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International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

IN


IN

A principal thing to notice about this preposition, which in the King James Version represents about 16 Hebrew and as many Greek words and prepositions, is that, in hundreds of cases (especially in the Old Testament, but frequently also in the New Testament) in the Revised Version (British and American) the rendering is changed to more exact forms ("to," "unto," "by," "upon," "at," "with," "among," "for," "throughout," etc.; compare e.g. Gen 6:16; 13:8; 17:7,9,12; 18:1; Ex 8:17; Lev 1:9, etc.); while, nearly as often, "in" is substituted for divergent forms of the King James Version (e.g. Gen 2:14; 17:11; 31:54; 40:7; 49:17; Ex 8:14,24; Lev 3:17; 4:2, etc.). The chief Greek preposition en, is frequently adhered to as "in" in the Revised Version (British and American) where the King James Version has other forms ("with," "among," etc.; compare "in" for "with" in John's baptism, Mt 3:11, and parallel; "in the tombs" for "among the tombs," Mk 5:3). In 2 Thess 2:2, "shaken in mind" in the King James Version is more correctly rendered in the Revised Version (British and American) "shaken from (apo) your mind." There are numerous such instructive changes.

James Orr


IN THE LORD

(en Kurio): A favorite Pauline expression, denoting that intimate union and fellowship of the Christian with the Lord Jesus Christ which supplies the basis of all Christian relations and conduct, and the distinctive element in which the Christian life has its specific character. Compare the synonymous Pauline phrases, "in Christ," "in Christ Jesus," and the Johannine expressions, "being in Christ," "abiding in Christ." "In the Lord" denotes: (1) the motive, quality, or character of a Christian duty or virtue, as based on union with Christ, e.g. "Free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord" (1 Cor 7:39), i.e. provided the marriage be consistent with the Christian life. Compare 1 Cor 15:58; Phil 3:1; 4:1,2,4,10; Eph 6:1,10; Col 3:18, etc.; (2) the ground of Christian unity, fellowship, and brotherly salutation, e.g. Rom 16:2,8,22; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:7; (3) it is often practically synonymous with "Christian" (noun or adjective), "as Christians" or "as a Christian," e.g. "Salute them of the household of Narcissus, that are in the Lord," i.e. that are Christians (Rom 16:11); "I .... the prisoner in the Lord," i.e. the Christian prisoner (Eph 4:1); compare Rom 16:13; 1 Cor 9:1,2; Eph 6:21 ("faithful minister in the Lord" = faithful Christian minister); Col 4:17 (see Grimm-Thayer, Lex. of New Testament, en, I, 6).

D. Miall Edwards


INCANTATION

in-kan-ta'-shun.

See MAGIC .


INCARNATION

in-kar-na'-shun.

See PERSON OF CHRIST .


INCENSE

in'-sens (qeTorah; in Jer 44:21, qiTTer; in Mal 1:11, qaTar, "In every place incense shall be offered unto my name"; the word lebhonah, translated "incense" in several passages in Isa and Jer in the King James Version, is properly "frankincense," and is so rendered in the Revised Version (British and American)): The offering of incense, or burning of aromatic substances, is common in the religious ceremonies of nearly all nations (Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, etc.), and it is natural to find it holding a prominent place in the tabernacle and temple-worship of Israel. The newer critical theory that incense was a late importation into the religion of Israel, and that the altar of incense described in Ex 30:1 ff is a post-exilian invention, rests on presuppositions which are not here admitted, and is in contradiction to the express notices of the altar of incense in 1 Ki 6:20,22; 7:48; 9:25; compare 2 Ch 4:19 (see discussion of the subject by Delitzsch in Luthardt's Zeitschrift, 1880, 113 ff). In the denunciation of Eli in 1 Sam 2:27 ff, the burning of incense is mentioned as one of the functions of the priesthood (2:28). The "smoke" that filled the temple in Isaiah's vision (Isa 6:4) may be presumed to be the smoke of incense. The word keTorah itself properly denotes. "smoke." For the altar of incense see the article on that subject, andTABERNACLE andTEMPLE . The incense used in the tabernacle service--called "sweet incense" (keToreth ha-cammim, Ex 25:6, etc.)--was compounded according to a definite prescription of the perfumes, stacte, onycha, galbanum and pure frankincense (Ex 30:34 f), and incense not so compounded was rejected as "strange incense" (keTorah zarah, Ex 30:9). In the offering of incense, burning coals from the altar of burnt offering were borne in a censer and put upon the altar of incense (the "golden altar" before the oracle), then the fragrant incense was sprinkled on the fire (compare Lk 1:9 f). Ample details of the rabbinical rules about incense may be seen in the article "Incense," in DB.

See CENSER .

Figuratively, incense was symbolical of ascending prayer. The multitude were praying while Zacharias offered incense (Lk 1:10, thumiama), and in Rev 5:8; 8:3 f, the incense in the heavenly temple is connected and even identified (5:8) with "the prayers of the saints."

James Orr


INCEST

in'-sest.

See CRIMES .


INCONTINENCY

in-kon'-ti-nen-si (akrasia, "without control"): In 1 Cor 7:5, it evidently refers to lack of control in a particular matter, and signifies unchastity. In Mt 23:25, the Greek word is translated in both the King James Version and the American Standard Revised Version by "excess."


INCORRUPTION

in-ko-rup'-shun (aphtharsia): Occurs in 1 Cor 15:42,50,53,54, of the resurrection body, and is twice used in the Revised Version (British and American) for the King James Version "immortality" (Rom 2:7; 2 Tim 1:10 margin).

See IMMORTALITY .


INCREASE

in'-kres, (noun), in-kres' (verb): Employed in the English Bible both as verb and as noun, and in both cases to represent a number of different words in the original. As a verb it is used in the ordinary sense of the term. As a noun it is usually used of plant life, or of the herds and flocks, to denote the fruitage or the offspring; more rarely of money, to denote the interest. As examples of the different terms translated by this word, students who read Hebrew or Greek may compare Dt 7:22; Prov 16:21; Job 10:16 the King James Version; Job 12:23; Nu 18:30; Dt 7:13; Ezek 22:12 in the Old Testament, and Jn 3:30; 1 Cor 3:6; Col 2:19; Eph 4:16 in the New Testament.

Russell Benjamin Miller


INDIA

in'-di-a (hoddu: he Indike): The name occurs in canonical Scripture only in Est 1:1; 8:9, of the country which marked the eastern boundary of the territory of Ahasuerus. The Hebrew word comes from the name of the Indus, Hondu, and denotes, not the peninsula of Hindustan, but the country drained by that great river. This is the meaning also in 1 Esdras 3:2; Additions to Esther 3:2; 16:1. Many have thought that this country is intended by Havilah in Gen 2:11 and that the Indus is the Pishon. The drivers of the elephants (1 Macc 6:37) were doubtless natives of this land. The name in 1 Macc 8:9 is certainly an error. India never formed part of the dominions of Antiochus the Great. It may possibly be a clerical error for "Ionia," as Media is possibly a mistake for Mysia. If the Israelites in early times had no direct relations with India, many characteristic Indian products seem to have found their way into Palestinian markets by way of the Arabian and Syrian trade routes, or by means of the Red Sea fleets (1 Ki 10:11,15; Ezek 27:15 ff, etc.). Among these may be noted "horns of ivory and ebony," "cassia and calamus," almug (sandalwood), apes and peacocks.

W. Ewing


INDIGNITIES

in-dig'-ni-tiz.

See PUNISHMENTS .


INDITE

in-dit': the King James Version Ps 45:1, "My heart is inditing a good matter"; the Revised Version (British and American) "My heart overfloweth with a goodly matter," is in harmony with rachash, "to bubble up"; compare Septuagint exereuxato, "to pour out." "Indite" in English is becoming obsolete. It may mean "to dictate," "to invite," "to compose." In the latter meaning it is used in the above passage.


INFANCY, GOSPEL OF THE

in'-fan-si.

See APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS .


INFANT, BAPTISM

in'-fant.

See BAPTISM .


INFANTICIDE

in-fan'-ti-sid.

See CRIMES .


INFIDEL

in'-fi-del (apistos, "unbelieving," "incredulous"): the King James Version has this word twice: "What part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" (2 Cor 6:15); "If any provide not for his own, .... is worse than an infidel" (1 Tim 5:8). In both passages the English Revised Version and the American Standard Revised Version have "unbeliever" in harmony with numerous other instances of the use of the Greek apistos. The word nowhere corresponds to the modern conception of an infidel, one who denies the existence of God, or repudiates the Christian faith; but always signifies one who has not become a believer in Christ. It was formerly so used in English, and some of the older versions have it in other passages, besides these two. It is not found in the Old Testament, but "infidelity" (incredulity) occurs in 2 Esdras 7:44 (114).

William Owen Carver


INFINITE; INFINITUDE

in'-fin-it, in-fin'-i-tud:

1. Scripture Use:

The word "infinite" occurs 3 times only in the text of the King James Version (Job 22:5; Ps 147:5; Nah 3:9) and once in margin (Nah 2:9). In Ps 147:5, "His understanding is infinite" it represents the Hebrew 'en micpar, "no number"; in the other passages the Hebrew 'en qets (Job 22:5, of iniquities) and 'en qetseh (Nah 3:9, of strength of Ethiopia and Egypt; the King James Version margin 2:9, of "spoil"), meaning "no end." the Revised Version (British and American), therefore, renders in Job 22:5, "Neither is there any end to thine iniquities," and drops the marginal reference in Nah 2:9.

2. Application to God:

Ps 147:5 is thus the only passage in which the term is directly applied to God. It there correctly conveys the idea of absence of all limitation. There is nothing beyond the compass of God's understanding; or, positively, His understanding embraces everything there is to know. Past, present and future; all things possible and actual; the inmost thoughts and purposes of man, as well as his outward actions, lie bare to God's knowledge (Heb 4:13; see OMNISCIENCE ).

3. Infinity Universally Implied:

While, however, the term is not found, the truth that God is infinite, not only in His understanding, but in His being and all His perfections, natural and moral, is one that pervades all Scripture. It could not be otherwise, if God was unoriginated, exalted above all limits of time, space and creaturehood, and dependent only on Himself. The Biblical writers, certainly, are far from thinking in metaphysical categories, or using such terms as "self-existence," "absoluteness," "unconditioned" yet the ideas for which these terms stand were all of them attributed in their conceptions to God. They did not, e.g. conceive of God as having been born, or as having a beginning, as the Babylonian and Greek gods had, but thought of Him as the ever-existing One (Ps 90:1,2), and free Creator and Disposer of all that exists. This means that God has self-existence, and for the same reason that He is not bound by His own creation. He must be thought of as raised above all creaturely limits, that is, as infinite.

4. Anthropomorphisms:

The anthropomorphisms of the Bible, indeed, are often exceedingly naive, as when Yahweh is said to "go down" to see what is being done (Gen 11:5,7; 18:21), or to "repent" of His actions (Gen 6:6); but these representations stand in contexts which show that the authors knew God to be unlimited in time, space, knowledge and power (compare Gen 6:7, God, Creator of all; 11:8,9, universal Ruler; 18:25, universal Judge; Nu 23:19, incapable of repentance, etc.). Like anthropomorphisms are found in Dt and the Prophets, where it is not doubted that the higher conceptions existed. In this infinity of God is implied His unsearchableness (Job 11:7; Ps 145:3; Rom 11:33); conversely, the latter attribute implies His infinity.

5. Infinity a Perfection Not a Quantity:

This infinitude of God is displayed in all His attributes--in His eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, etc.--on which see the separate articles. As regards the proper conception of infinity, one has chiefly to guard against figuring it under too quantitative an aspect. Quantitative boundlessness is the natural symbol we employ to represent infinity, yet reflection will convince us that it is inadequate as applied to a spiritual magnitude. Infinitude in power, e.g. is not an infinite quantity of power, but the potentiality in God of accomplishing without limit everything that is possible to power. It is a perfection, not a quantity. Still more is this apparent in moral attributes like love, righteousness, truth, holiness. These attributes are not quantities (a quantity can never be truly infinite), but perfections; the infinity is qualitative, consisting in the absence of all defect or limitation in degree, not in amount.

6. Errors Based on Quantitative Conceptions:

The recollection of the fact now stated will free the mind from most of the perplexities that have been raised by metaphysical writers as to the abstract possibility of the co-existence of infinite attributes in God (thus e.g. Mansel); the reconcilability of God's infinity with His Personality, or with the existence of a finite world; the power of the human mind to conceive infinity, etc. How, it is asked, can the idea of infinity get into our finite minds? It might as well be asked how the mind can take in the idea of the sun's distance of some 90 million miles from the earth, when the skull that holds the brain is only a few cubic inches in capacity. The idea of a mile is not a mile big, nor is the idea of infinity too large to be thought of by the mind of man. The essence of the power of thought is its capacity for the universal, and it cannot rest till it has apprehended the most universal idea of all the infinite.

James Orr


INFIRMITY

in-fur'-mi-ti (dawah, chalah, machalah; astheneia): This word is used either in the singular or plural (the latter only in the New Testament) and with somewhat varying signification. (1) As sickness or bodily disease (Jn 5:5; Mt 8:17; Lk 5:15; 8:2; 1 Tim 5:23). In the last instance the affections seem to have been dyspeptic, the discomfort of which might be relieved by alcohol, although the disease would not be cured thereby. It is probable that this condition of body produced a certain slackness in Timothy's work against which Paul several times cautions him. In Lk 7:21 the Revised Version (British and American) has "diseases," which is a better rendering of the Greek noson, used here, than the King James Version "infirmities." (2) Imperfections or weaknesses of body (Rom 6:19; 2 Cor 11:30 the King James Version; 2 Cor 12:5,9,10 the King James Version; Gal 4:13). (3) Moral or spiritual weaknesses and defects (Ps 77:10; Rom 8:26; 15:1; Heb 4:15; 5:2; 7:28). In this sense it is often used by the classic English writers, as in Milton's "the last infirmity of noble minds"; compare Caesar,IV , iii, 86. The infirmity which a man of resolution can keep under by his will (Prov 18:14) may be either moral or physical. In Lk 13:11 the woman's physical infirmity is ascribed to the influence of an evil spirit.

Alexander Macalister


INFLAME; ENFLAME

in-flam', en-flam' (dalaq): "To inflame" in the meaning "to excite passion" is found in Isa 5:11, "till wine inflame them." In some the King James Version passages (e.g. Isa 57:5) we find "enflaming" with the same meaning; compare the King James Version Susanna verse 8 and Sirach 28:10 the King James Version (the Revised Version (British and American) "inflame").


INFLAMMATION

in-fla-ma'-shun (dalleqeth; rhigos): Only in Dt 28:22, was considered by Jewish writers as "burning fever," by Septuagint as a form of ague. Both this and typhoid fever are now, and probably were, among the commonest of the diseases of Palestine. See FEVER . In Lev 13:28 the King James Version has "inflammation" as the rendering of tsarebheth, which Septuagint reads charakter, and for which the proper English equivalent is "scar," as in the Revised Version (British and American).


INFLUENCES

in'-floo-ens-iz (ma`adhannoth): This word occurs only in Job 38:31 the King James Version, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?" the Revised Version (British and American) "the cluster of the Pleiades," margin "or chain, or sweet influences"; Delitzsch, Dillmann and others render "fetters," that which binds the group together; "influences," if correct, would refer to the seasons, which were believed to be regulated, so far, by the PLEIADES (which see). In The Wisdom of Solomon 7:25, it is said of Wisdom that she is "a pure influence (aporrhoia, the Revised Version (British and American) "effluence") flowing from the glory of the Almighty."

W. L. Walker


INGATHERING, FEASTS OF

in'-gath-er-ing.

See FEASTS AND FASTS ;BOOTH .


INHABIT; INHABITANT

in-hab'-it, in-hab'-it-ant (yashabh, "to sit," "remain, "dwell," "inhabit" shakhen, "to settle down" "tabernacle," "dwell"; katoikeo, "to settle," "dwell"): See DWELL . The verb "to inhabit," now used only transitively, had once an intransitive meaning as well. Compare Cowper, Olney Hymns,XIV ,

"Who built it, who inhabits there?"

