Hermeneutics - Lesson 19

Well, let’s think of some of the hermeneutical or interpretive difficulties that we encounter with prophecy. I already mentioned one, that we just have the wrong expectations. We’re thinking that prophecy is going to be a prediction of the future. And then we open up the Bible and it doesn’t look like prophecy of the future, but it’s got to be prophecy of the future, so maybe I just don’t know what I’m reading because it’s got to be prophecy of the future. Well, you can’t make something into something that it’s not. Okay. So, that’s one. 

And another difficulty would be the historical distance that we find. The literature of the prophets is rich in analogies and geographical references. A knowledge of the history and geography and culture is very important when we’re trying to understand the message of the Major and Minor Prophets. 

Now, some prophets like Obadiah and Joel and Jonah they don’t provide any specific historical reference, that is, we don’t know exactly when they wrote. We don’t know who the king was. With Jonah, we know that Assyria is still doing its thing, but that’s a pretty broad period of time. And so, we have to look elsewhere for clues about how to interpret it in the Scriptures. 

Why did the prophets write? Oftentimes there were unprecedented upheavals in political, or military, economic, or the social spheres that led to a point of crisis. And so, the prophets needed to write. Well, understanding what those historical issues were is very helpful. And again, adequate historical background can be found in the Bible itself. So, in the book of 1 and 2 Kings, or 1 and 2 Chronicles, we’ll find the historical context for what’s going on when the prophets did their writing. 

Oftentimes there was religious upheaval. People were turning from God to pagan gods, the pagan gods of the surrounding nations. We see that in Hosea 2 or Jeremiah 2. And as you’ve read through the Books of Kings and Chronicles, you know that that’s Israel’s history. 

There were often shifts in population and national boundaries that led to constantly unsettled conditions. And all of this meant that the divine message from the prophets was needed anew and afresh, even though they’re really saying the same old thing. 

Another issue that we run into that creates difficulty is just the question of fulfillment. How do we know when a prophecy has been fulfilled? I’ve been beating the drum that most of the prophetic literature is not prediction of future, but some of it is. Oftentimes that’s the interesting stuff that we’re looking for. But how would we know if it’s been fulfilled or not? 

It seems in some places that there’s a prophecy that’s given and then it’s fulfilled multiple times. This is double fulfillment or multiple fulfillment really a thing? Consider, for example, in the Book of Daniel 9:27, we read this, 

“He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.” 

Daniel 11:31 we read, 

“Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate.” 

One chapter later in Daniel 12, 

“And from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be 1,290 days.”

Now, if you were to ask anyone during the lifetime of Jesus who that person was, or if that person had come, they would say, “Yes, that person has absolutely come and it was Antiochus Epiphanes [recte Antiochus IV Epiphanes], this Greek ruler who forced the Jews to sacrifice pigs on the altars as a way of desecrating the temple. He wanted to put an end to Judaism as it was known. And so, he entered the Holy of Holies in 167 BC and that brought an end to temple worship until you have the events that are chronicled in the Book of Maccabees, where temple worship is reinstituted. But the abomination that makes desolate, we know who that is, people would have said that was Antiochus. 

However, Jesus in Mark 13:14 says, 

“But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then that those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.’” 

Jesus is acting like it hasn’t been fulfilled yet. Was it Antiochus or was it this person who is to come? If you were a Jewish person who lived in the 2nd century, you would say, “Oh, I know who that second guy is, he was the true abomination that makes desolate, and that would be Titus, the Roman ruler who destroyed Jerusalem, the Roman general, who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD.” 

As we look back on it, we go. Well, which one was it? Was it Antiochus or was it Titus? 

And then we get to Revelation 13:14, where we read, 

“…and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast, it deceives those who dwell on the earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived.” 

And there’s language in the Book of Revelation that sure looks like there’s another abomination that makes desolate who’s coming down the pike. Well, which one is it? Is it Antiochus, is it Titus? Or is it someone future still for us? 

Here’s where the concept of multiple fulfillment applies. I believe that God gives prophecies that are fulfilled multiple times throughout history. Usually, it appears to me, rising in intensity. 

We might think in terms of promise and fulfillment. The New Testament writers often saw analogous situations in salvation history, and then they linked them together prophetically. 

