With reference to the above passages from the prophetical literature, the difficult question now arises, what we are to hold as to the literal perform- ance of the actions mentioned by the prophets. We will examine the various possible solutions of the problem, in order to arrive at the correct solution.
(a) As in dealing with other questions, the proper course will be to consider the OT data themselves, It appears to the present writer that a starting- point from which a sure conclusion may be reached is to be found in Jer 25", There we read: ‘For thus saith Jahweh, the God of Israel, unto me, Take the cup of the wine of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it (v."°). Then took I the cup at the hand of Jahweh, and made all the nations to drink, unto whom Jahweh had sent me (v.2”), namely, Jerusalem and the cities of Judah,’ etc. (vv.18-5). Now, it is obvious that the causing of whole cities and peoples to drink cannot have been carried out literally. But when, in spite of this, the narrative of this transaction runs as if it had been so, we have at least one certain instance of a prophetical action
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which to all appearance was literally performed, although its performance is seen to have been an impossibility. Jeremiah thus means nothing more than that he was stirred up by his Divine director to a certain action, and that he carried this out in his inner life. The purpose meant to be served by the Divine commission and the record of it, is to set forth the determination of God with the greatest clearness. Incidents belonging to the spiritual sphere are to pass like an earthly drama before the eyes of the hearer and reader.
The position {of matters disclosed in Jer 251": furnishes a ground for holding that some of the other symbolical actions of which we read in the prophetical books, could also have been performed only ideally. The prophets, like Jeremiah in the above passage, might so relate the symbolical transaction as to guide their hearers to the cor- rect conclusion as to its actual or ideal occurrence. Let us examine this point in detail.
Jeremiah records in 13*7 how he was commanded by God to bury a girdle by the ‘ Perath’ (nv5), and that he carried out this commission. If the con- temporaries of Jeremiah must necessarily—and no other possibility can be plausibly made out—have understood by ‘ Perath’ the well-known great river of Asia, the Kuphrates, they must at the same time have been aware that the prophet had not actually gone to the Euphrates.—Again, the circumstance noted in Is 2074 that the prophet went about for three years half-clothed and barefooted, is far from natural. But it may be that the statement of time here is not original. The mention of a de- finite period seemed to be required, and so it was inserted in the form of a so-called round number. We venture to add another remark on this passage. The form of expression, ‘At that time Jahweh spake by Isaiah’ (v.?) is extremely surprising, see- ing that the following words are addressed to Isaiah. The form is not at all explained by such passages as Ex 9%, Lv 104, 1K 12”, Jer 372, Hag 1-8, which are cited by Duhm (in Kurzer Hdcom. on Is 20°), for in none of these does any Divine message follow, addressed to the person who is in- troduced by ‘by’ (7:3). Is it too much to assume that the man who wrote the words ‘by Isaiah’ meant to mark the contents of vy.24 as contain- ing nothing more than the report of an announce- ment by God? Have we not the same indication in the strange form of v., where the words of God are reported in a definite form meant for the people? Was it not Isaiah’s intention by this narrative to call attention to the overthrow of Egypt and Ethiopia ?
But, be this as it may, the history which meets us in Hos 1 and 3 was certainly enacted only in the spiritual sphere. By means of the Divinely in- spired narrative of the experiences of the prophet with an unfaithful wife, the ideal relations are meant to be portrayed, which had partly been realized in the case of the prophet’s Master and the people of Israel, and were partly to follow by way of punishment. It is true that, even in recent times, there have not been wanting exegetes who have seen in these chapters the record of actual experiences (Nowack, Die kleinen Propheten, p. 29; Valeton, Amos und Hosea, 1898, p. 221 f.; O. Seesemann, Jsrael und Juda bet Amos und Hosea, 1898, p. 32ff.). But the objections to this view appear to the present writer to be too weighty to be set aside. The marriage of the prophet with a harlot, if it had been an actual incident, would have been altogether too repulsive. And it may be.remarked, in passing, that what the prophet was commanded to do was to take to himself a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom (TE), The notion that ‘the impure inclinations of this woman did not reveal themselves to Hosea till
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