So in 1 Ch 5:9 the King James Version, "And eastward he inhabited unto the entering in of the wilderness" (but the Revised Version (British and American) "dwelt"). We have the obsolete inhabiters for "inhabitants" in Rev 8:13 the King James Version (but the Revised Version (British and American) "them that dwell") and Rev 12:12 the King James Version (but omitted in the Revised Version (British and American)). The rare inhabitress (feminine) is found only in Jer 10:17 margin; "the church called the inhabitress of the gardens" (Bishop Richardson).

D. Miall Edwards


INHERITANCE

in-her'-i-tans (nahalah, "something inherited," "occupancy," "heirloom," "estate," "portion"): The word is used in its widest application in the Old Testament Scriptures, referring not only to an estate received by a child from its parents, but also to the land received by the children of Israel as a gift from Yahweh. And in the figurative and poetical sense, the expression is applied to the kingdom of God as represented in the consecrated lives of His followers. In a similar sense, the Psalmist is represented as speaking of the Lord as the portion of his inheritance. In addition to the above word, the King James Version translations as inheritance, morashah, "a possession," "heritage" (Dt 33:4; Ezek 33:24); yerushshah, "something occupied," "a patrimony," "possession" (Jdg 21:17); cheleq, "smoothness," "allotment" (Ps 16:5); kleronomeo, "to inherit" (Mt 5:5, etc.); kleronomos, "heir" (Mt 21:38, etc.); kleronomia, "heirship," "patrimony, "possession"; or kleros, "an acquisition" "portion," "heritage," from kleroo, "to assign," "to allot," "to obtain an inheritance" (Mt 21:38; Lk 12:13; Acts 7:5; 20:32; 26:18; Gal 3:18; Eph 1:11,14,18; 5:5; Col 1:12; 3:24; Heb 1:4; 9:15; 11:8; 1 Pet 1:4).

The Pentateuch distinguishes clearly between real and personal property, the fundamental idea regarding the former being the thought that the land is God's, given by Him to His children, the people of Israel, and hence, cannot be alienated (Lev 25:23,28). In order that there might not be any respecter of persons in the division, the lot was to determine the specific piece to be owned by each family head (Nu 26:52-56; 33:54). In case, through necessity of circumstances, a homestead was sold, the title could pass only temporarily; for in the year of Jubilee every homestead must again return to the original owner or heir (Lev 25:25-34). Real estate given to the priesthood must be appraised, and could be redeemed by the payment of the appraised valuation, thus preventing the transfer of real property even in this case (Lev 27:14-25). Inheritance was controlled by the following regulations: (1) The firstborn son inherited a double portion of all the father's possession (Dt 21:15-17); (2) the daughters were entitled to an inheritance, provided there were no sons in the family (Nu 27:8); (3) in case there were no direct heirs, the brothers or more distant kinsmen were recognized (27:9-11); in no case should an estate pass from one tribe to another. The above points were made the subject of statutory law at the instance of the daughters of Zelophehad, the entire case being clearly set forth in Nu 27; 36.

Frank E. Hirsch


INIQUITY

in-ik'-wi-ti (`awon; anomia): In the Old Testament of the 11 words translated "iniquity," by far the most common and important is `awon (about 215 times). Etymologically, it is customary to explain it as meaning literally "crookedness," "perverseness," i.e. evil regarded as that which is not straight or upright, moral distortion (from `iwwah, "to bend," "make crooked," "pervert"). Driver, however (following Lagarde), maintains that two roots, distinct in Arabic, have been confused in Hebrew, one = "to bend," "pervert" (as above), and the other = "to err," "go astray"; that `awon is derived from the latter, and consequently expresses the idea of error, deviation from the right path, rather than that of perversion (Driver, Notes on Sam, 135 note) Whichever etymology is adopted, in actual usage it has three meanings which almost imperceptibly pass into each other: (1) iniquity, (2) guilt of iniquity, (3) punishment of iniquity. Primarily, it denotes "not an action, but the character of an action" (Oehler), and is so distinguished from "sin" (chaTTa'th). Hence, we have the expression "the iniquity of my sin" (Ps 32:5). Thus the meaning glides into that of "guilt," which might often take the place of "iniquity" as the translation of `awon (Gen 15:16; Ex 34:7; Jer 2:22, etc.). From "guilt" it again passes into the meaning of "punishment of guilt," just as Latin piaculum may denote both guilt and its punishment. The transition is all the easier in Hebrew because of the Hebrew sense of the intimate relation of sin and suffering, e.g. Gen 4:13, "My punishment is greater than I can bear"; which is obviously to be preferred to King James Version margin, the Revised Version, margin "Mine iniquity is greater than can be forgiven," for Cain is not so much expressing sorrow for his sin, as complaining of the severity of his punishment; compare 2 Ki 7:9 (the Revised Version (British and American) "punishment," the Revised Version margin "iniquity"); Isa 5:18 (where for "iniquity" we might have "punishment of iniquity," as in Lev 26:41,43, etc.); Isa 40:2 ("iniquity," the Revised Version margin "punishment"). The phrase "bear iniquity" is a standing expression for bearing its consequences, i.e. its penalty; generally of the sinner bearing the results of his own iniquity (Lev 17:16; 20:17,19; Nu 14:34; Ezek 44:10, etc.), but sometimes of one bearing the iniquity of another vicariously, and so taking it away (e.g. Ezek 4:4 f; 18:19 f). Of special interest in the latter sense are the sufferings of the Servant of Yahweh, who shall "bear the iniquities" of the people (Isa 53:11; compare 53:6).

Other words frequently translated "iniquity" are: 'awen, literally, "worthlessness," "vanity," hence, "naughtiness," "mischief" (47 times in the King James Version, especially in the phrase "workers of iniquity," Job 4:8; Ps 5:5; 6:8; Prov 10:29, etc.); `awel and `awlah, literally, "perverseness" (Dt 32:4; Job 6:29 the King James Version, etc.).

In the New Testament "iniquity" stands for anomia = properly, "the condition of one without law," "lawlessness" (so translated in 1 Jn 3:4, elsewhere "iniquity," e.g. Mt 7:23), a word which frequently stood for `awon in the Septuagint; and adikia, literally, "unrighteousness" (e.g. Lk 13:27).

D. Miall Edwards


INJOIN

in-join'.

See ENJOIN .


INJURIOUS

in-joo'-ri-us, in-ju'-ri-us (hubristes, "insolent"): In former usage, the word was strongly expressive of insult as well as hurtfulness. So in 1 Tim 1:13. In Rom 1:30 the same adjective is translated "insolent" (the King James Version "despiteful").


INJURY

in'-ju-ri, in'-joo-ri.

See CRIMES .


INK

ink (deyo, from root meaning "slowly flowing," BDB, 188; melan, "black"): Any fluid substance used with pen or brush to form written characters. In this sense ink is mentioned once in the Hebrew Bible (Jer 36:2) and 3 times in the Greek New Testament (2 Cor 3:3; 2 Jn 1:12; 3 Jn 1:13), and it is implied in all references to writing on papyrus or on leather. The inference from the "blotting out" of Ex 32:33 and Nu 5:23 that the Hebrew ink was a lamp-black and gum, or some other dry ink, is confirmed by the general usage of antiquity, by the later Jewish prejudice against other inks (OTJC, 71 note) and by a Jewish receipt referring to ink-tablets (Drach, "Notice sur l'encre des Hebreux," Ann. philos. chret., 42, 45, 353). The question is, however, now being put on a wholly new basis by the study of the Elephantine Jewish documents (Meyer, Papyrusfund2, 1912, 15, 21), and above all of the Harvard Ostraca from Samaria which give actual specimens of the ink in Palestine in the time of Ahab (Harvard Theological Review, Jan. 1911, 136-43). It is likely, however, that during the long period of Bible history various inks were used. The official copy of the law in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus was, according to Josephus (Ant., XII, ii, 11), written in gold, and the vermilion and red paints and dyes mentioned in Jer 22:14; Ezek 23:14, and The Wisdom of Solomon 13:14 (milto kai phukei) were probably used also for writing books or coloring incised inscriptions. See literature underWRITING ; especially Krauss, Talmud, Arch. 3, 148-53; Gardthausen, Greek Palestine, 1911, I, 202-17, and his bibliographical references passim.

E. C. Richardson


INK-HORN

ink'-horn (keceth = keseth, BDB, 903): This term "inkhorn" occurs 3 times in Ezek 9 (9:2,3,11), in the phrase "writer's inkhorn upon his loins" (or "by his side"). The word is more exactly "implement case," or "writing-case" (calamarium atramentarium, theca calamaria, theca libraria, graphiaria). This may have been the Egyptian palette (Budge, Mummy, 350-52) seen so often in the monuments of all periods, or the later form of pen-case with ink-well attached, which is a modified form adapted for ink carried in fluid form. The Egyptian palette was carried characteristically over the shoulder or under the arm, neither of which methods is strictly "upon the loins." The manner of carrying, therefore, was doubtless in the girdle, as in modern oriental usage (Benzinger, Hebrew Archaeol., 185). A good example of the pen-case and inkwell writing-case (given also in Garucci, Daremberg-Saglio, Gardthausen, etc.) is given from the original in Birt, Die Buchrolle in der Kunst, 220, and is reproduced (a) in this article, together with (b) an Egyptian palette. Whether the form of Ezekiel's case approached the palette or the ink-well type probably depends on the question of whether dry ink or fluid ink was used in Ezekiel's time (see INK ). Compare Hieronymus at the place, and for literature, seeWRITING , and especially Gardthausen, Greek Palestine, 1911, I, 193-94.

E. C. Richardson


INN

(malon; pandocheion, kataluma):

1. Earliest Night Resting-Places:

The Hebrew word malon means literally, a "night resting-place," and might be applied to any spot where caravans (Gen 42:27; 43:21 the King James Version), individuals (Ex 4:24; Jer 9:2), or even armies (Josh 4:3,8; 2 Ki 19:23; Isa 10:29) encamped for the night. In the slightly altered form melunah, the same word is used of a nightwatchman's lodge in a garden (Isa 1:8; 24:20, the King James Version "cottage"). The word in itself does not imply the presence of any building, and in the case of caravans and travelers was doubtless originally, as very often at the present day, only a convenient level bit of ground near some spring, where baggage might be unloaded, animals watered and tethered, and men rest on the bare ground. Nothing in the Old Testament suggests the occupancy of a house in such cases. The nearest approach to such an idea occurs in Jer 41:17 margin, where geruth kimham is translated "the lodging-place of Chimham," but the text is very doubtful and probably refers rather to sheepfolds. We cannot say when buildings were first used, but the need of shelter for caravans traveling in winter, and of protection in dangerous times and districts, would lead to their introduction at an early period in the history of trade.

2. Public Inns:

It is noteworthy that all the indisputable designations of "inn" come in with the Greek period. Josephus (Ant., XV, v, 1; BJ, I, xxi, 7) speaks of "Public inns" under the name of katagogal, while in the Aramaic Jewish writings we meet with 'ushpiza', from Latin hospitium, and 'akhcanya' from the Greek xenia; the New Testament designation pandocheion has passed into the Aramaic pundheqa' and the Arabic funduq. All these are used of public inns, and they all correspond to the modern "khan" or "caravanserai." These are to be found on the great trade routes all over the East. In their most elaborate form they have almost the strength of a fortress. They consist of a great quadrangle into which admission is gained through a broad, strong gateway. The quadrangle is enclosed on all sides by a 2-story building, the windows in the case of the lower story opening only to the interior. The upper story is reached by stairways, and has a gangway all around, giving access to the practically bare rooms which are at the disposal of travelers.

3. Their Evil Name:

There is usually a well of good water in the center of the quadrangle, and travelers as a rule bring their own food and often that of their animals (Jdg 19:19) with them. There are no fixed payments, and on departure, the arranging of haqq el-khan generally means a disagreeable dispute, as the innkeepers are invariably untruthful, dishonest and oppressive. They have ever been regarded as of infamous character. The Roman laws in many places recognize this. In Mishna, Yebhamoth, xvi. 7 the word of an innkeeper was doubted, and Mishna, `Abbodhah Zarah, ii.4 places them in the lowest scale of degradation. The New Testament is quite clear in speaking of "Rahab the harlot" (Heb 11:31; Jas 2:25). The Targum designates her an "innkeeper," while Rashi translates zonah as "a seller of kinds of food," a meaning the word will bear. Chimchi, however, accepts both meanings. This evil repute of public inns, together with the Semitic spirit of hospitality, led the Jews and the early Christians to prefer to recommend the keeping of open house for the entertainment of strangers. In the Jewish Morning Prayers, even in our day, such action is linked with great promises, and the New Testament repeatedly (Heb 13:2; 1 Pet 4:9; 3 Jn 1:5) commends hospitality. It is remarkable that both the Talmud (Shab 127a) and the New Testament (Heb 13:2) quote the same passage (Gen 18:3) in recommending it.

The best-known khans in Palestine are Khan Jubb-Yusuf, North of the Lake of Galilee, Khan et-Tujjar, under the shadow of Tabor, Khan el-Lubban (compare Jdg 21:19), and Khan Chadrur, midway between Jerusalem and Jericho. This last certainly occupies the site of the inn referred to in Lk 10:34, and it is not without interest that we read in Mishna, Yebhamoth, xvi.7, of another sick man being left at that same inn. See illustration, p. 64.

4. Guest Chambers:

The Greek word kataluma, though implying a "loosing" for the night, seems rather to be connected with the idea of hospitality in a private house than in a public inn. Luke with his usual care distinguishes between this and pandocheion, and his use of the verb kataluo (Lk 9:12; 19:7) makes his meaning clear. In the Septuagint, indeed, malon is sometimes translated kataluma, and it appears in 1 Sam 9:22 for lishkah, the King James Version "parlour." It is the word used of the "upper room" where the Last Supper was held (Mk 14:14; Lk 22:11, "guest-chamber"), and of the place of reception in Bethlehem where Joseph and Mary failed to find quarters (Lk 2:7). It thus corresponds to the spare or upper room in a private house or in a village, i.e. to the manzil adjoining the house of the sheikh, where travelers received hospitality and where no payment was expected, except a trifle to the caretaker. In Jerusalem such payments were made by leaving behind the earthenware vessels that had been used, and the skins of the animals that had been slaughtered (Yoma' 12a).

5. Birth of Christ:

Judging from the word used, and the conditions implied, we are led to believe that Joseph and Mary had at first expected reception in the upper room or manzil at the house of the sheikh of Bethlehem, probably a friend and member of the house of David; that in this they were disappointed, and had to content themselves with the next best, the elevated platform alongside the interior of the stable, and on which those having the care of the animals generally slept. It being now the season when they were in the fields (Lk 2:8), the stable would be empty and clean. There then the Lord Jesus was born and laid in the safest and most convenient place, the nearest empty manger alongside of this elevated platform. Humble though the circumstances were, the family were preserved from all the annoyance and evil associations of a public khan, and all the demands of delicacy and privacy were duly met.

W. M. Christie


INNER MAN

See INWARD MAN .


INNOCENCE; INNOCENCY; INNOCENT

in'-o-sens, in'-o-sen-si, in'-o-sent (zakhu, niqqayon, chinnam, chaph, naqi; athoos): the King James Version and the American Standard Revised Version have innocency in Gen 20:5; Ps 26:6; 73:13; Dan 6:22; Hos 8:5. In Daniel the Hebrew is zakhu, and the innocence expressed is the absence of the guilt of disloyalty to God. In all the other places the Hebrew is niqqayon, and the innocence expressed is the absence of pollution, Hosea having reference to the pollution of idolatry, and the other passages presenting the cleansing under the figure of washing hands. the King James Version has innocent not fewer than 40 times. In one place (1 Ki 2:31) the Hebrew is chinnam, meaning "undeserved," or "without cause," and, accordingly, the American Standard Revised Version, instead of "innocent blood .... shed," has "blood .... shed without cause." In another place (Job 33:9) the Hebrew is chaph, meaning "scraped," or "polished," therefore "clean," and refers to moral purity. In all the other places the Hebrew is naqi, or its cognates, and the idea is doubtless the absence of pollution. In more than half the passages "innocent" is connected with blood, as "blood of the innocent," or simply "innocent blood." In some places there is the idea of the Divine acquittal, or forgiveness, as in Job 9:28: "I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent" (compare Job 10:14, where the same Hebrew word is used). The New Testament has "innocent" twice in connection with blood--"innocent blood," and "innocent of the blood" (Mt 27:4,24).