Also, the Jewish prophets often engaged in what I’ll call the telescoping of time. For example, in 2 Peter 3:8 we read the statement of the Lord in time, 

“Don’t overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” 

That’s God’s perspective. He’s got lots of patience. For us, though, we’re very much bound by time. I like the illustration, I mean, even as I look out and on a clear day from here, I can see Mount Hood. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had the phenomenon where you are driving down the highway and you see a mountain in the distance and it looks like it’s just over the bend. But then when you get over the bend, you realize it’s further away than what you thought that it was. 

And I think that’s what goes on with the prophets. The prophets saw something that looked very imminent and near to them. But as time progressed, it becomes clear that they were further away from the fulfillment of their prophecy than what they might have thought. 

I want to introduce to you another concept when it comes to prophecy, prediction of the future, and that is the idea of conditional prophecy. And conditional prophecy, the topic, it embroils us in the very nature of the sovereignty of God and of his omniscience. We might ask, “How well does God know the future, that is, is there such a thing as conditional prophecy where the fulfillment is conditioned on something?” But when we read a prophecy, it looks like the fulfillment is certain, but then it doesn’t happen. Was God wrong? Does he know the future? Or was the fulfillment of that prophecy conditioned on something? And I’m going to argue that there is this concept of conditional prophecy. 

A very good example of this is found in the book of Jonah, Jonah 3:4. You know, the story of Jonah that leads up to this. Jonah is told to go prophesy to the Assyrians in Nineveh that destruction is coming. Jonah hates the Ninevites though, he has no love for them at all. He doesn’t want to go anywhere near them. And we might think, “Well, is he afraid? Is he afraid to go there?” No, that’s not the reason. As we read through the rest of Jonah, the reason he doesn’t want to go prophesy is because he doesn’t want to deliver the message of their destruction. 

And we might think, “Well, I thought Jonah hated the Assyrians. Isn’t that what you just said?” Yes, he did. But he knew that if he went and warned the Assyrians, they might very well repent. As a matter of fact, Jonah seemed to think that it was very likely they would repent. He thought that God was going to use him to bring about the repentance of the Assyrians, and he wanted nothing to do with Assyrian repentance. He wanted judgment on them. Judgment on Assyria. And so, he tries to get as far away as he can. 

You know the story of how God calls him back, he’s thrown into the water, God rescues him through the giant fish, spits him out on the land. Jonah says, he cries, “Uncle,” he says, “Okay, I’ll go.” And he makes it on to Assyria and to Nineveh. 

In Jonah 3:4, we get Jonah’s great prophetic effort. Listen to this, 

“Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’” 

An eight-word sermon. That is like the poorest excuse for a sermon that you will ever hear of. He’s obeying the letter of God’s command, not necessarily the spirit. Nevertheless, despite his pathetic efforts, the Ninevites listen to him. And they repent. 

And at the end of chapter 3, we read this, 

“When God saw what they [the Ninevites] did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” 

He did not bring the destruction that Jonah prophesied was going to come. 

Now, notice that in Jonah’s prophecy to them in his sermon, he doesn’t say, “Unless you repent, you will be destroyed in 40 days.” He just announces it: “In 40 days, you’re going to die.” That’s it. That was his message. There’s no condition attached to it. There’s no “if/then.” 

So, what’s going on? Was Jonah’s prophecy unfulfilled? And at face value, we might say yes. But the Book of Jonah provides an invaluable help at looking at the nature of prophecy, especially this category of conditional prophecy. 

In 4:1, we read this, 

“It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.” 

The only revival preacher ever who was frustrated over repentance. 

“And he prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.’” 

“I knew you were going to use me to bring about their repentance, and I knew that you were going to show mercy on them, that’s why I didn’t want to have anything to do with this.” 

The whole point, it seems, of the Book of Jonah is that Jonah understood that the message that he was bringing to the Ninevites was the means by which God would call them to repentance. Far from being a message of certain doom, I would think a message that Jonah would have been delighted to preach to the Ninevites. Jonah knew that the only thing that was certain is that Nineveh would repent. That’s what he knew would happen. 

Bruce Ware writes this about the Jonah episode, 

“Nearly all interpreters of Jonah, for example, agree that when Jonah predicted yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown, we understand that an implied but unstated condition attached to this prediction, ‘Unless you repent, this will happen.’” 

