splendid instances in the Book of Ezekiel. These, distinct as they are from each other,[1] are evidently varieties of one species; in which the true idea of the parable, as a teaching by comparison, is most fully developed. In the New^ Testament it is this species in its first and highest variety which is almost exclusively employed; of the others, largely represented in the Old Testament, there are but slight traces.
(J)) From the parable of explicit narrative we pass, next, to a vaguer use of the word “ parable “ in the Old Testament. It is applied to any expression of a hidden wisdom — whether by metaphor, or proverb, or riddle — into which the world at large can but imperfectly enter. Thus, in Psalms 49:4, the words, “ I will incline my ear to a parable: I will open my dark saying upon the harp “; and in Psalms 78:2, “ I will open my mouth in a parable: I will declare dark sayings of old,” introduce psalms which contain little or nothing of what we call parable, the one being directly didactic, the other simply historical. In the same sense, Ezekiel complains (Eze. 50:49), “ Ah, Lord God! they say of me. Doth he not speak parables? “ Those proverbs, in which the symbol only is expressed, and the comparison left to be understood, evidently approach to this class. Such are for example: “ Where no oxen is, the crib is clean “; “ A bird in the air shall carry the voice ’*; “ Where the tree falleth, there shall it lie.” In one case (Mark 7:15) the figurative and antithetical saying of our Lord, “ There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man,” is expressly called a “ parable.” Here the original idea of comparison is at least latent, if not extinct; only the idea of the popular expression (necessarily partial) of a secret wisdom remains behind. In this class we may include some “ dark sayings,” not expressly termed parables in Scripture, such as the song of Lamech (Genesis 4:23-24), and the “riddle” of Samson (Judges 14:12).[1] It is a class, in which we trace in general only a rudimentary and implicit form of the comparison which marks the true parable. To this same class belong the symbolic actions or acted riddles of the prophets, especially the prophet Ezekiel; and with it may be connected the symbolic visions of prophecy, first found in the early Book of Amos, but most frequent and elaborate in Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah, the later prophets of the Captivity and the Restoration. All, like the spoken riddle, are intended to call out the question, “Wilt thou not tell us what these things mean?” In most cases the answer is explicitly given; in some it is left to be inferred by present thought or unfolded by future experience.
(c) There is, next, the class of what we generally call “Proverbs.” The Hebrew word for “proverb” (Mashdl), which gives its name to the Book of Proverbs, is in fact, the same word which is used for “ parable.” [2] The idea of comparison, no doubt, lies at the foundation of this application of the word.
This, as has been often remarked, is very clearly indicated by the well-known passage in the book of Proverbs (Proverbs 26:7), “ The legs of the lame are not equal; so is a parable [or proverb] in the mouth of fools.” For the meaning clearly is that the proverb “ halts “(as we say), that is, fails in the exactness of the comparison which links its two members together. In many proverbs, indeed, the metaphorical use of comparison is still clearly to be traced: “ As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman without decoration.” “ As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more.” “ Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.” “ The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil; so do stripes the inward parts of the belly.” In fact, the proverb, which is almost always drawn from physical phenomena or obvious human actions, might often be unfolded into what we call a parable, or the parable compressed into a proverb.
Thus, for example, it is clear that the verse (Proverbs 2:4), “If thou seekest her (wisdom) as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure,” contains in a compressed form the same idea, which our Lord unfolds in the parables of the “ hid treasure “ and the “ pearl of great price.” The principle of metaphor, in fact, underlies the great mass of proverbs, as it comes out explicitly in those which are most widely and popularly used. For in the well-known saying that a proverb is “ the wisdom of many and the wit of one,” it is implied that it draws out of common knowledge a hidden meaning, which only the keen sighted few can discern. By no means is this process so strikingly successful, as by the use of apt and forcible metaphor. But at the same time the idea of comparison often fades out of the proverb; leaving behind it, however, first, the form of parallelism or antithesis, in which comparison mostly clothes itself; and, next, the notion of something abstruse or enigmatical, discovered by the wisdom of the few, and embodied in such forms as may be, at least in part, understood by the many. This is the case with far the larger number of the proverbs of the Old Testament. Accordingly, here our modern usage has naturally substituted for the original word “ parable “ the wider and vaguer term of “ proverb,” — the popular saying (that is), or by-word of life.
(d) But the last sense of the word parable, departing farthest from the original type, is found in especial connexion with the phrase of “taking up his parable.” This phrase is applied in Numbers 23:7, &c, &c, to the prophecies of Balaam; in
IV. It is interesting thus to trace the idea contained in the word “ parable,” as it gradually varies from its distinct and explicit form through vaguer phases, till it ultimately passes into direct and unmetaphorical teaching. The process is full of instruction, as bearing upon the history of language, and the connexions and developments of thought. To the student of Holy Scripture it has a still higher instructiveness, as showing that its formally parabolic teaching is no mere ornament 01 excrescence, but inseparably connected with direct instruction in the things of God — growing out of the great principle of the unity of all law and being in Him, and adapting itself naturally to the processes, by which the human mind passes from the visible to the invisible, from the concrete to the abstract.
It has also a further interest in the contrast between this vague and variable use of the parable in the Old Testament, and the almost exclusive use of one type, and that the highest, in the New Testament. As by a Divine use of the law of evolution, the parable in Our Lord’s hands throws off all lower forms, and survives only in the highest. It does net deign to clothe itself in the garb of fable or allegory, because it will only deal with analogies belonging, not to the cloudland of fancy, but to the solid ground of fact, which are, accordingly, the creations of the mind of God rather than of man. It ascends also from the lower uses belonging to the world of humanity, to the higher purpose of illustrating the ways of God, and the unity which binds together His dealings with the life, bodily, mental, and spiritual, of man. Of the parables, therefore, of the Old Testament, as of the other elements of its revelation, it is true that *’ the Law,” i.e.^ the older covenant, “made nothing perfect,” but was simply “ the schoolmaster,” having charge of the boyhood of humanity, in order to bring it to the perfect teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yet, in virtue of that very imperfection, they have, as has already been suggested, a peculiar instructiveness of their own. Just as in the more rudimentary forms of being we see so clearly the connexions of the various species that they seem almost to melt into each other, so in the less perfect developments of the ancient parable we may perhaps trace — ’better than in the more perfect beauty of the parable of the New Testament — the true nature, both of the general principle running through it, and of the gradations by which it passes into plain and unmetaphorical teaching. The subject is a large one — too large for exhaustive treatment in a single volume. But it may well be dealt with in its various parts in different degrees of fulness. Thus it will be well to dwell in some detail on the various forms of the first and highest species of parable, especially as suggesting at many points comparison with the parables of the New Testament. “The parable in the form of symbol,” written or acted, occupies a considerable place in the Old Testament, and needs perhaps more elucidation than for ordinary readers it has generally received. “ The parable in the form of proverb “may be treated only in general outline, bringing out simply the main characteristics of the proverbial teaching of Holy Scripture. The “ parables “ of the fourth class cannot be grouped together; each must be examined separately, as forming a prominent and graphic example of Old Testament teaching. The design to be kept in view throughout the whole investigation is, primarily, to bring out the great principle of parabolic teaching— the unity underlying variety, on which all Scripture interpretation largely depends; and secondarily, to throw light on some of the obscurer passages of the Old Testament, which are apt to be but superficially glanced at, if not entirely passed by.