E. J. Forrester


INNOCENTS, MASSACRE OF THE

in'-o-sents, mas'-a-ker,

I. MEANING AND HISTORY OF THE TERM

II. ANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MOTIVE

1. Focus of Narrative--Residence at Nazareth

2. Corollaries from Above Facts

3. Marks of Historicity

I. Meaning and History of the Term.

The conventional, ecclesiastical name given to the slaughter by HEROD, I (which see) of children two years old and under in Bethlehem and its environs at the time of the birth of Christ (Mt 2:16). The accepted title for this event may be traced through Augustine to Cyprian.

Irenaeus (died 202 AD) calls these children "martyrs," and in a very beautiful passage interprets the tragedy which ended their brief lives as a gracious and tender "sending before" into His kingdom by the Lord Himself.

Cyprian (died 258 AD) says: "That it might be manifest that they who are slain for Christ's sake are innocent, innocent infancy was put to death for his name's sake" (Ep. lv. 6).

Augustine (born 354 AD), following Cyprian, speaks of the children, formally, as "the Innocents" (Commentary on Ps 43:5).

The ecclesiastical treatment of the incident is remarkable because of the exaggeration which was indulged in as to the extent of the massacre and the number of victims. At an early date the Greek church canonized 14,000, and afterward, by a curious misinterpretation of Rev 14:1,3, the number was increased to 144,000.

According to Milman the liturgy of the Church of England retains a reminiscence of this ancient error in the use of Rev 14 on Holy Innocents' Day (see History of Christianity, I, 107, note e). This exaggeration, of which there is no hint in the New Testament, is worthy of note because the most serious general argument against the historicity of the narrative is drawn from the silence of Josephus. As in all probability there could not have been more than twenty children involved (compare Farrar, Life of Christ, I, 45, note), the incident could not have bulked very largely in the series of horrors perpetrated or planned by Herod in the last months of his life (see Farrar, The Herods, 144 f) .

II. Analysis of Narrative with Special Reference to Motive.

In estimating the value of such a narrative from the viewpoint of historicity, the first and most important step is to gauge the motive. Why was the story told? This question is not always easy to answer, but in the present instance there is a very simple and effective test at hand.

1. Focus of Narrative--Residence at Nazareth:

In Matthew's infancy section (Mt 1 and 2) there are five quotations from the Old Testament which are set into the narrative of events. These five quotations represent the cardinal and outstanding points of interest. The quotations are placed thus: (1) at the Virgin Birth (Mt 1:23); (2) at the birth at Bethlehem (Mt 2:6); (3) at the visit to Egypt (Mt 2:15); (4) at the murder of the children (Mt 2:18); (5) at the Nazareth residence (Mt 2:23). It will be noticed at once as peculiar and significant that no quotation is attached to the visit of the Magi. This omission is the more noteworthy because in Nu 24:7; Ps 72:15; Isa 60:6, and numerous references to the ingathering of the Gentiles there are such beautiful and appropriate passages to link with the visit of the strangers from the far East. This peculiar omission, on the part of a writer so deeply interested in prophecy and its fulfillment and so keen to seize upon appropriate and suggestive harmonies, in a section constructed with a view to such harmonies, can be explained only on the ground that the visit of the Magi did not, in the writer's view of events, occupy a critical point of especial interest. Their visit is told, not for its own sake, but because of its connection with the murder of the children and the journey to Egypt. The murder of the children is of interest because it discloses the character of Herod and the perils surrounding the newborn Messiah. It also explains the visit to Egypt and the subsequent residence at Nazareth. The latter is evidently the objective point, because it is given a place by itself and marked by a quotation. Moreover, the one evidence of overstrain in the narrative is in the ambiguous and obscure statement by which the Old Testament is brought into relationship with the Nazareth residence. The center of interest in the entire section which is concerned with Herod and the Magi is the Nazareth residence. The story is told for the express purpose of explaining why the heir of David, who was born at Bethlehem, lived at Nazareth.

This brings the narrative of Matthew into striking relationship with that of Luke. The latter's concern is to show how it was that the Messiah who lived at Nazareth was born at Bethlehem. We have here one of the undesigned unities which bind together these two narratives which are seemingly so divergent. That Matthew says nothing about a previous residence at Nazareth and that Luke says nothing about a forced return thither may be explained, in accordance with the balance of probabilities, on the ground, either that each evangelist was ignorant of the fact omitted by himself, or that in his condensed and rapid statement he did not see fit to mention it. In any case the harmony immeasurably outweighs the discrepancy.

2. Corollaries from Above Facts:

The fact that the focus of the entire narrative lies in the residence of Jesus at Nazareth effectually disposes of a number of current hypotheses as to its origin.

(1) The idea that it is merely legend told for the purpose of literary embellishment. The dovetailing of what would be the main item into the rest of the narrative and its subordination to secondary features cannot be explained on this hypothesis. The absence of adornment by available passages from the Old Testament alone is conclusive on this point (see Allen, "Matthew,"ICC , 14, 15).

(2) The idea that the story is told for the purpose of illustrating the scope of the Messiah's influence beyond Israel. Here, again, the subordinate position assigned to the story of the Magi together with the absence of Old Testament material is conclusive. Moreover, the history of the Magi is abruptly dropped with the statement of their return home. Interest in them flags as soon as their brief connection with the movement of the history through Herod ceases. And the intensely Hebraic character of Matthew's infancy section as a whole is incidental evidence pointing in the same direction (compare remarks of the writer, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, 70 f).

(3) The idea that the story is told to emphasize the wonder-element in connection with the birth of Christ. The facts contradict this. In addition to the primary consideration, the subordinate position, there are others of great value. That the Magi were providentially guided to the feet of the Messiah is evidently the firm conviction of the narrator. The striking feature of the story is that with this belief in his mind he keeps so strictly within the limits of the natural order. In Mt 2:9 and 12 only is there apparent exception. Of these the statement in 2:9 is the only one peculiar to this part of the narrative. Two things are to be remembered concerning it: It is clear that the verse cannot be interpreted apart from a clear understanding of the whole astronomical occurrence of which it forms a part.

It is also evident that Mt 2:9 must not be interpreted apart from the context. From the viewpoint of a wonder-tale the writer makes a fatal blunder at the most critical point of his story. The popular notion that the Magi were miraculously led to the Messiah finds no support in the text. The Magi did not come to Bethlehem, but to Jerusalem, asking: "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" Mt 2:9 comes after this statement and after the conclave called by Herod in which Bethlehem was specified. In view of all this it seems clear that the Magi were led, not miraculously, but in accordance with the genius of their own system, and that the Providential element lay in the striking coincidence of their visit and the birth of Jesus. The interest of the writer was not in the wonder-element, else, infallibly, he would have sharpened its outlines and expurgated all ambiguity as to the nature of the occurrence.

We may now glance at the positive evidence for the historicity of the event.

3. Marks of Historicity:

(1) The centering of the narrative upon the residence of Jesus at Nazareth. This not only brings Luke's Gospel in support of the center, but groups the story around a point of known interest to the first generation of believers. It is interesting to note that the residence in Egypt has independent backing of a sort. There are in existence two stories, one traced by Origen through Jews of his own day to earlier times, and the other in the Talmud, which connect Jesus with Egypt and attempt to account for His miracles by reference to Egyptian magic (see Plummer, "Matthew," Ex. Comm., 17,18).

(2) The fact that the story of the Magi is told so objectively and with such personal detachment. Both Jews and early Christians had strong views both as to astrology and magic in general (see Plummer, op. cit., 15), but the author of this Gospel tells the story without emphasis and without comment and from the viewpoint of the Magi. His interest is purely historical and matter-of-fact.

(3) The portrait of Herod the Great. So far as Herod is concerned the incident is usually discussed with exclusive reference to the savagery involved. By many it is affirmed that we have here a hostile and unfair portrait. This contention could hardly be sustained even if the question turned entirely upon the point of savagery. But there is far more than savagery in the incident. (a) In the first place there is this undeniable element of inherent probability in the story. Practically all of Herod's murders, including those of his beloved wife and his sons, were perpetrated under the sway of one emotion and in obedience to a single motive. They were in practically every instance for the purpose of consolidating or perpetuating his power. He nearly destroyed his own immediate family in the half-mad jealousy that on occasion drove him to the very limits of ferocity, simply because they were accused of plotting against him. The accusations were largely false, but the suspicion doomed those accused. The murder of the Innocents was another crime of the same sort. The old king was obsessed by the fear of a claimant to his petty throne; the Messianic hope of the Jews was a perpetual secret torment, and the murder of the children, in the attempt to reach the child whose advent threatened him, was at once so original in method and so characteristic in purpose as to give an inimitable veri-similitude to the whole narrative. There are also other traits of truth. (b) Herod's prompt discovery of the visit of the Magi and their questions is in harmony with what we know of the old ruler's watchfulness and his elaborate system of espionage. (c) Characteristic also is the subtlety with which he deals with the whole situation. How striking and vivid, with all its rugged simplicity, is the story of the king's pretended interest in the quest of the strangers, the solemn conclave of Jewish leaders with himself in the role of earnest inquirer, his urgent request for information that he may worship also, followed by his swift anger (note that ethumothe, "was wroth," verse 16, is not used elsewhere in the New Testament) at being deceived, and the blind but terrible stroke of his questing vengeance.

All these items are so true to the man, to the atmosphere which always surrounded him, and to the historic situation, that we are forced to conclude, either that we have veracious history more or less directly received from one who was an observer of the events described, or the work of an incomparably clever romancer.

Louis Matthews Sweet


INORDINATE

in-or'-di-nat ("ill-regulated," hence, "immoderate," "excessive"; Latin in, "not," ordinatus, "set in order"): Only twice in the King James Version. In each case there is no corresponding adjective in the original, but the word was inserted by the translators as being implied in the noun. It disappears in Revised Version: Ezek 23:11, "in her inordinate love" (the Revised Version (British and American) "in her doting"); aghabhah, "lust"; Col 3:5 "inordinate affection" (the Revised Version (British and American) "passion"); pathos, a word which in classical Greek may have either a good or a bad sense (any affection or emotion of the mind), but in the New Testament is used only in a bad sense (passion).

D. Miall Edwards


INQUIRE

in-kwir' (sha'al, "to ask," "desire"; zeteo, "to seek"); A form sometimes employed with reference to the practice of divination, as where Saul "inquires of" (or "consults") the witch of Endor as to the issue of the coming battle (1 Sam 28:6,7) (see DIVINATION ).

In Job 10:6, "to inquire (baqash) after iniquity" signifies to bring to light and punish for it, and Job asks distractedly if God's time is so short that He is in a hurry to find him guilty and to punish him as if He had only a man's few days to live.

"To inquire of Yahweh" denotes the consultation of oracle, priest, prophet or Yahweh Himself, as to a certain course of action or as to necessary supplies. (Jdg 20:27 the King James Version, "to ask"; 1 Ki 22:5; 1 Sam 9:9 (darash); 10:22 the King James Version; 2 Sam 2:1; 5:19,23; Ezek 36:37).

"To inquire (baqar) in his temple" (palace) means to find out all that constant fellowship or unbroken intercourse with God can teach (Ps 27:4).

Prov 20:25 warns against rashness in making a vow and afterward considering (baqar, "to make inquiry") as to whether it can be fulfilled or how it may be eluded.

In the King James Version, the translation of several Greek words: diaginosko, "to know thoroughly" (Acts 23:15); epizeteo, "to seek after" (Acts 19:39); suzeteo, "to seek together" (Lk 22:23); exetazo, "to search out" (Mt 10:11).

M. O. Evans


INQUISITION

in-kwi-zish'-un (darash, "to follow," "diligently inquire," "question," "search" (Dt 19:18; Ps 9:12), baqash, "to search out," "to strive after," "inquire" (Est 2:23)): The term refers, as indicated by these passages, first of all to a careful and diligent inquiry necessary to ascertain the truth from witnesses in a court, but may also refer to a careful examination into circumstances or conditions without official authority.


INSCRIPTION

in-skrip'-shun (verb epigrapho, "to write upon," "inscribe"): The word occurs once in English Versions of the Bible in Acts 17:23 of the altar at Athens with the inscription "To an Unknown God." On inscriptions in archaeology, see ARCHAEOLOGY ;ASSYRIA ;BABYLONIA , etc.


INSECTS

in'-sekts: In English Versions of the Bible, including the marginal notes, we find at least 23 names of insects or words referring to them: ant, bald locust, bee, beetle, cankerworm, caterpillar, creeping thing, cricket, crimson, flea, fly, gnat, grasshopper, honey, hornet, locust, louse, (lice), moth, palmer-worm, sandfly, scarlet-worm, silk-worm. These can be referred to about 12 insects, which, arranged systematically, are: Hymenoptera, ant, bee, hornet; Lepidoptera, clothes-moth, silk-worm; Siphonaptera, flea; Diptera, fly; Rhynchota, louse, scarletworm; Orthoptera, several kinds of grasshoppers and locusts.

The word "worm" refers not only to the scarletworm, but to various larvae of Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Diptera. "Creeping things" refers indefinitely to insects, reptiles, and beasts. In the list of 23 names given above honey and bee refer to one insect, as do crimson and scarlet. Sandfly has no place if "lice" be retained in Ex 8:16 ff. Bald locust, beetle, canker-worm, cricket, and palmerworm probably all denote various kinds of grasshoppers and locusts. When the translators of English Versions of the Bible had to do with two or more Hebrew words for which there was only one well-recognized English equivalent, they seem to have been content with that alone, if the two Hebrew words occurred in different passages; e.g. zebhubh, "fly" (Eccl 10:1; Isa 7:18), and `arobh, "fly" (Ex 8:21 ff). On the other hand, they were put to it to find equivalents for the insect names in Lev 11:22; Joel 1:4, and elsewhere. For cale'am (Lev 11:22) they evidently coined "bald locust," following a statement of the Talmud that it had a smooth head. For gazam and yeleq they imported "palmer-worm" and "canker-worm," two old English names of caterpillars, using "caterpillar" for chasil. The King James Version "beetle" for chargol is absolutely inappropriate, and the Revised Version (British and American) "cricket," while less objectionable, is probably also incorrect. The English language seems to lack appropriate names for different kinds of grasshoppers and locusts, and it is difficult to suggest any names to take the places of those against which these criticisms are directed. See under the names of the respective insects. See also SCORPION andSPIDER , which are not included here because they are not strictly insects.

Alfred Ely Day


INSPIRATION, 1-7

in-spi-ra'-shun:

1. Meaning of Terms

2. Occurrences in the Bible

3. Consideration of Important Passages

(1) 2 Timothy 3:16

(2) 2 Peter 1:19-21

(3) John 10:34 f

4. Christ's Declaration That Scripture Must Be Fulfilled

5. His Testimony That God Is Author of Scripture

6. Similar Testimony of His Immediate Followers

7. Their Identification of God and Scripture

8. The "Oracles of God"

9. The Human Element in Scripture

10. Activities of God in Giving Scripture

11. General Problem of Origin: God's Part

12. How Human Qualities Affected Scripture. Providential Preparation

13. "Inspiration" More than Mere "Providence"

14. Witness of New Testament Writers to Divine Operation

15. "Inspiration" and "Revelation"

16. Scriptures a Divine-Human Book?

17. Scripture of the New Testament Writers Was the Old Testament

18. Inclusion of the New Testament

LITERATURE

1. Meaning of Terms:

The word "inspire" and its derivatives seem to have come into Middle English from the French, and have been employed from the first (early in the 14th century) in a considerable number of significations, physical and metaphorical, secular and religious. The derivatives have been multiplied and their applications extended during the procession of the years, until they have acquired a very wide and varied use. Underlying all their use, however, is the constant implication of an influence from without, producing in its object movements and effects beyond its native, or at least its ordinary powers. The noun "inspiration," although already in use in the 14th century, seems not to occur in any but a theological sense until late in the 16th century. The specifically theological sense of all these terms is governed, of course, by their usage in Latin theology; and this rests ultimately on their employment in the Latin Bible. In the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) Latin Bible the verb inspiro (Gen 2:7; The Wisdom of Solomon 15:11; Ecclesiasticus 4:12; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21) and the noun inspiratio (2 Sam 22:16; Job 32:8; Ps 18:15; Acts 17:25) both occur 4 or 5 times in somewhat diverse applications. In the development of a theological nomenclature, however, they have acquired (along with other less frequent applications) a technical sense with reference to the Biblical writers or the Biblical books. The Biblical books are called inspired as the Divinely determined products of inspired men; the Biblical writers are called inspired as breathed into by the Holy Spirit, so that the product of their activities transcends human powers and becomes Divinely authoritative. Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given Divine trustworthiness.

