Tlie significance of the marked clustering of recorded supernatural dreams at just these his- torical points it is not easy to be perfectly sure of. Perhaps it is only a part of the general tendency
' of the supernatural manifestations recorded in Scripture to gather to the gi-eat historical crises ;
1 throughout Scripture the creative epochs .are the supernaturalistic epochs. Perhaps, on the other
I hand, it may be connected Avith the circumstance
I that at just these particular periods God's people were brought into particularly close relations with
! the outside world. We have but to think of Abraham and Abimelech, of Jacob and Laban,
j of .Joseph and Pharaoh, of Daniel and Nebuchad-
I nezzar, of Joseph and tlie Magi, to observe how
DREAM
DEEAM
495
near at hand the suggestion lies tliat the choice of dreams in these instances as tlie medium of revela- tion has some connexion with the relation in which the recipient stood at the moment to influences arising from the outer world, or at least to some special interaction between Israel and that world.
In entertaining such a conjecture we must beware, however, of imagining: that there was something heathenish in the recog- nition of dreams as vehicles of revelation ; or even of unduly depreciating dreams among the vehicles of revelation. It has become quite usual to speak of dreams as the lowest of the media of revelation, with the general implication either that the revelations given through them cannot rise very high in the scale of revelations, or at least that the choice of dreams as their vehicle imr !ies something inferior in the qualification of the recipients for receiving revelations. There is very little Scriptural support for such representations. No doubt, there is a certain gradation in dignity indicated in the methods of revelation. Moses' pre - eminence was marked by Jehovah speaking with him * mouth to mouth,' manifestly, while to others lie made Himself known 'iti a vision,' or 'in a dream' (Nu 126). And it is possible that the order in which the various methods of revelation are enumerated in such passages as Dt 131, 1 S 286- 16, Jl 228, Ac 2" may imply a gradation in which reve- lation through dreams may stand at the foot. But these very passages establish dreams among the media statedly used by God for the revelation of His will, and drop no word depreciatory of them : nor is there discoverable in Scripture any justification for conceiving the revelations made through them as less valu- able than those made through other media (cf. Kdnig, OJen- barungsbegriff, i. 65, ii. 9f., 63 f.).
It is very misleading to say, for example (Barry in Smith's DB i. 617 ; cf. Orelli, op. cit.), that ' the greater number' of the recorded supernatural dreams ' were granted, for prediction or for warning, to those who were aliens to the Jewish covenant ' ; and when they were given to God's 'chosen servants, they were almost always referred to the periods of their earliest and most imperfect knowledge of Him'; and ' "i^-^"-^,. *^^'r k«.
many of these IS ; they do not mark any particular stage of religious development in their recipients ; they do not gradually decrease with the progress of revelation ; they no more characterize the patriarchal age than that of the exile or the opening of the new dispensation. If no example is recorded during the whole period from Solomon to Daniel ; so none is recorded from the patriarchs to Solomon, or again from Daniel to our Lord. If the great writing-pro- phets assign none of their revelations to dreams, they yet refer to revelations by dreams in such a way as to manifest their recognition of them as an ordinarv medium of revelation (Jer 2326. 28. 32 279 298, Zeo 102). These passages are often adduced,
characteristic of
sometimes represented that Jeremiah means to brand dream- revelations as such as lying revelations. Jeremiah's polemic, however, is not directed against any one particular method of revelation, but against false claims to revelation by any method. His zeal burns no more hot against the prophet that *hath a dream ' than against him that ' hath the Lord's word ' (232S) ; no more against those that cry, ' I have dreamed, I have dreamed,' than against those who ' take their tongue and say. He saith ' (2325- 31). Nor does Zechariah's careful definition of his visions as received waking, though coming to him at night (18 4I), involve a depreciation of revelations through dreams ; it merely calls our attention to the fact, otherwise copiouslv illustrated, that .all night-visions are not dreams (cf. On 1.')12 2624 462, Nu 2220, 1 ch 173, 2 Ch 712, Job 413 jQS 3315, Dn 2", Ac 169, 189 2311 2724).
The citation in Ac 2" of the prediction of Jl 2^ suffices to show that there rested no shadow upon the ' dreaming of dreams ' in the estimation of the writers of the NT. Rather this was in their view one of the tokens of the Messianic glory. Never- theless, as we have seen, none of them except Matthew records instances of the supernatural dream. In the Gospel of Matthew, however, no fewer than five or six instances occur. Some doubt may attach, to be sure, to the nature of the dream of Pilate's wife (27'^). The mention of it was cer- tainly not introduced by Matthew idly, or for its own sake ; it forms rather one of the incidents which he accumulates to exhibit the atrocity of the judicial murder of Jesus. Is his meaning that thus God Himself intervened to render Pilate utterly without excuse in his terrible crime (so Keil, in loc.)"! Even so the question would still remain open whether the Divine intervention was direct and immediate, in the mode of a special revelation, or indirect and mediate, in the mode of a ])rovidential determination. In the latter