Don't Read the Prophets "Literally"
How to Interpret the Prophets
Everybody loves a good prophet, right? People who can predict the future, people who can tell you what will happen next week? Lots of fun.
And people love the so-called modern day prophets and preachers who can unlock the mysteries of the biblical prophets, who somehow know—even though Jesus didn’t—when the end of days will be, and you can discover these “truths” for yourself if you would subscribe to their ministry and receive a “free” handkerchief which will also cure any illness if you wipe your forehead with it…
Okay, so we know that’s sensationalism and not Christianity (I hope). But within the more sober realms of Christianity, we still struggle to understand the prophets. And probably the most widespread interpretive view among conservative churches is that we ought to read the Bible literally. And if you do not read the Bible literally—well, watch out!—you must be a liberal who doesn’t take the Bible seriously.
So, in such a view, Israel returning to the land in 1948 must be a historical fulfillment of the literal promise of Israel’s return to the land (even though many of the predications of Israel’s return to their land were historically fulfilled in 538, 458 and 445 BC…). And many people holding this interpretive view, likewise, are quoting the Bible to interpret Israel’s current war with Hamas. I even heard a sermon once from the 1970’s on the 10-horned best in Revelation and the preacher noted, in all seriousness, that the European Union was about to allow in its 10th member…
On the one hand, many people who succumb to such interpretations of the prophets do so because they are Christians who love God’s Word, believe all it says, and believe God still acts today. And so, finding that the Bible is so powerful that it predicted something happening in your own lifetime is tantalizing and believable. However, these “interpretations” sadly misunderstand the literature of prophecy. And so I, like many others, would advocate that we interpret the Bible, not literally, but literarily, that is, according to the nature of its literature.
Prophets as Forthtellers
When we think of prophets, we typically think of people who can predict the future. However, this is not entirely accurate. The Old Testament prophets—while predicting the future occasionally—far more often spoke to their present situation. They were not so much “foretellers” as “forthtellers”—that is, people who declared forth what God has already told Moses on Mount Sinai. Chalmers notes that “more than 92 per cent” of the prophetic material addressed Israel’s immediate situation.1 And so when we interpret the prophets, most likely the original meaning lies in the distant past.
Of course, this is not to say that Scripture does not apply to us, all Scripture is profitable for all Christians (2 Tim 3:16). I’m simply debating in what way Scripture, and specifically the prophets, is profitable for Christians. The prophets are not profitable because they predict events in our lifetime, because almost in their entirity they do not.
The majority of the content of, say Ezekiel or Obadiah, contains a message applicable to the original setting of the original audience—92% if Chalmers is to be believed. And even the remaining 8% that was predictive of the future, was predicting the future from the perspective of the prophet, not our future. So even much of this 8% has already been fulfilled, such as the historical return to the land in 538BC, etc., and the coming of the Messiah.
Thus, when interpreting the prophets today, we ought to expect that the original meaning of the text is not speaking about our present-day situation but to a historical setting. Because it is Scripture, that original meaning still applies to us and even was recorded for future generations, but it does not speak about our present situation.
The Prophets are not Paul’s Letters
The prophets also employ many literary forms common to the poetic form of Hebrew writing. They use synecdoche, merism, metaphor, alliteration, simile, acrostic, hyperbole, typology, allegory, parable, etc. Each genre or literary form plays by different set of interpretive rules. You don’t play monopoly the way you play twister. You have to follow the rules.
And we automatically “switch gears” to the appropriate “interpretive rules” when we move from reading a history book, to a novel, to a dictionary, to a user-guide, to a comic book, to a newspaper etc. because we recognize the different literary forms appropriate to each genre. We don’t expect to find historical fact in a comic book, nor do we expect to find hyperbole in a user-guide (now that would be frustrating!)
Thus, Peter Gentry’s reminder is apt: “a central problem in the Christian church…is that we have been reading…the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament…exactly the same way we read Romans.”2 In other words, Ezekiel is not Paul. Paul is quite straightforward, logical, and says what he means quite plainly. And this genre of “letter” is most familiar to Western interpreters and thus easier and more natural to interpret. But the prophets are not so. They are from a different cultural and historical milieu altogether. They are naturally foreign to us and much harder to interpret. And so it is misguided and lazy interpretation to assume they play by the same interpretive rules as a New Testament letter.
Interpret Literarily, not Literally
Thus, when we read the prophets, it is actually erroneous to demand that everyone interpret the prophets “literally.” Because what “interpret literally” usually means is that we should interpret the prophets using the same interpretive rules as we employ for Paul’s letters. When Paul told Timothy to bring his scrolls, he meant that Timothy would bring his scrolls (2 Tim 4:13). And so when Isaiah prophesied that the Euphrates river would be split into seven channels (Isa 11:15) he meant that he would split the Euphrates river into seven channels—what you don’t think he could do it? You must be a liberal who doesn’t interpret the Bible literally.
But would we read the political-satire cartoon strips in a newspaper this “literally”? Are we expecting to see a literal donkey and an elephant at the next political debate? Of course not, that would be a misinterpretation. We “get” the figure of speech used. But this example illustrates how many people read the prophets. They don’t “get” the figures of speech used in the prophets and they demand a literal interpretation which misunderstands God’s Word because it misunderstands how the prophets communicate.