2. Occurrences in the Bible:

Meanwhile, for English-speaking men, these terms have virtually ceased to be Biblical terms. They naturally passed from the Latin Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) into the English versions made from it (most fully into the Rheims-Douay: Job 32:8; The Wisdom of Solomon 15:11; Ecclesiasticus 4:12; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21). But in the development of the English Bible they have found ever-decreasing place. In the English Versions of the Bible of the Apocrypha (both the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American)) "inspired" is retained in The Wisdom of Solomon 15:11; but in the canonical books the nominal form alone occurs in the King James Version and that only twice: Job 32:8, "But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding"; and 2 Tim 3:16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." the Revised Version (British and American) removes the former of these instances, substituting "breath" for "inspiration"; and alters the latter so as to read: "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness," with a marginal alternative in the form of, "Every scripture is inspired of God and profitable," etc. The word "inspiration" thus disappears from the English Bible, and the word "inspired" is left in it only once, and then, let it be added, by a distinct and even misleading mistranslation.

For the Greek word in this passage--theopneustos--very distinctly does not mean "inspired of God." This phrase is rather the rendering of the Latin, divinitus inspirata, restored from the Wycliff ("Al Scripture of God ynspyrid is ....") and Rhemish ("All Scripture inspired of God is ....") versions of the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) The Greek word does not even mean, as the King James Version translates it, "given by inspiration of God," although that rendering (inherited from, Tyndale: "All Scripture given by inspiration of God is ...." and its successors; compare Geneva: "The whole Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is ....") has at least to say for itself that it is a somewhat clumsy, perhaps, but not misleading, paraphrase of the Greek term in theological language of the day. The Greek term has, however, nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of a "spiring" or "spiration." What it says of Scripture is, not that it is "breathed into by God" or is the product of the Divine "inbreathing" into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, "God-breathed," the product of the creative breath of God. In a word, what is declared by this fundamental passage is simply that the Scriptures are a Divine product, without any indication of how God has operated in producing them. No term could have been chosen, however, which would have more emphatically asserted the Divine production of Scripture than that which is here employed. The "breath of God" is in Scripture just the symbol of His almighty power, the bearer of His creative word. "By the word of Yahweh," we read in the significant parallel of Ps 33:6 "were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." And it is particularly where the operations of God are energetic that this term (whether ruach, or neshamah) is employed to designate them--God's breath is the irresistible outflow of His power. When Paul declares, then, that "every scripture" or "all scripture" is the product of the Divine breath, "is God-breathed," he asserts with as much energy as he could employ that Scripture is the product of a specifically Divine operation.

3. Consideration of Important Passages:

(1) 2 Timothy 3:16:

In the passage in which Paul makes this energetic assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture he is engaged in explaining the greatness of the advantages which Timothy had enjoyed for learning the saving truth of God. He had had good teachers; and from his very infancy he had been, by his knowledge of the Scriptures, made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The expression, "sacred writings," here employed (1 Tim 3:15), is a technical one, not found elsewhere in the New Testament, it is true, but occurring currently in Philo and Josephus to designate that body of authoritative books which constituted the Jewish "Law." It appears here anarthrously because it is set in contrast with the oral teaching which Timothy had enjoyed, as something still better: he had not only had good instructors, but also always "an open Bible," as we should say, in his hand. To enhance yet further the great advantage of the possession of these Sacred Scriptures the apostle adds now a sentence throwing their nature strongly up to view. They are of Divine origin and therefore of the highest value for all holy purposes.

There is room for some difference of opinion as to the exact construction of this declaration. Shall we render "Every Scripture" or "All Scripture"? Shall we render "Every (or all) Scripture is God-breathed and (therefore) profitable," or "Every (or all) Scripture, being God-breathed, is as well profitable"? No doubt both questions are interesting, but for the main matter now engaging our attention they are both indifferent. Whether Paul, looking back at the Sacred Scriptures he had just mentioned, makes the assertion he is about to add, of them distributively, of all their parts, or collectively, of their entire mass, is of no moment: to say that every part of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed and to say that the whole of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed, is, for the main matter, all one. Nor is the difference great between saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, God-breathed and therefore profitable, and saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, because God-breathed as well profitable. In both cases these Sacred Scriptures are declared to owe their value to their Divine origin; and in both cases this their Divine origin is energetically asserted of their entire fabric. On the whole, the preferable construction would seem to be, "Every Scripture, seeing that it is God-breathed, is as well profitable." In that case, what the apostle asserts is that the Sacred Scriptures, in their every several passage--for it is just "passage of Scripture" which "Scripture" in this distributive use of it signifies--is the product of the creative breath of God, and, because of this its Divine origination, is of supreme value for all holy purposes.

It is to be observed that the apostle does not stop here to tell us either what particular books enter into the collection which he calls Sacred Scriptures, or by what precise operations God has produced them. Neither of these subjects entered into the matter he had at the moment in hand. It was the value of the Scriptures, and the source of that value in their Divine origin, which he required at the moment to assert; and these things he asserts, leaving to other occasions any further facts concerning them which it might be well to emphasize. It is also to be observed that the apostle does not tell us here everything for which the Scriptures are made valuable by their Divine origination. He speaks simply to the point immediately in hand, and reminds Timothy of the value which these Scriptures, by virtue of their Divine origin, have for the "man of God." Their spiritual power, as God-breathed, is all that he had occasion here to advert to. Whatever other qualities may accrue to them from their Divine origin, he leaves to other occasions to speak of.

(2) 2 Peter 1:19-21:

What Paul tells us here about the Divine origin of the Scriptures is enforced and extended by a striking passage in 2 Pet (1:19-21). Peter is assuring his readers that what had been made known to them of "the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" did not rest on "cunningly devised fables." He offers them the testimony of eyewitnesses of Christ's glory. And then he intimates that they have better testimony than even that of eyewitnesses. "We have," says he, "the prophetic word" (English Versions of the Bible, unhappily, "the word of prophecy"): and this, he says, is "more sure," and therefore should certainly be heeded. He refers, of course, to the Scriptures. Of what other "prophetic word" could he, over against the testimony of the eyewitnesses of Christ's "excellent glory" (the King James Version) say that "we have" it, that is, it is in our hands? And he proceeds at once to speak of it plainly as "Scriptural prophecy." You do well, he says, to pay heed to the prophetic word, because we know this first, that "every prophecy of scripture ...." It admits of more question, however, whether by this phrase he means the whole of Scripture, designated according to its character, as prophetic, that is, of Divine origin; or only that portion of Scripture which we discriminate as particularly prophetic, the immediate revelations contained in Scripture. The former is the more likely view, inasmuch as the entirety of Scripture is elsewhere conceived and spoken of as prophetic. In that case, what Peter has to say of this "every prophecy of scripture"--the exact equivalent, it will be observed, in this case of Paul's "every scripture" (2 Tim 3:16)--applies to the whole of Scripture in all its parts. What he says of it is that it does not come "of private interpretation"; that is, it is not the result of human investigation into the nature of things, the product of its writers' own thinking. This is as much as to say it is of Divine gift. Accordingly, he proceeds at once to make this plain in a supporting clause which contains both the negative and the positive declaration: "For no prophecy ever came (margin: "was brought") by the will of man, but it was as borne by the Holy Spirit that men spoke from God." In this singularly precise and pregnant statement there are several things which require to be carefully observed. There is, first of all, the emphatic denial that prophecy--that is to say, on the hypothesis upon which we are working, Scripture--owes its origin to human initiative: "No prophecy ever was brought--`came' is the word used in the English Versions of the Bible text, with `was brought' in the Revised Version margin--by the will of man." Then, there is the equally emphatic assertion that its source lies in God: it was spoken by men, indeed, but the men who spoke it "spake from God." And a remarkable clause is here inserted, and thrown forward in the sentence that stress may fall on it, which tells us how it could be that men, in speaking, should speak not from themselves, but from God: it was "as borne"--it is the same word which was rendered "was brought" above, and might possibly be rendered "brought" here--"by the Holy Spirit" that they spoke. Speaking thus under the determining influence of the Holy Spirit, the things they spoke were not from themselves, but from God.

Here is as direct an assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture as that of 2 Tim 3:16. But there is more here than a simple assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture. We are advanced somewhat in our understanding of how God has produced the Scriptures. It was through the instrumentality of men who "spake from him." More specifically, it was through an operation of the Holy Ghost on these men which is described as "bearing" them. The term here used is a very specific one. It is not to be confounded with guiding, or directing, or controlling, or even-leading in the full sense of that word. It goes beyond all such terms, in assigning the effect produced specifically to the active agent. What is "borne" is taken up by the "bearer," and conveyed by the "bearer's" power, not its own, to the "bearer's" goal, not its own. The men who spoke from God are here declared, therefore, to have been taken up by the Holy Spirit and brought by His power to the goal of His choosing. The things which they spoke under this operation of the Spirit were therefore His things, not theirs. And that is the reason which is assigned why "the prophetic word" is so sure. Though spoken through the instrumentality of men, it is, by virtue of the fact that these men spoke "as borne by the Holy Spirit," an immediately Divine word. It will be observed that the proximate stress is laid here, not on the spiritual value of Scripture (though that, too, is seen in the background), but on the Divine trustworthiness of Scripture. Because this is the way every prophecy of Scripture "has been brought," it affords a more sure basis of confidence than even the testimony of human eyewitnesses. Of course, if we do not understand by "the prophetic word" here the entirety of Scripture described, according to its character, as revelation, but only that element in Scripture which we call specifically prophecy, then it is directly only of that element in Scripture that these great declarations are made. In any event, however, they are made of the prophetic element in Scripture as written, which was the only form in which the readers of this Epistle possessed it, and which is the thing specifically intimated in the phrase "every prophecy of scripture." These great declarations are made, therefore, at least of large tracts of Scripture; and if the entirety of Scripture is intended by the phrase "the prophetic word," they are made of the whole of Scripture.

(3) John 10:34 f:

How far the supreme trustworthiness of Scripture, thus asserted, extends may be conveyed to us by a passage in one of our Lord's discourses recorded by John (Jn 10:34-35). The Jews, offended by Jesus' "making himself God," were in the act to stone Him, when He defended Himself thus: "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified (margin "consecrated") and sent unto the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" It may be thought that this defense is inadequate. It certainly is incomplete: Jesus made Himself God (Jn 10:33) in a far higher sense than that in which "Ye are gods" was said of those "unto whom the word of God came": He had just declared in unmistakable terms, "I and the Father are one." But it was quite sufficient for the immediate end in view--to repel the technical charge of blasphemy based on His making Himself God: it is not blasphemy to call one God in any sense in which he may fitly receive that designation; and certainly if it is not blasphemy to call such men as those spoken of in the passage of Scripture adduced gods, because of their official functions, it cannot be blasphemy to call Him God whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world. The point for us to note, however, is merely that Jesus' defense takes the form of an appeal to Scripture; and it is important to observe how He makes this appeal. In the first place, He adduces the Scriptures as law: "Is it not written in your law?" He demands. The passage of Scripture which He adduces is not written in that portion of Scripture which was more specifically called "the Law," that is to say, the Pentateuch; nor in any portion of Scripture of formally legal contents. It is written in the Book of Pss; and in a particular psalm which is as far as possible from presenting the external characteristics of legal enactment (Ps 82:6). When Jesus adduces this passage, then, as written in the "law" of the Jews, He does it, not because it stands in this psalm, but because it is a part of Scripture at large. In other words, He here ascribes legal authority to the entirety of Scripture, in accordance with a conception common enough among the Jews (compare Jn 12:34), and finding expression in the New Testament occasionally, both on the lips of Jesus Himself, and in the writings of the apostles. Thus, on a later occasion (Jn 15:25), Jesus declares that it is written in the "law" of the Jews, "They hated me without a cause," a clause found in Ps 35:19. And Paul assigns passages both from the Psalms and from Isa to "the Law" (1 Cor 14:21; Rom 3:19), and can write such a sentence as this (Gal 4:21 f) : "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written ...." quoting from the narrative of Gen. We have seen that the entirety of Scripture was conceived as "prophecy"; we now see that the entirety of Scripture was also conceived as "law": these three terms, the law, prophecy, Scripture, were indeed, materially, strict synonyms, as our present passage itself advises us, by varying the formula of adduction in contiguous verses from "law" to "scripture." And what is thus implied in the manner in which Scripture is adduced, is immediately afterward spoken out in the most explicit language, because it forms an essential element in Our Lord's defense. It might have been enough to say simply, "Is it not written in your law?" But our Lord, determined to drive His appeal to Scripture home, sharpens the point to the utmost by adding with the highest emphasis: "and the scripture cannot be broken." This is the reason why it is worth while to appeal to what is "written in the law," because "the scripture cannot be broken." The word "broken" here is the common one for breaking the law, or the Sabbath, or the like (Jn 5:18; 7:23; Mt 5:19), and the meaning of the declaration is that it is impossible for the Scripture to be annulled, its authority to be withstood, or denied. The movement of thought is to the effect that, because it is impossible for the Scripture--the term is perfectly general and witnesses to the unitary character of Scripture (it is all, for the purpose in hand, of a piece)--to be withstood, therefore this particular Scripture which is cited must be taken as of irrefragable authority. What we have here is, therefore, the strongest possible assertion of the indefectible authority of Scripture; precisely what is true of Scripture is that it "cannot be broken." Now, what is the particular thing in Scripture, for the confirmation of which the indefectible authority of Scripture is thus invoked? It is one of its most casual clauses--more than that, the very form of its expression in one of its most casual clauses. This means, of course, that in the Savior's view the indefectible authority of Scripture attaches to the very form of expression of its most casual clauses. It belongs to Scripture through and through, down to its most minute particulars, that it is of indefectible authority.

It is sometimes suggested, it is true, that our Lord's argument here is an argumentum ad hominem, and that His words, therefore, express not His own view of the authority of Scripture, but that of His Jewish opponents. It will scarcely be denied that there is a vein of satire running through our Lord's defense: that the Jews so readily allowed that corrupt judges might properly be called "gods," but could not endure that He whom the Father had consecrated and sent into the world should call Himself Son of God, was a somewhat pungent fact to throw up into such a high light. But the argument from Scripture is not ad hominem but e concessu; Scripture was common ground with Jesus and His opponents. If proof were needed for so obvious a fact, it would be supplied by the circumstance that this is not an isolated but a representative passage. The conception of Scripture thrown up into such clear view here supplies the ground of all Jesus' appeals to Scripture, and of all the appeals of the New Testament writers as well. Everywhere, to Him and to them alike, an appeal to Scripture is an appeal to an indefectible authority whose determination is final; both He and they make their appeal indifferently to every part of Scripture, to every element in Scripture, to its most incidental clauses as well as to its most fundamental principles, and to the very form of its expression. This attitude toward Scripture as an authoritative document is, indeed, already intimated by their constant designation of it by the name of Scripture, the Scriptures, that is "the Document," by way of eminence; and by their customary citation of it with the simple formula, "It is written." What is written in this document admits so little of questioning that its authoritativeness required no asserting, but might safely be taken for granted. Both modes of expression belong to the constantly illustrated habitudes of our Lord's speech. The first words He is recorded as uttering after His manifestation to Israel were an appeal to the unquestionable authority of Scripture; to Satan's temptations He opposed no other weapon than the final "It is written"! (Mt 4:4,7,10; Lk 4:4,8). And among the last words which He spoke to His disciples before He was received up was a rebuke to them for not understanding that all things "which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and psalms" concerning Him--that is (Lk 24:45) in the entire "Scriptures"--"must needs be" (very emphatic) "fulfilled" (Lk 24:44). "Thus it is written," says He (Lk 24:46), as rendering all doubt absurd. For, as He had explained earlier upon the same day (Lk 24:25 ff), it argues only that one is "foolish and slow of heart" if he does not "believe in" (if his faith does not rest securely on, as on a firm foundation) "all" (without limit of subject-matter here) "that the prophets" (explained in Lk 24:27 as equivalent to "all the scriptures") "have spoken."