So, this condition is implicit though it’s not explicit. I continue the quote, 

“The people did repent and God did not bring the predicted judgment. And nearly all agree that even as Jonah knew, it was God’s intent all along to show mercy to the Ninevites, knowing that the stated prediction of judgment would elicit their repentance so that God could then display his originally intended mercy.” 

So, some prophecies are dependent upon fulfillment of a stated or unstated condition. And this principle is illustrated in Jeremiah 18:7-10, 

“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do it.” 

So, notice the language of Jeremiah 18. God says, “I will—I may declare that I’m going to destroy someone, but if they repent, I will not do it.” 

He goes on, 

“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I intended to do it.” 

God will change his mind, so to speak. Even though, I would argue that God doesn’t change his mind like that. What God does is he declares something, there’s an implicit condition attached to it and his will is accomplished through that conditional prophecy. And I think that this concept of conditional prophecy explains many of the so-called “unfulfilled prophecies” that we might find in the Bible, like the destruction of Damascus in Isaiah 7:1. Or that statement by Huldah, the prophetess, that Josiah would die in peace we find in 2 Kings 22. As you know, Josiah went, you know ignoring all wisdom, got himself involved in a land war in Asia, which everyone knows you’re not supposed to do. And then he was killed in battle. Was Huldah wrong? No, I think there was probably an implicit condition. And Josiah met the requirements of that implicit condition and therefore was killed, even though the prophecy was that he would die in peace. 

Okay. Just like there are many kinds of narratives, there are many kinds of prophetic proclamations in the Bible. There are judgment speeches, for example. This is the basic form of the prophetic message. There’s usually first, an introductory commissioning of the prophet. Followed by second, a detailed accusation or description of the situation that led to the judgment. And third, there’s usually a messenger formula where the prophet identifies himself as a prophet. And then fourth, the prediction of disaster to come. This is the judgment speech. 

An example of this is in Amos 7:15-17, 

“The Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people, Israel.’ 

There’s your introductory commissioning of the prophet. 

“Now therefore, hear the word of the Lord. ‘You say, “Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.”’” 

There’s the detailed accusation or description of situation that’s going to lead to the judgment. 

“Therefore, thus says the Lord.” 

That’s the messenger formula for the prophet: you’re about to hear from God. 

“‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, your land shall be divided up with the measuring line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.’” 

There’s the prediction of disaster. 

That’s the judgment speech. 

There are other kinds of prophetic proclamations. And this list that I’m giving you, again, I don’t think it’s important that you necessarily remember all of these; I’m doing it to illustrate the fact that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to prophecy. 

There are prophecies of blessing or deliverance, and this usually, quite frankly, follows a judgment speech because that’s just the way God is. He’s usually pretty kind and compassionate. There’s a promise of blessing at the end of the judgment speech. Some examples of that would be in Isaiah 41 and Jeremiah 33. 

There are what many scholars very cleverly call “woe oracles.” This is a particular type of judgment prophecy that contains the word “woe” or the Hebrew 'óy. It signaled tragedy and imminent sorrow. So, like in Amos 5:18-20, 

“Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light, as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, gloom with no brightness in it?” 

Other examples of that can be found in Isaiah 5, Micah 2, Habakkuk 2. Jesus takes it up, as you remember, in Matthew 23 with his woe oracles. 

The prophets often engaged in symbolic actions and those were a form of prophetic speech as well. These were these were acted out parables. They served as object lessons to the observers. And Jeremiah and Ezekiel used this method often. I mean, like the whole book of Hosea, for example, with Hosea’s marital situation is a lived-out parable for the people to see. 

Be careful about wanting to be a prophet. It’s a hard, hard life, or even to be the son of a prophet where you were given a ridiculous name like Majer-Shalal-Hash-Baz, or something like that. Poor kid is like a fourth grader, can’t even spell his own name. But it was important for the prophetic message of Isaiah. 

Jeremiah 18, we get examples of this. Ezekiel 5. Ezekiel had to do some freaky things. I mean, he had to run around naked for a while. He had to, you know, cook his food over like, human excrement was what he had to do. And like, even for Ezekiel, that was like a bridge too far. “Lord, no, please, please, not that.” And God says, “Okay, cook your food over like, cattle excrement instead.” These prophets were tough guys. That’s for sure. 