Gentry writes again, “When the Reformers talked about the ‘literal sense’ of the text, they meant the meaning intended by the author according to the rules of the genre of literature being used to communicate the message.”3 We must interpret according to the rules of the genre. We must recognize irony, satire, humor, hyperbole, parable, metaphor etc., and interpret these literary forms appropriately. If we interpreted hyperbole or metaphor literally, we are misinterpreting. Thus, it is more accurate to say we ought to interpret literarily—according to the literary form of the prophets—rather than literally. This is more faithful to Scripture.
Historical and Typological Prediction
Though the prophets are primarily “forthtellers” they do predict the future. For example, Daniel predicts the downfall of not just Babylon, but even Persia and Greece (Dan 2, 7), and he predicts in great detail the strife within the kingdom of Greece after it has been divided into a northern and southern kingdom (Dan 11). Micah predicts that Israel’s ruler will be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5) and when Herod asks the scribes where the Messiah would be born this is the verse they turn to because they recognize it as predicative. And Jeremiah predicted that the exile would last 70 years (Jer 25) and Isaiah predicted that Cyrus would allow the captives to return to their land (Isa 44:28–45:1). But note, all these examples have already been fulfilled.
One other reason why a prophet would predict the future is to validate their prophetic ministry (in accordance with Deut 13). Once their prophetic ministry has been confirmed by validating their prediction coming true, these prophets would predict something to be fulfilled in the distant future and not in their lifetime. In other words, they would predict something that could not be verified in their own lifetime. And yet, it ought to still be believed that it would come true because they have verified themselves as a true prophet by predicting things that did occur in their own lifetime.
An example of this is Isaiah’s prediction that the virgin would conceive which happened in his own lifetime (Isa 7–8), and then his subsequent prediction that another divine child would be born in the future (Isa 9). Or when Isaiah prophesied the downfall of Assyria (Isa 10, 39), which happened a little after Isaiah’s prophetic ministry, you can be assured that the downfall of Babylon, also predicted by Isaiah will also occur (Isa 13), even though it didn’t occur in Isaiah’s lifetime.
So the prophets do predict historical events but much of their historical predication has already been fulfilled.
The prophets also predict the future using typology. This simply means they predict the future using forms (types) from Israel’s past. There is to be a historical fulfillment in the future, but the predication will not be fulfilled exactly as they predict because they’ve intentionally predicted the future in the form/type of the past to make a theological point.
For example, when Hosea describes how Israel will be driven into captivity to Assyria, he says that they will return to Egypt (Hos 8:13, 9:3). Hosea is not saying Israel will go back to Egypt, he is saying, that in going into captivity to Assyria it is like they are going back to Egypt. Thus, typology not only makes their predictions more vivid by using from/types from Israel’s own history, but it also makes them more theological. For, to go back to slavery in Egypt, meant to return to the beginning of their history.
And just at the captivity in Assyria is predicted typologically, so also the deliverance from Assyria is described typologically, in that it will be like a new and better exodus out of Egypt (Isa 11:15 52:10–12). Again, typology gives recognizable vividness to a prediction and gives theological weight to a prediction. This is how the literary form of typology works.
So, the prophets ought to be understood literarily which often means typologically and not literally historically. For example, Isaiah 11:15 describes that the Euphrates will be dried up into seven channels, reminiscent of the drying up of the Red Sea. If we interpret this literally and historically, then this verse, to our knowledge, has never been fulfilled and either Isaiah lied or it is yet to be fulfilled. But if we interpret it literarily—recognizing this is typology—and thus interpret it, not historically, but typologically, we understand that Isaiah is saying Israel’s return from Assyria will be theologically like their exodus out of Egypt, and yet superior because there will be not just one channel in the sea but seven.
There are some things in them that are hard to understand…
Peter, speaking about Paul’s letters, says “There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction” (2 Pet 3:16). How much more the prophets.
Reading the prophets well requires hard work. It requires knowledge of the historical context into which the prophets spoke and the theological assumptions their messages were built upon—basically you need to know the history of Israel from the exodus to the exile and know the theological content of the Sinai covenant (Genesis through 2 Kings). Knowing these biblical books well, we can recognize either the historic original meaning of a text or its typological prediction and associated theological implications. One of the reasons the prophets are so easily misinterpreted is because people do not know the contents of Genesis through 2 Kings well enough to interpret the prophets. And while potentially less exciting than “finding out” a prophet from 2500 years ago spoke about events in your life-time, reading literarily will prove more fruitful in the long run as you rightly handle the Word of God and build a much firmer base upon which to stand than the ever-changing and conflicting interpretations of modern day “prophets.”
***Image: Michelangelo’s painting of Isaiah
Aaron Chalmers, Interpreting the Prophets: Reading, Understanding and Preaching from the Words of the Prophets (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 7.
Peter Gentry, How to Read and Understand the Biblical Prophets. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 13.
Peter Gentry, How to Read and Understand the Biblical Prophets. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 124.