4. Christ's Declaration That Scripture Must Be Fulfilled:

The necessity of the fulfillment of all that is written in Scripture, which is so strongly asserted in these last instructions to His disciples, is frequently adverted to by our Lord. He repeatedly explains of occurrences occasionally happening that they have come to pass "that the scripture might be fulfilled" (Mk 14:49; Jn 13:18; 17:12; compare 12:14; Mk 9:12,13). On the basis of Scriptural declarations, therefore, He announces with confidence that given events will certainly occur: "All ye shall be offended (literally, "scandalized") in me this night: for it is written ...." (Mt 26:31; Mk 14:27; compare Lk 20:17). Although holding at His command ample means of escape, He bows before on-coming calamities, for, He asks, how otherwise "should the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" (Mt 26:54). It is not merely the two disciples with whom He talked on the way to Emmaus (Lk 24:25) whom He rebukes for not trusting themselves more perfectly to the teaching of Scripture. "Ye search the scriptures," he says to the Jews, in the classical passage (Jn 5:39), "because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life!" These words surely were spoken more in sorrow than in scorn: there is no blame implied either for searching the Scriptures or for thinking that eternal life is to be found in Scripture; approval rather. What the Jews are blamed for is that they read with a veil lying upon their hearts which He would fain take away (2 Cor 3:15 f). "Ye search the scriptures"--that is right: and "even you" (emphatic) "think to have eternal life in them"--that is right, too. But "it is these very Scriptures" (very emphatic) "which are bearing witness" (continuous process) "of me; and" (here is the marvel!) "ye will not come to me and have life!"--that you may, that is, reach the very end you have so properly in view in searching the Scriptures. Their failure is due, not to the Scriptures but to themselves, who read the Scriptures to such little purpose.

5. His Testimony That God Is Author of Scripture:

Quite similarly our Lord often finds occasion to express wonder at the little effect to which Scripture had been read, not because it had been looked into too curiously, but because it had not been looked into earnestly enough, with sufficiently simple and robust trust in its every declaration. "Have ye not read even this scripture?" He demands, as He adduces Ps 118 to show that the rejection of the Messiah was already intimated in Scripture (Mk 12:10; Mt 21:42 varies the expression to the equivalent: "Did ye never read in the scriptures?"). And when the indignant Jews came to Him complaining of the Hosannas with which the children in the Temple were acclaiming Him, and demanding, "Hearest thou what these are saying?" He met them (Mt 21:16) merely with, "Yea: did ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou has perfected praise?" The underlying thought of these passages is spoken out when He intimates that the source of all error in Divine things is just ignorance of the Scriptures: "Ye do err," He declares to His questioners, on an important occasion, "not knowing the scriptures" (Mt 22:29); or, as it is put, perhaps more forcibly, in interrogative form, in its parallel in another Gospel: "Is it not for this cause that ye err, that ye know not the scriptures?" (Mk 12:24). Clearly, he who rightly knows the Scriptures does not err. The confidence with which Jesus rested on Scripture, in its every declaration, is further illustrated in a passage like Mt 19:4. Certain Pharisees had come to Him with a question on divorce and He met them thus: "Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? .... What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." The point to be noted is the explicit reference of Gen 2:24 to God as its author: "He who made them .... said"; "what therefore God hath joined together." Yet this passage does not give us a saying of God's

recorded in Scripture, but just the word of Scripture itself, and can be treated as a declaration of God's only on the hypothesis that all Scripture is a declaration of God's. The parallel in Mk (10:5 ff) just as truly, though not as explicitly, assigns the passage to God as its author, citing it as authoritative law and speaking of its enactment as an act of God's. And it is interesting to observe in passing that Paul, having occasion to quote the same passage (1 Cor 6:16), also explicitly quotes it as a Divine word: "For, The twain, saith he, shall become one flesh"--the "he" here, in accordance with a usage to be noted later, meaning just "God."

Thus clear is it that Jesus' occasional adduction of Scripture as an authoritative document rests on an ascription of it to God as its author. His testimony is that whatever stands written in Scripture is a word of God. Nor can we evacuate this testimony of its force on the plea that it represents Jesus only in the days of His flesh, when He may be supposed to have reflected merely the opinions of His day and generation. The view of Scripture He announces was, no doubt, the view of His day and generation as well as His own view. But there is no reason to doubt that it was held by Him, not because it was the current view, but because, in His Divine-human knowledge, He knew it to be true; for, even in His humiliation, He is the faithful and true witness. And in any event we should bear in mind that this was the view of the resurrected as well as of the humiliated Christ. It was after He had suffered and had risen again in the power of His Divine life that He pronounced those foolish and slow of heart who do not believe all that stands written in all the Scriptures (Lk 24:25); and that He laid down the simple "Thus it is written" as the sufficient ground of confident belief (Lk 24:46). Nor can we explain away Jesus' testimony to the Divine trustworthiness of Scripture by interpreting it as not His own, but that of His followers, placed on His lips in their reports of His words. Not only is it too constant, minute, intimate and in part incidental, and therefore, as it were, hidden, to admit of this interpretation; but it so pervades all our channels of information concerning Jesus' teaching as to make it certain that it comes actually from Him. It belongs not only to the Jesus of our evangelical records but as well to the Jesus of the earlier sources which underlie our evangelical records, as anyone may assure himself by observing the instances in which Jesus adduces the Scriptures as Divinely authoritative that are recorded in more than one of the Gospels (e.g. "It is written," Mt 4:4,7,10 (Lk 4:4,8,10); Mt 11:10; (Lk 7:27); Mt 21:13 (Lk 19:46; Mk 11:17); Mt 26:31 (Mk 14:21); "the scripture" or "the scriptures," Mt 19:4 (Mk 10:9); Mt 21:42 (Mk 12:10; Lk 20:17); Mt 22:29 (Mk 12:24; Lk 20:37); Mt 26:56 (Mk 14:49; Lk 24:44)). These passages alone would suffice to make clear to us the testimony of Jesus to Scripture as in all its parts and declarations Divinely authoritative.

6. Similar Testimony of His Immediate Followers

The attempt to attribute the testimony of Jesus to His followers has in its favor only the undeniable fact that the testimony of the writers of the New Testament is to precisely the same effect as His. They, too, cursorily Apostles speak of Scripture by that pregnant name and adduce it with the simple "It is written," with the implication that whatever stands written in it is Divinely authoritative. As Jesus' official life begins with this "It is written" (Mt 4:4), so the evangelical proclamation begins with an "Even as it is written" (Mk 1:2); and as Jesus sought the justification of His work in a solemn "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day" (Lk 24:46 ff), so the apostles solemnly justified the Gospel which they preached, detail after detail, by appeal to the Scriptures, "That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" and "That he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3,4; compare Acts 8:35; 17:3; 26:22, and also Rom 1:17; 3:4,10; 4:17; 11:26; 14:11; 1 Cor 1:19; 2:9; 3:19; 15:45; Gal 3:10,13; 4:22,27). Wherever they carried the gospel it was as a gospel resting on Scripture that they proclaimed it (Acts 17:2; 18:24,28); and they encouraged themselves to test its truth by the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). The holiness of life they inculcated, they based on Scriptural requirement (1 Pet 1:16), and they commended the royal law of love which they taught by Scriptural sanction (Jas 2:8). Every detail of duty was supported by them by an appeal to Scripture (Acts 23:5; Rom 12:19). The circumstances of their lives and the events occasionally occurring about them are referred to Scripture for their significance (Rom 2:26; 8:36; 9:33; 11:8; 15:9,21; 2 Cor 4:13). As our Lord declared that whatever was written in Scripture must needs be fulfilled (Mt 26:54; Lk 22:37; 24:44), so His followers explained one of the most startling facts which had occurred in their experience by pointing out that "it was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spake before by the mouth of David" (Acts 1:16). Here the ground of this constant appeal to Scripture, so that it is enough that a thing "is contained in scripture" (1 Pet 2:6) for it to be of indefectible authority, is plainly enough declared: Scripture must needs be fulfilled, for what is contained in it is the declaration of the Holy Ghost through the human author. What Scripture says, God says; and accordingly we read such remarkable declarations as these: "For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up" (Rom 9:17); "And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, .... In thee shall all the nations be blessed" (Gal 3:8). These are not instances of simple personification of Scripture, which is itself a sufficiently remarkable usage (Mk 15:28; Jn 7:38,42; 19:37; Rom 4:3; 10:11; 11:2; Gal 4:30; 1 Tim 5:18; Jas 2:23; 4:5 f), vocal with the conviction expressed by James (4:5) that Scripture cannot speak in vain. They indicate a certain confusion in current speech between "Scripture" and "God," the outgrowth of a deep-seated conviction that the word of Scripture is the word of God. It was not "Scripture" that spoke to Pharaoh, or gave his great promise to Abraham, but God. But "Scripture" and "God" lay so close together in the minds of the writers of the New Testament that they could naturally speak of "Scripture" doing what Scripture records God as doing. It was, however, even more natural to them to speak casually of God saying what the Scriptures say; and accordingly we meet with forms of speech such as these: "Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, Today if ye shall hear His voice," etc. (Heb 3:7, quoting Ps 95:7); "Thou art God .... who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage," etc. (Acts 4:25 the King James Version, quoting Ps 2:1); "He that raised him from the dead .... hath spoken on this wise, I will give you .... because he saith also in another (place) ...." (Acts 13:34, quoting Isa 55:3 and Ps 16:10), and the like. The words put into God's mouth in each case are not words of God recorded in the Scriptures, but just Scripture words in themselves. When we take the two classes of passages together, in the one of which the Scriptures are spoken of as God, while in the other God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures, we may perceive how close the identification of the two was in the minds of the writers of the New Testament.

7. Their Identification of God and Scripture:

This identification is strikingly observable in certain catenae of quotations, in which there are brought together a number of passages of Scripture closely connected with one another. The first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies an example. We may begin with Heb 1:5:"For unto which of the angels said he"--the subject being necessarily "God"--"at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?"--the citation being from Ps 2:7 and very appropriate in the mouth of God--"and again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?"--from 2 Sam 7:14, again a declaration of God's own--"And when he again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him"--from Dt 32:43, Septuagint, or Ps 97:7, in neither of which is God the speaker--"And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire"--from Ps 104:4, where again God is not the speaker but is spoken of in the third person--"but of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, etc."--from Ps 45:6,7 where again God is not the speaker, but is addressed--"And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning," etc.--from Ps 102:25-27, where again God is not the speaker but is addressed--"But of which of the angels hath he said at any time, Sit thou on my right hand?" etc.--from Ps 110:1, in which God is the speaker. Here we have passages in which God is the speaker and passages in which God is not the speaker, but is addressed or spoken of, indiscriminately assigned to God, because they all have it in common that they are words of Scripture, and as words of Scripture are words of God. Similarly in Rom 15:9 ff we have a series of citations the first of which is introduced by "as it is written," and the next two by "again he saith," and "again," and the last by "and again, Isaiah saith," the first being from Ps 18:49; the second from Dt 32:43; the third from Ps 117:1; and the last from Isa 11:10. Only the last (the only one here assigned to the human author) is a word of God in the text of the Old Testament.


INSPIRATION, 8-18

8. The "Oracles of God":

This view of the Scriptures as a compact mass of words of God occasioned the formation of a designation for them by which this their character was explicitly expressed. This designation is "the sacred oracles," "the oracles of God." It occurs with extraordinary frequency in Philo, who very commonly refers to Scripture as "the sacred oracles" and cites its several passages as each an "oracle." Sharing, as they do, Philo's conception of the Scriptures as, in all their parts, a word of God, the New Testament writers naturally also speak of them under this designation. The classical passage is Rom 3:2 (compare Heb 5:12; Acts 7:38). Here Paul begins an enumeration of the advantages which belonged to the chosen people above other nations; and, after declaring these advantages to have been great and numerous, he places first among them all their possession of the Scriptures: "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God." That by "the oracles of God" here are meant just the Holy Scriptures in their entirety, conceived as a direct Divine revelation, and not any portions of them, or elements in them more especially thought of as revelatory, is perfectly clear from the wide contemporary use of this designation in this sense by Philo, and is put beyond question by the presence in the New Testament of habitudes of speech which rest on and grow out of the conception of Scripture embodied in this term. From the point of view of this designation, Scripture is thought of as the living voice of God speaking in all its parts directly to the reader; and, accordingly, it is cited by some such formula as "it is said," and this mode of citing Scripture duly occurs as an alternative to "it is written" (Lk 4:12 replacing "it is written" in Mt; Heb 3:15; compare Rom 4:18). It is due also to this point of view that Scripture is cited, not as what God or the Holy Spirit "said," but what He "says," the present tense emphasizing the living voice of God speaking in Scriptures to the individual soul (Heb 3:7; Acts 13:35; Heb 17,8,10; Rom 15:10). And especially there is due to it the peculiar usage by which Scripture is cited by the simple "saith, without expressed subject, the subject being too well understood, when Scripture is adduced, to require stating; for who could be the speaker of the words of Scripture but God only (Rom 15:10; 1 Cor 6:16; 2 Cor 6:2; Gal 3:16; Eph 4:8; 5:14)? The analogies of this pregnant subjectless "saith" are very widespread. It was with it that the ancient Pythagoreans and Platonists and the medieval Aristotelians adduced each their master's teaching; it was with it that, in certain circles, the judgments of Hadrian's great jurist Salvius Julianus were cited; African stylists were even accustomed to refer by it to Sallust, their great model. There is a tendency, cropping out occasionally, in the Old Testament, to omit the name of God as superfluous, when He, as the great logical subject always in mind, would be easily understood (compare Job 20:23; 21:17; Ps 114:2; Lam 4:22). So, too, when the New Testament writers quoted Scripture there was no need to say whose word it was: that lay beyond question in every mind. This usage, accordingly, is a specially striking intimation of the vivid sense which the New Testament writers had of the Divine origin of the Scriptures, and means that in citing them they were acutely conscious that they were citing immediate words of God. How completely the Scriptures were to them just the word of God may be illustrated by a passage like Gal 3:16: "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." We have seen our Lord hanging an argument on the very words of Scripture (Jn 10:34); elsewhere His reasoning depends on the particular tense (Mt 22:32) or word (Mt 22:43) used in Scripture. Here Paul's argument rests similarly on a grammatical form. No doubt. it is the grammatical form of the word which God is recorded as having spoken to Abraham that is in question. But Paul knows what grammatical form God employed in speaking to Abraham only as the Scriptures have transmitted it to him; and, as we have seen, in citing the words of God and the words of Scripture he was not accustomed to make any distinction between them. It is probably the Scriptural word as a Scriptural word, therefore, which he has here in mind: though, of course, it is possible that what he here witnesses to is rather the detailed trustworthiness of the Scriptural record than its direct divinity--if we can separate two things which apparently were not separated in Paul's mind. This much we can at least say without straining, that the designation of Scripture as "scripture" and its citation by the formula, "It is written," attest primarily its indefectible authority; the designation of it as "oracles" and the adduction of it by the formula, "It says," attest primarily its immediate divinity. Its authority rests on its divinity and its divinity expresses itself in its trustworthiness; and the New Testament writers in all their use of it treat it as what they declare it to be--a God-breathed document, which, because God-breathed, is through and through trustworthy in all its assertions, authoritative in all its declarations, and down to its last particular, the very word of God, His "oracles."