Disputation speeches, we find them in Scripture. A disputation speech is where the words of the people to whom the prophet is prophesying are quoted against them. It turns the words of the people back on themselves to show the error of their ways. And typically, there’s like some sort of introduction, a quotation, and then a refutation. Here’s Jeremiah 31, an introduction to the promise of the New Covenant. But he uses a disputation speech to do it. 

“In those days, they shall no longer say,” 

There’s your introduction. 

“‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’” 

That’s the quotation of the opponents. 

“But everyone shall die for his own sin. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.” 

That’s the refutation of the people’s words. 

There is poetry all through the prophets. We’ll talk about poetry as literary genre. So, everything we say about poetry is going to apply to the prophecy in the Major and Minor Prophets. 

There’s wisdom thinking in the prophets as well. Proverbs are often used. We’ll talk about Proverbs here in an upcoming session. 

Allegories are often used. In Ezekiel 16 and 20 and 23, and we’ll talk about allegories in a moment, but we’ll talk about probably better ways to interpret the allegories when we get to the parables, because the parables are basically allegories, made-up stories that Jesus used. And so, we’ll talk in detail about that. 

And then there’s even some apocalyptic stuff in the prophets, and we’ll talk about that. That will be the last literary genre that we look at. 

So, all of those are different forms that we find in the Major and Minor Prophets. 

This does raise the question when we were talking about fulfillment of sensus plenior, Is it possible that the text has a deeper meaning than the original author intended? And this is a very significant question for the prophets, because how well did the prophets understand how their words would be fulfilled?

According to some advocates of sensus plenior, whereas the author had one view, God had an entirely different willed meaning he conveyed through the same language and vocabulary. Now, I say, according to some advocates of sensus plenior, because when people use the term sensus plenior, oftentimes they will mean something very different than the last person that you heard from. And so, my advice to you is whenever you talk to someone and they mention sensus plenior, ask them specifically, “What do you mean by sensus plenior?” 

If they mean by that the prophet says, you know, ten words and they think they know what they’re talking about. They have an intentional willed meaning in those ten words (I’m holding up five fingers, but count each for two), but God takes those ten words and has an entirely different meaning, willed meaning attached to them. Well, I am uncomfortable with that, given my understanding of inspiration and everything that we talked about earlier. 

Now, I recognize that there are many prophecies that are fulfilled in Christ, which the original author would have been hard pressed to understand, especially like Isaiah 53. The problem with sensus plenior, it’s virtually impossible to recognize or to verify or to argue against. If meaning is found in the text— So, go back to ten words spoken by a prophet, we can understand what they mean by what they say, by literary analysis, by looking at the words and the grammar and all of that, the way that we would understand anything anybody says. 

But then someone else might come along and say, “Yeah, but God means this.” And it might not have anything to do with the grammatical, historical construction of those ten words. How do we know? How do we argue with someone? They might end up just pulling out some sort of pneumentological trump card and say, “Well, the Spirit of God gave me this understanding of the passage.” I think that’s problematic. 

We have access only to the vocabulary, the style, and the grammar of the prophet who wrote. It seems then that we can only find a deeper meaning after the fact and we have no access to it before the fact. 

Now, it could be that by sensus plenior a person means only that there’s a wide range of implications for what the prophet is saying, or what any biblical author is saying. And at that point, I don’t have any problems with it. 

If you’re saying, you know, like Paul said, “Don’t get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” But today I would apply that by saying, you know, “Don’t get high on crack cocaine.” Yeah, I think that’s a legitimate implication of what Paul meant. And Paul had no concept probably of crack cocaine. If you want to call that sensus plenior, that’s fine. I got no issue with that. I’m all in on that. 

You just have to understand what a person means by what they say, when they talk about sensus plenior. And I get uncomfortable with the notion when there’s a meaning that the Spirit brings that is different or can’t be argued from the words that the prophet uses. If we want to argue that the prophet said this, but it was fulfilled in this way, something that he probably wasn’t consciously thinking of, but we could legitimately argue with someone, yeah, this is an implication or this is fulfillment of it, then again, I have no problem there. 

Hermeneutical principles. Well, let me tell you what not to do. Oftentimes, that’s easier. Don’t let the contemporary situation control the biblical text. For example, modern liberation movements often use the prophets’ condemnation of social injustice to support their movement. I think we can use the prophets’ condemnation of social injustice to condemn social injustice where we see it. But that doesn’t mean that we buy into the program, the political program, that others are using to replace the social injustice, if that makes sense. 

