(4) The family.— 1 Th 2": 'But we, brethren, being bereaved of you for a short season . . .' (d7rop0aHfu, however, is used so widely that, as Milligan says, the metaphor can hardly be jiressed). Another instance of this would be 1 Th 2', where the text is uncertain, ' But we were babes in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherisheth her own children ' (for vi^Trioi, ' babes,' some MSS read flirioi, ' gentle ' ; but the former reading seems to lit in better with the context).
(5) Building is a favourite Pauline metaphor.
3*2
METAPHOR
METAl'HOR
Ro 1": 'to the end ye may be established,' i.e. strengthened or built up. 1 Th 3- : 'to establish you and to comfort you.' 1 Ti 6"*: 'laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on the life which is life indeed' (here themetaphorischanged in the same sentence from ' building' to 'grasping'). 2 Ti 2" : ' Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth . . .' Cf. too 1 Co 14'' : ' He that speak- eth in a tongue editieth (lit. ' buildeth up') him- self.'
(6) The sea. — Perhaps St. Paul's frequent voyages suggested to him nautical metaphors. Thus, 1 Ti 1": ' holding faith and a good conscience; which some having thrust from them made shipwreck concerning the faith.' The Greek vavayiui is used literally in 2 Co 11" : ' thrice I suifered sliipwreck.' The word is also used metaphorically in Plutarch, Demosthenes, and jEschines.
(7) Mirror. — 1 Co 13'- : ' For now we see in a mirror darkly.' The signiKeance of this would have been more apparent to an ancient than it is to a modern reader, for ancient mirrors were always of polished metal, and thus their reflexion was imperfect. According to Jewish tradition. Moses saw in a clear mirror but all the prophets in a dark one. Again, in 2 Co 3'* : ' with unveiled face reflecting, as a mirror, the glory of the Lord.'
(8) First-fruits.— \ Co 15=" : ' But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that slept.' ' On the morning of the 16th of Nisan, probably the very morning of the Lord's Resurrection, the first ripe sheaf of the harvest was offered to God. It was the consecration of the whole harvest to Him. So the Resurrection of Christ was the pledge of the Resurrection of all in union with Him ' (Goudge, in loc).
(9) Clothing.— I Co 15®': 'For this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.'
(10) Horticulttcre.-'Ro 11=*: 'For, if thou wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree : how much more shall these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree ? '
(11) Law. — 'It is unquestionable that various legal metaphors, such as adoption, inheritance, tutelage, slavery, manumission, were consecrated by him to the high office of conveying his doctrine and facilitating its comprehension by heathen minds, impoverished of spiritual conceptions and strangers to the novel truths he proclaimed' (W. S. Muntz, Rome, St. Paul and the Early Church, 1913, p. 48). This point has been elucidated by Deissmann in Light from the Ancient East, Eng. tr., p. 326): 'Among the various ways in which the manumission of a slave could take place by ancient law we find the solemn rite of fictitious purchase of the slave by some divinity. The owner comes with the slave to the temple, sells him there to the god, and receives the purchase money from the temple treasury, the slave having previously paid it in there out of his savings. The slave is now the property of the god ; not, how- ever, a slave of the temple, but a protege of the god.' St. Paul refers to this in Ro 6", Gal 4i-' 5', 1 Co 6™ 1^, etc. ' St. Paul's predilection for this whole group of images would be most beautifully accounted for if we knew him to have been previously acquainted with the Greek form of our Lord's deeply significant saying about the ransom (Mk 10«» = Mt2028). . . . But when anybody heard the Greek word Xirpov, "ransom," in the first century, it was natural for him to think of the purchase-money for manumitting slaves ' (p. 331 f. ). Papyri of the 1st cent. A.D. liave been discovered granting remission of debt. Cf. Philera '^ In Col
2'* there is some reference to an ancient custom, but exactly what is uncertain.
(12) Miscellaneous metaphors. — An interesting passage is 2 Co 5* : ' For indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened ; not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.' There is here a double metaphor of house and garment. The explanation of the abrupt transition may be found ' in the image, familiar to the Apostle, both from his occupations and his birth-place, of tlie tent of Cilician haircloth, which might almost equally suggest the idea of a habitation and of a vesture' (A. P. Stanley, Corinthians", 1858, p. 427). oktivos means a ' hut, tent,' and then the body as the tabernacle of the soul.