9. The Human Element in Scripture:

That the Scriptures are throughout a Divine book, created by the Divine energy and speaking in their every part with Divine authority directly to the heart of the readers, is the fundamental fact concerning Scripture them which is witnessed by Christ and the sacred writers to whom we owe the New Testament. But the strength and constancy with which they bear witness to this primary fact do not prevent their recognizing by the side of it that the Scriptures have come into being by the agency of men. It would be inexact to say that they recognize a human element in Scripture: they do not parcel Scripture out, assigning portions of it, or elements in it, respectively to God and man. In their view the whole of Scripture in all its parts and in all its elements, down to the least minutiae, in form of expression as well as in substance of teaching, is from God; but the whole of it has been given by God through the instrumentality of men. There is, therefore, in their view, not, indeed, a human element or ingredient in Scripture, and much less human divisions or sections of Scripture, but a human side or aspect to Scripture; and they do not fail to give full recognition to this human side or aspect. In one of the primary passages which has already been before us, their conception is given, if somewhat broad and very succinct, yet clear expression. No `prophecy,' Peter tells us (2 Pet 1:21), `ever came by the will of man; but as borne by the Holy Ghost, men spake from God.' Here the whole initiative is assigned to God, and such complete control of the human agents that the product is truly God's work. The men who speak in this "prophecy of scripture" speak not of themselves or out of themselves, but from "God": they speak only as they are "borne by the Holy Ghost." But it is they, after all, who speak. Scripture is the product of man, but only of man speaking from God and under such a control of the Holy Spirit as that in their speaking they are "borne" by Him. The conception obviously is that the Scriptures have been given by the instrumentality of men; and this conception finds repeated incidental expression throughout the New Testament.

It is this conception, for example, which is expressed when our Lord, quoting Ps 110, declares of its words that "David himself said in the Holy Spirit" (Mk 12:36). There is a certain emphasis here on the words being David's own words, which is due to the requirements of the argument our Lord was conducting, but which none the less sincerely represents our Lord's conception of their origin. They are David's own words which we find in Ps 110, therefore; but they are David's own words, spoken not of his own motion merely, but "in the Holy Spirit," that is to say--we could not better paraphrase it--"as borne by the Holy Spirit." In other words, they are "God-breathed" words and therefore authoritative in a sense above what any words of David, not spoken in the Holy Spirit, could possibly be. Generalizing the matter, we may say that the words of Scripture are conceived by our Lord and the New Testament writers as the words of their human authors when speaking "in the Holy Spirit," that is to say, by His initiative and under His controlling direction. The conception finds even more precise expression, perhaps, in such a statement as we find--it is Peter who is speaking and it is again a psalm which is cited--in Acts 116, "The Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David." Here the Holy Spirit is adduced, of course, as the real author of what is said (and hence, Peter's certainty that what is said will be fulfilled); but David's mouth is expressly designated as the instrument (it is the instrumental preposition that is used) by means of which the Holy Spirit speaks the Scripture in question. He does not speak save through David's mouth. Accordingly, in Acts 4:25, `the Lord that made the heaven and earth,' acting by His Holy Spirit, is declared to have spoken another psalm `through the mouth of .... David,' His "servant"; and in Mt 13:35 still another psalm is adduced as "spoken through the prophet" (compare Mt 2:5). In the very act of energetically asserting the Divine origin of Scripture the human instrumentality through which it is given is constantly recognized. The New Testament writers have, therefore, no difficulty in assigning Scripture to its human authors, or in discovering in Scripture traits due to its human authorship. They freely quote it by such simple formulas as these: "Moses saith" (Rom 10:19); "Moses said" (Mt 22:24; Mk 10; Acts 3:22); "Moses writeth" (Rom 10:5); "Moses wrote" (Mk 12:19; Lk 20:28); "Isaiah .... saith" (Rom 10:20); "Isaiah said" (Jn 12:39); "Isaiah crieth" (Rom 9:27); "Isaiah hath said before" (Rom 9:29); "said Isaiah the prophet" (Jn 1:23); "did Isaiah prophesy" (Mk 7:6: Mt 15:7); "David saith" (Lk 20:42; Acts 2:25; Rom 11:9); "David said" (Mk 12:36). It is to be noted that when thus Scripture is adduced by the names of its human authors, it is a matter of complete indifference whether the words adduced are comments of these authors or direct words of God recorded by them. As the plainest words of the human authors are assigned to God as their real author, so the most express words of God, repeated by the Scriptural writers, are cited by the names of these human writers (Mt 15:7; Mk 7:6; Rom 10:5 19,20; compare Mk 7:10 from the Decalogue). To say that "Moses" or "David says," is evidently thus only a way of saying that "Scripture says," which is the same as to say that "God says." Such modes of citing Scripture, accordingly, carry us little beyond merely connecting the name, or perhaps we may say the individuality, of the several writers with the portions of Scripture given through each. How it was given through them is left meanwhile, if not without suggestion, yet without specific explanation. We seem safe only in inferring this much: that the gift of Scripture through its human authors took place by a process much more intimate than can be expressed by the term "dictation," and that it took place in a process in which the control of the Holy Spirit was too complete and pervasive to permit the human qualities of the secondary authors in any way to condition the purity of the product as the word of God. The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God's book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men's book as well as God's, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.

10. Activities of God in Giving Scripture:

If we attempt to get behind this broad statement and to obtain a more detailed conception of the activities by which God has given the Scriptures, we are thrown back upon somewhat general representations, supported by the analogy of the modes Scripture of God's working in other spheres of His operation. It is very desirable that we should free ourselves at the outset from influences arising from the current employment of the term "inspiration" to designate this process. This term is not a Biblical term and its etymological implications are not perfectly accordant with the Biblical conception of the modes of the Divine operation in giving the Scriptures. The Biblical writers do not conceive of the Scriptures as a human product breathed into by the Divine Spirit, and thus heightened in its qualities or endowed with new qualities; but as a Divine product produced through the instrumentality of men. They do not conceive of these men, by whose instrumentality Scripture is produced, as working upon their own initiative, though energized by God to greater effort and higher achievement, but as moved by the Divine initiative and borne by the irresistible power of the Spirit of God along ways of His choosing to ends of His appointment. The difference between the two conceptions may not appear great when the mind is fixed exclusively upon the nature of the resulting product. But they are differing conceptions, and look at the production of Scripture from distinct points of view--the human and the Divine; and the involved mental attitudes toward the origin of Scripture are very diverse. The term "inspiration" is too firmly fixed, in both theological and popular usage, as the technical designation of the action of God in giving the Scriptures, to be replaced; and we may be thankful that its native implications lie as close as they do to the Biblical conceptions. Meanwhile, however, it may be justly insisted that it shall receive its definition from the representations of Scripture, and not be permitted to impose upon our thought ideas of the origin of Scripture derived from an analysis of its own implications, etymological or historical. The Scriptural conception of the relation of the Divine Spirit to the human authors in the production of Scripture is better expressed by the figure of "bearing" than by the figure of "inbreathing"; and when our Biblical writers speak of the action of the Spirit of God in this relation as a breathing, they represent it as a "breathing out" of the Scriptures by the Spirit, and not a "breathing into" the Scriptures by Him.

11. General Problem of Origin: God's Part:

So soon, however, as we seriously endeavor to form for ourselves a clear conception of the precise nature of the Divine action in this "breathing out" of the Scriptures--this "bearing" of the writers of the Scriptures to their appointed goal of the production of a book of Divine trustworthiness and indefectible authority--we become acutely aware of a more deeply lying and much wider problem, apart from which this one of inspiration, technically so called, cannot be profitably considered. This is the general problem of the origin of the Scriptures and the part of God in all that complex of processes by the interaction of which these books, which we call the sacred Scriptures, with all their peculiarities, and all their qualities of whatever sort, have been brought into being. For, of course, these books were not produced suddenly, by some miraculous act--handed down complete out of heaven, as the phrase goes; but, like all other products of time, are the ultimate effect of many processes cooperating through long periods. There is to be considered, for instance, the preparation of the material which forms the subject-matter of these books: in a sacred history, say, for example, to be narrated; or in a religious experience which may serve as a norm for record; or in a logical elaboration of the contents of revelation which may be placed at the service of God's people; or in the progressive revelation of Divine truth itself, supplying their culminating contents. And there is the preparation of the men to write these books to be considered, a preparation physical, intellectual, spiritual, which must have attended them throughout their whole lives, and, indeed, must have had its beginning in their remote ancestors, and the effect of which was to bring the right men to the right places at the right times, with the right endowments, impulses, acquirements, to write just the books which were designed for them. When "inspiration," technically so called, is superinduced on lines of preparation like these, it takes on quite a different aspect from that which it bears when it is thought of as an isolated action of the Divine Spirit operating out of all relation to historical processes. Representations are sometimes made as if, when God wished to produce sacred books which would incorporate His will--a series of letters like those of Paul, for example--He was reduced to the necessity of going down to earth and painfully scrutinizing the men He found there, seeking anxiously for the one who, on the whole, promised best for His purpose; and then violently forcing the material He wished expressed through him, against his natural bent, and with as little loss from his recalcitrant characteristics as possible. Of course, nothing of the sort took place. If God wished to give His people a series of letters like Paul's, He prepared a Paul to write them, and the Paul He brought to the task was a Paul who spontaneously would write just such letters.

12. How Human Qualities Affected Scripture. Providential Preparation:

If we bear this in mind, we shall know what estimate to place upon the common representation to the effect that the human characteristics of the writers must, and in point of fact do, condition and qualify the writings produced by them, the implication being that, therefore, we cannot get from mark a pure word of God. As light that passes through the colored glass of a cathedral window, we are told, is light from heaven, but is stained by the tints of the glass through which it passes; so any word of God which is passed through the mind and soul of a man must come out discolored by the personality through which it is given, and just to that degree ceases to be the pure word of God. But what if this personality has itself been formed by God into precisely the personality it is, for the express purpose of communicating to the word given through it just the coloring which it gives it? What if the colors of the stained-glass window have been designed by the architect for the express purpose of giving to the light that floods the cathedral precisely the tone and quality it receives from them? What if the word of God that comes to His people is framed by God into the word of God it is, precisely by means of the qualities of the men formed by Him for the purpose, through which it is given? When we think of God the Lord giving by His Spirit a body of authoritative Scriptures to His people, we must remember that He is the God of providence and of grace as well as of revelation and inspiration, and that He holds all the lines of preparation as fully under His direction as He does the specific operation which we call technically, in the narrow sense, by the name of "inspiration." The production of the Scriptures is, in point of fact, a long process, in the course of which numerous and very varied Divine activities are involved, providential, gracious, miraculous, all of which must be taken into account in any attempt to explain the relation of God to the production of Scripture. When they are all taken into account we can no longer wonder that the resultant Scriptures are constantly spoken of as the pure word of God. We wonder, rather, that an additional operation of God--what we call specifically "inspiration," in its technical sense--was thought necessary. Consider, for example, how a piece of sacred history--say the Book of Chronicles, or the great historical work, Gospel and Acts, of Luke--is brought to the writing. There is first of all the preparation of the history to be written: God the Lord leads the sequence of occurrences through the development He has designed for them that they may convey their lessons to His people: a "teleological" or "etiological" character is inherent in the very course of events. Then He prepares a man, by birth, training, experience, gifts of grace, and, if need be, of revelation, capable of appreciating this historical development and eager to search it out, thrilling in all his being with its lessons and bent upon making them clear and effective to others. When, then, by His providence, God sets this man to work on the writing of this history, will there not be spontaneously written by him the history which it was Divinely intended should be written? Or consider how a psalmist would be prepared to put into moving verse a piece of normative religious experience: how he would be born with just the right quality of religious sensibility, of parents through whom he should receive just the right hereditary bent, and from whom he should get precisely the right religious example and training, in circumstances of life in which his religious tendencies should be developed precisely on right lines; how he would be brought through just the right experiences to quicken in him the precise emotions he would be called upon to express, and finally would be placed in precisely the exigencies which would call out their expression. Or consider the providential preparation of a writer of a didactic epistle--by means of which he should be given the intellectual breadth and acuteness, and be trained in habitudes of reasoning, and placed in the situations which would call out precisely the argumentative presentation of Christian truth which was required of him. When we give due place in our thoughts to the universality of the providential government of God, to the minuteness and completeness of its sway, and to its invariable efficacy, we may be inclined to ask what is needed beyond this mere providential government to secure the production of sacred books which should be in every detail absolutely accordant with the Divine will.

13. "Inspiration" More than Mere "Providence":

The answer is, Nothing is needed beyond mere providence to secure such books--provided only that it does not lie in the Divine purpose that these books should possess qualities which rise above the powers of men to produce, even under the most complete Divine guidance. For providence is guidance; and guidance can bring one only so far as his own power can carry him. If heights are to be scaled above man's native power to achieve, then something more than guidance, however effective, is necessary. This is the reason for the superinduction, at the end of the long process of the production of Scripture, of the additional Divine operation which we call technically "inspiration." By it, the Spirit of God, flowing confluently in with the providentially and graciously determined work of men, spontaneously producing under the Divine directions the writings appointed to them, gives the product a Divine quality unattainable by human powers alone. Thus, these books become not merely the word of godly men, but the immediate word of God Himself, speaking directly as such to the minds and hearts of every reader. The value of "inspiration" emerges, thus, as twofold. It gives to the books written under its "bearing" a quality which is truly superhuman; a trustworthiness, an authority, a searchingness, a profundity, a profitableness which is altogether Divine. And it speaks this Divine word immediately to each reader's heart and conscience; so that he does not require to make his way to God, painfully, perhaps even uncertainly, through the words of His servants, the human instruments in writing the Scriptures, but can listen directly to the Divine voice itself speaking immediately in the Scriptural word to him.

14. Witness of New Testament Writers to Divine Operation:

That the writers of the New Testament themselves conceive the Scriptures to have been produced thus by Divine operations extending through the increasing ages and involving a multitude of varied activities, can be made clear by simply attending to the occasional references they make to this or that step in the process. It lies, for example, on the face of their expositions, that they of New Testament looked upon the Biblical history as teleological. Not only do they tell us that to "whatsoever things were written afore-time were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might have hope" (Rom 15:4; compare Rom 4:23,14); they speak also of the course of the historical events themselves as guided for our benefit: "Now these things happened unto them by way of example"--in a typical fashion, in such a way that, as they occurred, a typical character, or predictive reference impressed itself upon them; that is to say, briefly, the history occurred as it did in order to bear a message to us--"and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come" (1 Cor 10:11; compare 10:6). Accordingly, it has become a commonplace of Biblical exposition that "the history of redemption itself is a typically progressive one" (Kuper), and is "in a manner impregnated with the prophetic element," so as to form a "part of a great plan which stretches from the fall of man to the first consummation of all things in glory; and, in so far as it reveals the mind of God toward man, carries a respect to the future not less than to the present" (P. Fairbairn). It lies equally on the face of the New Testament allusions to the subject that its writers understood that the preparation of men to become vehicles of God's message to man was not of yesterday, but had its beginnings in the very origin of their being. The call by which Paul, for example, was made an apostle of Jesus Christ was sudden and apparently without antecedents; but it is precisely this Paul who reckons this call as only one step in a long process, the beginnings of which antedated his own existence: "But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me" (Gal 1:15,16; compare Jer 1:5; Isa 49:1,5). The recognition by the writers of the New Testament of the experiences of God's grace, which had been vouchsafed to them as an integral element in their fitting to be the bearers of His gospel to others, finds such pervasive expression that the only difficulty is to select from the mass the most illustrative passages. Such a statement as Paul gives in the opening verses of 2 Cor is thoroughly typical. There he represents that he has been afflicted and comforted to the end that he might "be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith" he had himself been "comforted of God." For, he explains, Whether we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or whether we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which worketh in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer" (2 Cor 1:4-6). It is beyond question, therefore, that the New Testament writers, when they declare the Scriptures to be the product of the Divine breath, and explain this as meaning that the writers of these Scriptures wrote them only as borne by the Holy Spirit in such a fashion that they spoke, not out of themselves, but "from God," are thinking of this operation of the Spirit only as the final act of God in the production of the Scriptures, superinduced upon a long series of processes, providential, gracious, miraculous, by which the matter of Scripture had been prepared for writing, and the men for writing it, and the writing of it had been actually brought to pass. It is this final act in the production of Scripture which is technically called "inspiration"; and inspiration is thus brought before us as, in the minds of the writers of the New Testament, that particular operation of God in the production of Scripture which takes effect at the very point of the writing of Scripture--understanding the term "writing" here as inclusive of all the processes of the actual composition of Scripture, the investigation of documents, the collection of facts, the excogitation of conclusions, the adaptation of exhortations as means to ends and the like--with the effect of giving to the resultant Scripture a specifically supernatural character, and constituting it a Divine, as well as human, book. Obviously the mode of operation of this Divine activity moving to this result is conceived, in full accord with the analogy of the Divine operations in other spheres of its activity, in providence and in grace alike, as confluent with the human activities operative in the case; as, in a word, of the nature of what has come to be known as "immanent action."