I think it’s fine to criticize treatment of the poor, but don’t use the prophets’ words where they’re criticizing treatment of the poor to say, “Hey, in our country we have poor, therefore, our policies are wrong and we need to replace it with this kind of policy.” I think that’s going beyond what the prophet was saying. If you want to use the prophets’ condemnation of social injustice to condemn contemporary social injustice, go at it. That makes perfect sense to me. But beyond that, I’m not so sure. 

Don’t take individual episodes in a story and symbolize them to speak to modern events. For example, I’ve heard the story of Ahab and Naboth, where Ahab wants a vineyard. That’s used to preach against the little man versus the state, or institutionalism, or something like that. I mean, what we have there is a particularly egregious evil king who tramples all over justice and robs from what appears to be a fairly righteous man who cares about the legacy of the inheritance that was given to him. In that sense, he’s acting in faith, and Ahab is trampling all over what God has commanded. Criticize that all you want. I’m not sure that, you know, that we want to turn a Naboth into some sort of Norma Rae character who is standing up against big money or whatever. 

Don’t ignore the role of Israel in redemptive history, claiming promises that God made to Israel are applicable to other nations. And by that, I mean, I’m American, in the United States of America. It could very well be that God will respond the same way with other nations that he responded to Israel. But God is not bound by his word to do so. Twenty-first century America is not Old Covenant Israel. 

There is the great prayer of Solomon where we get in this, that God’s response to this prayer of the dedication of the temple that, “If my people will humble themselves and will turn from their wicked ways and will turn to me, then I will heal their land.” 

And I’ve seen that quotation from Chronicles on posters in Jesus junk stores with, you know, American flags and bald eagles and such. And I think, you know, it’s theoretically possible that every single person in America could repent and turn to Christ, and the very next day we would get nuked out of existence and God would not have been unfaithful to his word at all. 

And we could stand before God if we wanted to and say, “Wait a second, you said that you would heal our land if we repented, and every single American did that. What’s up? Why did you not keep your word?” And God would say, “I never made that promise to you; that was a promise made to Old Covenant Israel.” And you as a follower of Jesus, you are a New Covenant believer, and as a New Covenant believer, speaking for us, we have newer and better promises. 

We have some hard stuff as well. Jesus warned us that we follow him, we enter into this New Covenant agreement, there is probably going to be really tough stuff on the horizon. Jesus said, “People are going to hate you. They’re going to want to kill you because of me.” He said, “But don’t worry about it. It’s not a you problem; it’s really about me. The reason they hate you is because they hate me. And you shouldn’t expect any less.” Twenty-first century America, not Old Covenant Israel. 

What are we supposed to do? Identify, where possible the book’s background, the date, the author, the place in Israel story. So, context, context, context. 

Most of the prophets come with chronological indicators. Those are there for a purpose. Pay attention to them. Who is the audience? Where’s the speaker from? Who is the prophet confronting? All those things are very important. 

Determine the type of prophetic proclamation. I walked through a few of them. Each subgenre of prophetic literature has to be interpreted with the genre in mind. So, when you find a lawsuit or a disputation speech, you’ll be able to pick out illustrations that both highlight the text and make it meaningful for the people that you’re teaching. 

Think in terms of speech acts. Is this a warning, a statement of imminent judgment? Is it a message of hope? 

Study the balance between the historical, the forth-telling, and the predictive, the foretelling. Ask yourself, is this predictive or is it didactic? Is it conditional or unconditional? Is it fulfilled or unfulfilled? For example, in Zachariah 1:1-6 is didactic. It’s more forth-telling; verses 7-21 is more predictive. 

And don’t leap too quickly to a futuristic interpretation before you consider the immediate historical interpretation. If the prophecy is predictive in nature, has it been fulfilled? You may want to use the New Testament as your guide in this. 

And then because most of the prophetic literature is written poetically, expect and account for figurative language and symbolism. According to Grant Osborne, there are three very different approaches that we could take. The first would be to take everything as completely literal. Most don’t do this. We pick and choose. The second as purely symbolic. Find the symbol behind every referent in the prophetic literature. The third, probably the more median position, “Find a language of equivalence,” he says. “Look for analogous situations, but don’t overload the text in the direction of either too literal or too symbolic.” 

