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in their intercourse with other eastern nations, and especially with Egypt,"

As long, however, as actions, symbols, and allegorical words were used to signify present or past events, they were merely emblematical representations of what might have been known by natural means, and expressed by articulate sounds.

But the same method was also applied to predict future events. A very large portion of the prophetic parts of Holy Scripture treats of instruction conveyed by action.

-297 The sacrifice of Isaac was probably in

tended to give the Patriarch Abraham intimation of the great events which it thus repremisented. I davi

n

When Moses slew the Egyptian who smote saan Israelite, he did it not unadvisedly nor y hastily, but in order to shew by action, under authe direction of God's Spirit, the deliverance which was to be accomplished. "For he sup:oposed his brethren would have understood how sothat God by his hand would deliver them." to moWhen: Ahijah was commissioned to forebotel that the kingdom should be taken from yloSolomon, the clad himself with a new garment, 95 and found Jeroboam in the way." And Ahi

m See Hurd on Prophecy. Serm. IX.

n See Warburton's Divine Legation. Book V. Sect. 5. • Exod. ii. 12.

P Acts vii. 25.

1

jah caught the new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces." And he gave ten pieces to Jeroboam, to signify by action, as well as by word, that the kingdom should be rent out of the hand of Solomon, and ten tribes should be given to him.

...When Elisha the prophet was fallen sick of the sickness whereof he died, "Joash the king of Israel came down unto him and wept over his face."

The prophet, under the inspiration of hea ven, proceeded to inform him by a symbolical action, of the events which should come to pass. He commanded the king to take bow and arrows, and to put his hands upon them, to indicate his war with Syria. And Elisha put his hand upon the king's hands, to shew that victory came from God alone. He directed him to open the window eastward, towards the country beyond Jordan, which was then possessed by the Syrians, and to shoot. And the king shot. And the prophet said, "The arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them. And he said, Take the ar rows: and he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground.

1 Kings xi. 30.

And he smote thrice, and stayed. And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice."

The whole of this transaction was prophetical instruction by action. The king's hands laid upon the bow, the prophet's hands laid upon the king's hands, the arrow shot forth, the smiting of the ground, were all intelligible signs of what was to take place. Almost the only words used were those by which the prophet directed the king what he was to do.

i

In many instances the prophet of God was commanded himself to perform actions significant of the events which the Holy Spirit enabled him to foresee.

Thus Isaiah was commanded to loose the sackcloth from off his loins, and to put off the shoe from his foot; and, thus divested of that part of his dress which designated his peculiar character, to walk for a sign and a wonder, or rather as a type and a pattern, concerning Egypt and Ethiopia: thus indicating in his own person the captivity and degradation of

* Zech. xiii. 4.

* 2 Kings xiii. 14—19.
See Bishop Chandler's Defence, Chap. iii. Sect. 1.

the Egyptians and Ethiopians by the king of Assyria.orunyf.

Thus Jeremiah, by breaking a potter's vessel, in the valley of Hinnom, described to the Jews who were present the destruction of their city. By making bonds and yokes, and, having first put them upon his neck, sending them to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Tyrus, he declared their subjugation to the yoke of the king of Babylon." And his last recorded prophecy was an instance of the same kind. After writing in a book all the evil which had come upon Babylon, he commanded Seraiah to bind a stone to the book which he had written, and, as he cast it into the midst of the Euphrates, to say, "Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her" the very same symbolical action, and nearly the same words, as the angel in the Apocalypse uses in prophesying the destruction of the spiritual Babylon.

Thus also the prophet Ezekiel was unto them a sign.

Among numerous other expressive actions, he pourtrayed upon a tile the holy city and its siege. He caused a razor to pass upon his head and upon his beard, and with the hair

u Isai. xx. 2.

* Jer. li. 64.

x Jer. xix.

y Jer. xxvii.

Rev. xviii. 21.

b Ezek. iv. 1.

he performed what the Lord commanded him, as a testimony against Jerusalem. He prepared his stuff for removing, and dug through the wall and carried it out thereby, and when the house of Israel asked him, what doest thou? his answer was, "I am your sign."

е

Again, he ate bread with quaking, and drank water with trembling and carefulness, to set forth the desolation of the land, and the captivity of Zedekiah and the people in Babylon.

f

This method of conveying information was, so common, that even false prophets adopted it as the most significant.

When a lying spirit went out to deceive Ahab to his death, " Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made him horns of iron; and he said, Thus saith the Lord, With these shalt thou push the Syrians until thou have consumed them."

In the New Testament the same method is adopted. Agabus "took Paul's girdle and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle."

"h

• Ezek. v.

e Ezek. xii. 11.
* 1 Kings xxii. 11.

d Ezek. xii. 3, 5, 11.

f Ezek. xii. 18..

h Acts xxi. 11.