15. "Inspiration" and "Revelation":

It will not escape observation that thus "inspiration" is made a mode of "revelation." We are often exhorted, to be sure, to distinguish sharply between "inspiration" and "revelation"; and the exhortation is just when "revelation" is taken in one of its narrower senses, of, say, an external manifestation of God, or of an immediate communication from God in words. But "inspiration" does not differ from "revelation" in these narrowed senses as genus from genus, but as a species of one genus differs from another. That operation of God which we call "inspiration," that is to say, that operation of the Spirit of God by which He "bears" men in the process of composing Scripture, so that they write, not of themselves, but "from God," is one of the modes in which God makes known to men His being, His will, His operations, His purposes. It is as distinctly a mode of revelation as any mode of revelation can be, and therefore it performs the same office which all revelation performs, that is to say, in the express words of Paul, it makes men wise, and makes them wise unto salvation. All "special" or "supernatural" revelation (which is redemptive in its very idea, and occupies a place as a substantial element in God's redemptive processes) has precisely this for its end; and Scripture, as a mode of the redemptive revelation of God, finds its fundamental purpose just in this: if the "inspiration" by which Scripture is produced renders it trustworthy and authoritative, it renders it trustworthy and authoritative only that it may the better serve to make men wise unto salvation. Scripture is conceived, from the point of view of the writers of the New Testament, not merely as the record of revelations, but as itself a part of the redemptive revelation of God; not merely as the record of the redemptive acts by which God is saving the world, but as itself one of these redemptive acts, having its own part to play in the great work of establishing and building up the kingdom of God. What gives it a place among the redemptive acts of God is its Divine origination, taken in its widest sense, as inclusive of all the Divine operations, providential, gracious and expressly supernatural, by which it has been made just what it is--a body of writings able to make wise unto salvation, and profitable for making the man of God perfect. What gives it its place among the modes of revelation is, however, specifically the culminating one of these Divine operations, which we call "inspiration"; that is to say, the action of the Spirit of God in so "bearing" its human authors in their work of producing Scripture, as that in these Scriptures they speak, not out of themselves, but "from God." It is this act by virtue of which the Scriptures may properly be called "God-breathed."

16. Scriptures a Divine-Human Book?:

It has been customary among a certain school of writers to speak of the Scriptures, because thus "inspired," as a Divine-human book, and to appeal to the analogy of Our Lord's Divine-human personality to explain their peculiar qualities as such. The expression calls attention to an important fact, and the analogy holds good a certain distance. There are human and Divine sides to Scripture, and, as we cursorily examine it, we may perceive in it, alternately, traits which suggest now the one, now the other factor in its origin. But the analogy with our Lord' s Divine-human personality may easily be pressed beyond reason. There is no hypostatic union between the Divine and the human in Scripture; we cannot parallel the "inscripturation" of the Holy Spirit and the incarnation of the Son of God. The Scriptures are merely the product of Divine and human forces working together to produce a product in the production of which the human forces work under the initiation and prevalent direction of the Divine: the person of our Lord unites in itself Divine and human natures, each of which retains its distinctness while operating only in relation to the other. Between such diverse things there can exist only a remote analogy; and, in point of fact, the analogy in the present instance amounts to no more than that in both cases Divine and human factors are involved, though very differently. In the one they unite to constitute a Divine-human person, in the other they cooperate to perform a Divine-human work. Even so distant an analogy may enable us, however, to recognize that as, in the case of our Lord's person, the human nature remains truly human while yet it can never fall into sin or error because it can never act out of relation with the Divine nature into conjunction with which it has been brought; so in the case of the production of Scripture by the conjoint action of human and Divine factors, the human factors have acted as human factors and have left their mark on the product as such, and yet cannot have fallen into that error which we say it is human to fall into, because they have not acted apart from the Divine factors, by themselves, but only under their unerring guidance.

17. Scripture of New Testament Writers Was the Old Testament:

The New Testament testimony is to the Divine origin and qualities of "Scripture"; and "Scripture" to the writers of the New Testament was fundamentally, of course, the Old Testament. In the primary passage, in which we are told that "every" or "all Scripture" is "God breathed," the direct reference is to the "sacred writings" which Timothy had had in knowledge since his infancy, and these were, of course, just the sacred books of the Jews (2 Tim 3:16). What is explicit here is implicit in all the allusions to inspired Scriptures in the New Testament. Accordingly, it is frequently said that our entire testimony to the inspiration of Scripture concerns the Old Testament alone. In many ways, however, this is overstated. Our present concern is not with the extent of "Scripture" but with the nature of "Scripture"; and we cannot present here the considerations which justify extending to the New Testament the inspiration which the New Testament writers attribute to the Old Testament. It will not be out of place, however, to point out simply that the New Testament writers obviously themselves made this extension. They do not for an instant imagine themselves, as ministers of a new covenant, less in possession of the Spirit of God than the ministers of the old covenant: they freely recognize, indeed, that they have no sufficiency of themselves, but they know that God has made them sufficient (2 Cor 3:5,6). They prosecute their work of proclaiming the gospel, therefore, in full confidence that they speak "by the Holy Spirit" (1 Pet 1:12), to whom they attribute both the matter and form of their teaching (1 Cor 2:13). They, therefore, speak with the utmost assurance of their teaching (Gal 1:7,8); and they issue commands with the completest authority (1 Thess 4:2,14; 2 Thess 3:6,12), making it, indeed, the test of whether one has the Spirit that he should recognize what they demand as commandments of God (1 Cor 14:37). It would be strange, indeed, if these high claims were made for their oral teaching and commandments exclusively. In point of fact, they are made explicitly also for their written injunctions. It was "the things" which Paul was "writing," the recognition of which as commands of the Lord, he makes the test of a Spirit-led man (1 Cor 14:37). It is his "word by this epistle," obedience to which he makes the condition of Christian communion (2 Thess 3:14). There seems involved in such an attitude toward their own teaching, oral and written, a claim on the part of the New Testament writers to something very much like the "inspiration'' which they attribute to the writers of the Old Testament.

18. Inclusion of New Testament:

And all doubt is dispelled when we observe the New Testament writers placing the writings of one another in the same category of "Scripture" with the books of the Old Testament. The same Paul who, in 2 Tim 3:16, declared that `every' or `all scripture is God-breathed' had already written in 1 Tim 5:18: "For the scripture saith, Thou shall not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn (grain). And, The laborer is worthy of his hire." The first clause here is derived from Deuteronomy and the second from the Gospel of Luke, though both are cited as together constituting, or better, forming part of the "Scripture" which Paul adduces as so authoritative as by its mere citation to end all strife. Who shall say that, in the declaration of the later epistle that "all" or "every" Scripture is God-breathed, Paul did not have Luke, and, along with Luke, whatever other new books he classed with the old under the name of Scripture, in the back of his mind, along with those old books which Timothy had had in his hands from infancy? And the same Peter who declared that every "prophecy of scripture" was the product of men who spoke "from God," being `borne' by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21), in this same epistle (2 Pet 3:16), places Paul's Epistles in the category of Scripture along with whatever other books deserve that name. For Paul, says he, wrote these epistles, not out of his own wisdom, but "according to the wisdom given to him," and though there are some things in them hard to be understood, yet it is only the ignorant and unsteadfast" who wrest these difficult passages--as what else could be expected of men who wrest "also the other Scriptures" (obviously the Old Testament is meant)--"unto their own destruction"? Is it possible to say that Peter could not have had these epistles of Paul also lurking somewhere in the back of his mind, along with "the other scriptures," when he told his readers that every "prophecy of scripture" owes its origin to the prevailing operation of the Holy Ghost? What must be understood in estimating the testimony of the New Testament writers to the inspiration of Scripture is that "Scripture" stood in their minds as the title of a unitary body of books, throughout the gift of God through His Spirit to His people; but that this body of writings was at the same time understood to be a growing aggregate, so that what is said of it applies to the new books which were being added to it as the Spirit gave them, as fully as to the old books which had come down to them from their hoary past. It is a mere matter of detail to determine precisely what new books were thus included by them in the category "Scripture." They tell us some of them themselves. Those who received them from their hands tell us of others. And when we put the two bodies of testimony together we find that they constitute just our New Testament. It is no pressure of the witness of the writers of the New Testament to the inspiration of the Scripture, therefore, to look upon it as covering the entire body of "Scriptures," the new books which they were themselves adding to this aggregate, as well as the old books which they had received as Scripture from the fathers. Whatever can lay claim by just right to the appellation of "Scripture," as employed in its eminent sense by those writers, can by the same just right lay claim to the "inspiration" which they ascribe to this "Scripture."

LITERATURE.

J. Gerhard, Loci Theolog., Locus I; F. Turretin, Instit. Theol., Locus II; B. de Moor, Commentary in J. Marckii Comp., cap. ii; C. Hodge, Syst. Theol., New York, 1871, I, 151-86; Henry B. Smith, The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, New York, 1855, new edition, Cincinnati, 1891; A. Kuyper, Encyclopedia der heilige Godgeleerdheid, 1888-89, II, 347 ff, English translation; Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, New York, 1898, 341-563; also De Schrift her woord Gods, Tiel, 1870; H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek2, Kampen, 1906, I, 406-527; R. Haldane, The Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures Established, Edinburgh, 1830; J. T. Beck, Einleitung in das System der christlichen Lehre, Stuttgart, 1838, 2nd edition, 1870; A. G. Rudelbach, "Die Lehre yon der Inspiration der heil. Schrift," Zeitschrift fur die gesammte Lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 1840, 1, 1841, 1, 1842, 1; S. R. L. Gaussen, Theopneustie ou inspiration pleniere des saintes ecritures2, Paris, 1842, English translation by E. N. Kirk, New York, 1842; also Theopneustia; the Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, David Scott's translation, reedited and revised by B. W. Carr, with a preface by C. H. Spurgeon, London, 1888; William Lee, The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, Donellan Lecture, 1852, New York, 1857; James Bannerman, Inspiration: the Infallible Truth and Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, Edinburgh, 1865; F. L. Patton, The Inspiration of the Scriptures, Philadelphia, 1869 (reviewing Lee and Bannerman); Charles Elliott, A Treatise on the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, Edinburgh, 1877; A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, "Inspiration," Presbyterian Review, April, 1881, also tract, Philadelphia, 1881; R. Watts, The Rule of Faith and the Doctrine of Inspiration, Edinburgh, 1885; A. Cave, The Inspiration of the O T Inductively Considered, London, 1888; B. Manly, The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, New York, 1888; W. Rohnert, Die Inspiration der heiligen Schrift und ihre Bestreiter, Leipzig, 1889; A. W. Dieckhoff, Die Inspiration und Irrthumlosigkeit der heiligen Schrift, Leipzig, 1891; J. Wichelhaus, Die Lehre der heiligen Schrift, Stuttgart, 1892; J. Macgregor, The Revelation and the Record, Edinburgh, 1893; J. Urquhart, The Inspiration and Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures, London, 1895; C. Pesch, De Inspiratione Sacrae Scripturae, Freiburg, 1906; James Orr, Revelation and Inspiration, London, 1910.

Benjamin B. Warfield


INSTANT; INSTANTLY

in'-stant, in'-stant-li: Derivative from Latin instare. Found in English with various meanings from the 15th century to the present time.

Instant is used once in Isa 29:5 in the sense of immediate time; elsewhere in the sense of urgent, pressing; Lk 23:23, where "were instant" is the King James Version translation of the verb epekeinto; Rom 12:12, where it is involved in the verb proskartereo; compare Acts 6:4. In 2 Tim 4:2 it stands for the expressive verb epistethi, "stand to."

Instantly (urgently, steadfastly) is the King James Version rendering of two different Greek phrases, spoudaios, found in Lk 7:4; and en ekteneia, in Acts 26:7. In both cases the American Standard Revised Version renders "earnestly."

Russell Benjamin Miller


INSTRUCTION

in-struk'-shun.

See CATECHIST ;EDUCATION ;SCHOOL .


INSTRUMENT

in'-stroo-ment (keli; in Greek plural hopla, Rom 6:13): The word in the Old Testament is used for utensils for service, chiefly in connection with the sanctuary (compare Ex 25:9; Nu 4:12,26,32; 1 Ki 19:21; 1 Ch 9:29; 2 Ch 4:16, the King James Version); for weapons of war (1 Sam 8:12; 1 Ch 12:33,17, etc.); notably for musical instruments. See MUSIC . The members of the body are described by Paul (Rom 6:13) as "instruments" to be used in the service of righteousness, as before they were in the service of unrighteousness.


INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC

(shalishim): Thus, the Revised Version (British and American) and the King James Version (1 Sam 18:6), the Revised Version margin "triangles" or "three-stringed instruments."

See MUSIC .


INSURRECTION

in-su-rek'-shun: The word in Ps 64:2 the King James Version is changed in the Revised Version (British and American) into "tumult"; in Ezr 4:19 (verb) it represents the Aramaic nesa', to "lift up oneself." In the New Testament stasis, is rendered "insurrection" in Mk 15:7 the King James Version (where compare the verb "made insurrection"), but in Lk 23:19,25 "sedition." the Revised Version (British and American) correctly renders "insurrection" throughout; also in Acts 24:5 "insurrections" for the King James Version "sedition."


INTEGRITY

in-teg'-ri-ti (tom, tummah): The translation of tom, "simplicity," "soundness," "completeness," rendered also "upright," "perfection." Its original sense appears in the phrase letom (1 Ki 22:34; 2 Ch 18:33), "A certain man drew his bow at a venture" margin "Hebrew, in his simplicity" (compare 2 Sam 15:11, "in their simplicity"). It is translated "integrity" (Gen 20:5,6; 1 Ki 9:4; Ps 7:8; 25:21; 26:1,11; 41:12; 78:72; Prov 19:1; 20:7), in all which places it seems to carry the meaning of simplicity, or sincerity of heart and intention, truthfulness, uprightness. In the plural (tummim) it is one of the words on the breastplate of the high priest (Ex 28:30; Dt 33:8; Ezr 2:63; Neh 7:65), one of the sacred lots, indicating, perhaps, "innocence" or "integrity" Septuagint aletheia). See URIM AND THUMMIM . Another word translated "integrity" is tummah, from tamam, "to complete," "be upright," "perfect," only in Job 2:3,1; 27:5; 31:6; Prov 11:3.

The word "integrity" does not occur in the New Testament, but its equivalents may be seen in "sincerity," "truth," the "pure heart," the "single eye," etc. In the above sense of simplicity of intention it is equivalent to being honest, sincere, genuine, and is fundamental to true character.

W. L. Walker


INTELLIGENCE

in-tel'-i-gens (bin): Occurs only once in the King James Version as the translation of bin, "to discriminate" (frequently translated "to understand"), in Dan 11:30 the King James Version, "(he shall) have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant," the Revised Version (British and American) renders "have regard unto them." "Intelligence" occurs in 2 Macc 3:9 the King James Version, in the sense of information (so the Revised Version (British and American)).


INTEND; INTENT

in-tend', in-tent': Early English words derived from Latin and used in the King James Version, sometimes in the Revised Version (British and American), to translate a number of different expressions of the original.