Some of the Major and Minor Prophets is christological. I do believe that Jesus is the central character of the entire canon but we don’t want to invent or insert Jesus specifically into every text. Some passages are going to be directly messianic. Micah 5:2, the birth in Bethlehem. Malachi 4:5, Elijah predicted as the forerunner to Messiah. 

Others are going to be more analogous, like Hosea 11:1, where Jesus is called out of Egypt. Jeremiah 31:15, the slaughter of the innocents. Matthew takes both those passages and sees those as fulfilled in the life of Christ, even though when we look at them, they don’t look like predictions of the future. They look like statements of either the past or the present. 

Some passages are not messianic on their face at all, but had their fulfillment in their own day. That’s the majority of the predictive prophecy in the Major and Minor Prophets. But we can still get to Jesus from there by asking, “What role is this playing in the big drama that gets us ultimately to Jesus?” 

Be very careful about imposing your theological system on the text. It’s impossible not to, but just be self-aware that our impulse is to read our theology into the words of Scripture rather than get our theology from the words of Scripture. It’s unavoidable that you’re going to do this. I don’t even think it’s necessarily wrong in like, this is just a totally hopeless situation. This is the way that it’s supposed to be. That’s how we read. That’s how we interpret things. But be self-aware so you can be self-critical and ask yourself the question, “Am I just reading my own theology into this prophetic literature, or am I allowing the prophetic literature to maybe alter my theological position?” 

And then after you’ve done all that, I think it’s fine to seek analogous situations in the modern church. If, for example, I was going to preach on justice issues, I would make a beeline for the Major and Minor Prophets because they condemn the two nations, the Northern nation, the Southern nation, over and over again, because that which was to characterize Israel was their remarkable social justice. The social justice of Israel, codified in the Mosaic Covenant, was unlike anything in the Ancient Near East, where they cared for the disempowered, like the refugee, or the sojourner, the widow, the orphan. And that social justice was to be a magnet to the nations where they would hear of the great righteousness and mercy of God, and they would flock to Jerusalem to learn the ways of the God of Israel. Social justice was supposed to be an attraction to the nations. And so, when they failed in that, the Major and Minor Prophets castigated Israel for their lack of concern for those who were disempowered. 

So, I think we can take those words, that’s the heart of God, that’s the mercy of God. And we can use that and apply that in our own context. Being mindful of the fact that we are not Old Covenant Israel and that we are under new management as the New Covenant Church. And our responses, even though motivated by the same heart and compassion of God, are going to be different in application because we are the church and not a geopolitical entity.

Student: You were talking earlier about sensus plenior, and probably the best illustration is Isaiah 7:14.

Dr. Miles: Yeah.

Student: Was Isaiah talking about his wife as a sign to the king, or was he prophesying about Mary, or both? I mean, because you don’t seem to like sensus plenior.

Dr. Miles: No, I don’t. 

Student: What do you do with that? 

Dr. Miles: Yeah. So, I do like sensus plenior in that sense. So, the answer is yes, he was talking about both. I don’t think he was conscious of both. I think that messianic prophecy only makes sense, or that prophecy only makes sense, if there is an immediate fulfillment in the lifetime of the King Ahaz? 

Student: Yeah. 

Dr. Miles: Because the birth of this child to this person who wasn’t necessarily expected to have a baby, I suppose, or someone who wasn’t likely in the moment to have a baby. The birth of that child was the signal that God was going to keep his promise to save Israel. And that was a promise given to Ahaz. So, there’s no hope given to Ahaz if 700 years later, Mary has a baby. And so, I’m pretty sure that’s what Isaiah was thinking at that point. 

Did he know that there would be a multiple fulfillment to that? I don’t know. I doubt it. But you know, we do get the language of the New Testament where there’s these Old Testament words and the prophets, they longed to understand what it was that they were writing, even. So maybe there’s something there for Isaiah. I don’t know. But I have no way to prove that. I think the only thing we can argue is that Isaiah thought there would be an immediate fulfillment. 

And then Matthew takes this and sees it fulfilled in Jesus. And probably aided a bit by the Septuagint translation, which chose to translate it with the Greek word that’s definitely someone who has never experienced sexual intimacy. It is a virgin in an unambiguous sense.