Intend is sometimes used in English in the literal sense of Latin intendere, "to stretch," but in the English Bible it is used only of the direction of the mind toward an object. Sometimes it is used of mere design (mello), Acts 5:35 the King James Version; Acts 20:13; or of desired action (thelo), Lk 14:28 the King James Version; again of a fixed purpose (boulomai), Acts 5:28; 12:4; or, finally, of a declared intention ('amar), Josh 22:33 the King James Version; 2 Ch 28:13 the King James Version.

Intent is used only of purpose, and is the translation sometimes of a conjunction (lebha`abhur), 2 Sam 17:14; (lema`an), 2 Ki 10:19; (hina), Eph 3:10; sometimes of an infinitive of purpose, 1 Cor 10:6; or of a preposition with pronoun (eis touto), Acts 9:21, and sometimes of a substantive (logo), Acts 10:29. This variety of original expressions represented in the English by single terms is an interesting illustration of the extent of interpretation embodied in our English Bible.

Russell Benjamin Miller


INTER-TESTAMENTAL, HISTORY AND LITERATURE

in-ter-tes-ta-men'-tal.

See BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS .


INTERCESSION

in-ter-sesh'-un (pagha`, "to make intercession"; originally "to strike upon," or "against"; then in a good sense, "to assail anyone with petitions," "to urge," and when on behalf of another, "to intercede" (Ruth 1:16; Jer 7:16; 27:18; Job 21:15; Gen 23:8; Isa 53:12; Jer 36:25). A similar idea is found in enteuxis, used as "petition," and in the New Testament "intercession." The English word is derived from Latin intercedo, "to come between," which strangely has the somewhat opposed meanings of "obstruct" and "to interpose on behalf of" a person, and finally "to intercede." The growth of meaning in this word in the various languages is highly suggestive. In the Greek New Testament we find the word in 1 Tim 2:1; 4:5; entugchano, is also found in Rom 8:26-34):

Etymology and Meaning of Term

I. MAN'S INTERCESSION FOR HIS FELLOW-MAN

1. Patriarchal Examples

2. Intercessions of Moses

3. The Progress of Religion, Seen in Moses' Intercessions

4. Intercessory Prayer in Israel's Later History

5. The Rise of Official Intercession

6. Samuel as an Intercessor in His Functions as Judge, Priest and Prophet

7. Intercession in the Poetic Books

8. The Books of Wisdom

9. The Prophets' Succession to Moses and Samuel

10. The Priest and Intercession

11. Intercession in the Gospels

12. Intercessory Prayers of the Church

13. Intercession Found in the Epistles

II. INTERCESSION PERFECTED IN CHRIST'S OFFICE AND IN THE CHURCH

III. INTERCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Etymology and Meaning of Term:

The meaning of the word is determined by its use in 1 Tim 2:1, "I exhort, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all and men"; where the different kinds of prayers appear to be distinguished. Considerable discussion has arisen on the exact meaning of these words. Augustine refers them to the liturgy of the Eucharist. This seems to be importing the significance of the various parts of the ceremony as observed at a time much later than the date of the passage in question. "Supplications" and "prayers" refer to general and specific petitions; "intercessions" will then have the meaning of a request concerning others.

Intercession is prayer on behalf of another, and naturally arises from the instinct of the human heart--not merely prompted by affection and interest, but recognizing that God's relation to man is not merely individual, but social. Religion thus involves man's relations to his fellow-man, just as in man's social position intercession with one on behalf of another is a common incident, becoming, in the development of society, the function of appointed officials; as in legal and courtly procedure, so in religion, the spontaneous and affectionate prayer to God on behalf of another grows into the regular and orderly service of a duly appointed priesthood. Intercession is thus to be regarded: (1) as the spontaneous act of man for his fellowman; (2) the official act of developed sacerdotalism; (3) the perfecting of the natural movement of humanity, and the typified function of priesthood in the intercession of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

I. Man's Intercession for His Fellow-Man.

1. Patriarchal Examples:

Many such prayers are recorded in Scripture. The sacrificial act of Noah may have been partly of this nature, for it is followed by a promise of God on behalf of the race and the earth at large (Gen 8:20-22). Such also is Abraham's prayer for Ishmael (Gen 17:18); Abraham's prayer for Sodom (Gen 18:23-33); Abraham for Abimelech (Gen 20:17). Jacob's blessing of Joseph's sons is of the nature of intercession (Gen 48:8-23). His dying blessing of his sons is hardly to be regarded as intercessory; it is, rather, declarative, although in the case of Joseph it approaches intercession. The absence of distinct intercessory prayer from Abraham to Moses is to be observed, and shows how intensely personal and individual the religious consciousness was still in its undeveloped quality. In Moses, however, the social element finds a further development, and is interesting as taking up the spirit of the Father of the Faithful. Moses is the creator of the national spirit. He lifts religion from its somewhat selfish character in the patriarchal life to the higher and wider plane of a national and racial fellowship.

2. Intercessions of Moses:

The progressive character of the Divine leading of man is found thus in the development of the intercessory spirit, e.g. Moses' prayer for the removal of plagues (Ex 15:25 f); for water at Rephidim (Ex 17:4); for victory over Amalek (Ex 17:8-16); prayer for the people after the golden calf (Ex 32:11-14,21-34; 33:12 f); after the renewal of the tables of stone (Ex 34:9); at the setting forth and stopping of the Ark (Nu 10:35 f); after the burning at Taberah (Nu 11:2); for the healing of Miriam's leprosy (Nu 12:13); after the return of the spies (Nu 14:13-19); after the destruction by serpents (Nu 21:7); for direction in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad (Nu 27:5); for a successor (Nu 27:15); recital of his prayer for the people for their entrance into Canaan (Dt 3:23 f); recital of his prayer for the people after the worship of the golden calf (Dt 9:18 ff); recital of prayers for the rebellious people (Dt 9:25-29); a command to him who pays his third-year tithes to offer prayer for the nation (Dt 26:15); Moses' final blessing of the tribes (Dt 33).

3. The Progress of Religion, Seen in Moses' Intercessions:

This extensive series of the intercessory prayers of Moses forms a striking illustration of the growth of religion, represented by the founder of the national life of Israel. It is the history of an official, but it is also the history of a leader whose heart was filled with the intensest patriotism and regard for his fellows. None of these prayers are perfunctory. They are the vivid and passionate utterances of a man full of Divine enthusiasm and human affection. They are real prayers wrung from a great and devout soul on occasions of deep and critical importance. Apart from their importance in the history of Israel, they are a noble record of a great leader of men and servant of God.

4. Intercessory Prayer in Israel's Later History:

In the history of Joshua we find only the prayer for the people after the sin of Achan (Josh 7:6-9), although the communications from God to Joshua are numerous. A faint intercessory note may be heard in Deborah's song (Jdg 5:31) though it is almost silenced by the stern and warlike tone of the poem. Gideon's prayer History of seems to reecho something of the words of Moses (Jdg 6:13), and accords with the national and religious spirit of the great leader who helped in the formation of the religious life of his people (see Jdg 6:24), notwithstanding the evident lower plane on which he stood (Jdg 8:27), which may account partially for the apostasy after his death (Jdg 8:33 f). Manoah's prayers (Jdg 13) may be noted.

5. The Rise of Official Intercession:

(The satisfaction of Micah at securing a priest for his house, and the subsequent story, belong rather to the history of official intercession (Jdg 18; see below), as also the inquiry of the people through Phinehas at Shiloh (Jdg 20:27 f), and the people's mourning and prayer (Jdg 21:2 f).)

6. Samuel as an Intercessor in His Functions as Judge, Priest and Prophet:

Samuel is the real successor of Moses, and in connection with his life intercession again appears more distinct and effective. Hannah's song, though chiefly of thankfulness, is not without the intercessory spirit (1 Sam 2:1-11). So also of Samuel's prayer at Mizpeh (1 Sam 7:5), and the recognition by the people of Samuel's place (1 Sam 7:8 f; see also 8:6,21; 10:17-25; 12:19) (for the custom of inquiring of the Lord through a seer see 1 Sam 9:6-10); Samuel's prayer for Saul (1 Sam 15:11); Saul's failure to secure inquiry of God, even through intercession (1 Sam 28:6); Saul's final appeal through the witch of Endor (1 Sam 28:7-20); David's prayer to God (2 Sam 7:18); David's Judge, prayer for deliverance of the people from pestilence (2 Sam 24:17); Solomon's prayer for wisdom to govern the people (1 Ki 3:5-15); Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple (1 Ki 8:12-61); Jeroboam's appeal to the man of God to pray for the healing of his hand (1 Ki 13:6); Elijah's prayer for the widow's son (1 Ki 17:20); Elijah's prayer for rain (1 Ki 18:42); Elisha's prayer for the widow's son (2 Ki 4:33); Elisha's prayer for the opening of the young man's eyes (2 Ki 6:17); Hezekiah's appeal to Isaiah (2 Ki 19:4); Hezekiah's prayer (2 Ki 19:14-19); Josiah's command for prayer concerning the "book that is found" (2 Ki 22:13). In Ch we find David's prayer for his house (1 Ch 17:16-27); David's prayer for deliverance from the plague (1 Ch 21:17); David's prayer for the people and for Solomon at the offering of gifts for the temple (1 Ch 29:10-19); Solomon's prayer at the consecration of the temple (2 Ch 6:1-42); Asa's prayer (2 Ch 14:11); Jehoshaphat's prayer (2 Ch 20:5-13); Hezekiah's prayer for the people who had not prepared to eat the Passover (2 Ch 30:18); Josiah's command for prayer concerning the book (2 Ch 34:21). In the Prophets we note Ezra's prayer (Ezr 9:5-15); Nehemiah's prayer (Neh 1:5-11); the prayer of the Levites for the nation (Neh 9:4-38).

7. Intercession in the Poetic Books:

The poetic books furnish a few examples of intercessory prayer: Job's intercession for his children (Job 1:5); Job's regret at the absence of intercession (Job 16:21); the Lord's command that Job should pray for his friends (Job 42:8). It is remarkable that the references to the Poetic intercession in the Psalms are few; but it must not be forgotten that the psalm is generally a lyrical expression of an intense subjective condition. This does not seem in the consciousness of Israel to have reached an altruistic development. The Psalms express very powerfully the sense of obligation to God, consciousness of sin, indignation against the sin of others. Occasionally the patriotic spirit leads to prayer for Israel; but only rarely does any deep sense of interest in the welfare of others appear to possess the hearts of Israel's singers. In Ps 2:12 there is a hint of the intercessory office of the Son, which reflects, perhaps, the growth of the Messianic spirit in the mind of Israel; Ps 20 is intercessional; it is the prayer of a people for their king. In Ps 25:22 we find a prayer for the redemption of Israel, as in Ps 28:9. In Ps 35:13 the Psalmist refers to his intercession for others. But the "prayer returned into mine own bosom," and the final issue of the prayer becomes rather denunciatory than intercessional. The penitence of Ps 51 rises into a note of prayer for the city (51:18). Sometimes (Ps 60, and perhaps Ps 67), the prayer is not individual but for the community, though even there it is hardly intercession. A common necessity makes common prayer. In Ps 69 there is the recognition of the injury that folly and sin may do to others, and a kind of compensatory note of intercession is heard. Ps 72 is regarded by some as the royal father's prayer for his son and successor, but the reading of the title adopted by the Revised Version (British and American) takes even this psalm from the category of intercession. In Asaph's Masehil (Ps 74), intercession is more distinct; it is a prayer for the sanctuary and the people in their desolation and calamity. Asaph appears to have caught something of the spirit of Moses, as in Ps 79 he again prays for the deliverance of Jerusalem; while a faint echo of the intercessory plea for the nation is heard in Ethan's psalm (Ps 89). It sounds faintly in Ps 106. In Ps 122 we seem to breathe a larger and more liberal spirit. It contains the appeal to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (122:6), as if the later thought of Israel had begun to expand beyond the mere limits of personal penitence, or desire for deliverance, or denunciation of the enemy. In one of the Songs of Degrees (Ps 125), there is the somewhat severely ethical prayer: "Do good, O Yahweh, unto those that are good." The yearning for the salvation of man as man has not yet been born. The Christ must come before the fullness of Divine love is shed abroad in the hearts even of the pious. This comparative absence of intercessory prayer from the service-book of Israel, and its collected expressions of spiritual experience, is instructive. We find continued references to those who needed prayer; but for the most part these references are descriptive of their wickedness, or denunciatory of their hostility to the Psalmist. The Book of Psalms is thus a striking commentary on the growth of Israel's spiritual life. Intense as it is in its perception of God and His claim on human righteousness, it is only when the supreme revelation of Divine love and the regard for universal man has appeared in the person of our Lord that the large and loving spirit which intercession signifies is found in the experience and expressions of the pious.

8. The Books of Wisdom:

In the Wisdom books there is little, if any, reference to intercession. But they deal rather with ethical character, and often on a merely providential and utilitarian basis. It is noticeable that the only reference to pleading a cause is said to be by the Lord Himself as against the injustice of man (Prov 22:23): "Yahweh will plead their (the poor's) cause." Action on behalf of others does not appear to have been very highly regarded by the current ethics of the Israelite. A kind of negative helpfulness is indicated in Prov 24:28: "Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause"; and it is significant that the office of advocate was not known among the Jews until they had come under the authority of Rome, when, not knowing the forms of Roman law, they were obliged to secure the aid of a Roman lawyer before the courts. Such practitioners were found in the provinces (Cic. pro Coelio c. 30); Tertullus (Acts 24:1) was such an advocate.

9. The Prophets' Succession of Moses and Samuel:

In the prophetical books the note of intercession reappears. The prophet, though primarily a messenger from God to man, has also something of the character of the intercessor (see Isaiah's call, Isa 6). Isa 25; 26 exhibit the intercessory characteristics. The request of Hezekiah for the prayers of Isaiah (Isa 37:4), and the answer of the Lord implied in 37:6, recall the constantly recurring service of Moses to the people. Hezekiah himself becomes an intercessor (37:14-21). In Jer 4:10 intercession is mingled with the words of the messenger. The sin of the people hinders such prayers as were offered on their behalf (Jer 7:16; compare 11:14; 14:11). Intercessory prayers are found in Jer 10:23 ff; 14:7 ff,19-22. The message of Zedekiah requesting Jeremiah's help is perhaps an instance of seer-inquiry as much as intercession (Jer 21:1 f; compare 1 Sam 9:19). In Jer 42:4, the prophet consents to the request of Johanan to seek the Lord on behalf of the people. The Book of Lam is naturally conceived in a more constantly recurring spirit of intercession. In the prophecies Jeremiah has been the messenger of God to the people. But, after the catastrophe, in his sorrow he appeals to God for mercy upon them (Lam 2:20; 5:1,19). Ezekiel in the same way is rather the seer of visions and the prophetic representative of God. Yet at times he appeals to God for the people (Ezek 9:8; 11:13). In Dan we find the intercession of his three friends sought for in order to secure the revelation of the king's dream (Dan 2:17); and Daniel's prayer for Jerusalem and her people (Dan 9:16-19).

In the Minor Prophets intercession rarely appears; even in the graphic pictures of Jonah, though the work itself shows the enlarging of the conception of God's relation to humanity outside of Israel, the prophet himself exhibits no tenderness and utters no pleas for the city against which he had been sent to prophesy, and receives the implied rebuke from the Lord for his want of sympathy, caring more for the perished gourd than for the vast population of Nineveh, whom the Lord, however, pitied and spared (Jon 4). Even the sublime prayer of Hab 3 has only a suggestion of intercession. Zec 6:13 relieves the general severity of the prophetic message, consisting of the threatenings of judgment, by the gleam of the promise of a royal priest whose office was partially that of an intercessor, though the picture is darkened by the character of the priesthood and the people, whose services had been selfish, without mercy and compassion (Zec 7:4,7). Now the spirit of tenderness, the larger nature, the loving heart, are to be restored to Israel (Zec 8:16-23). Other nations than Israel will share in the mercy of God. In Mal 2:7 we find the priest rebuked for the loss of his intercessory character.

10. The Priest and Intercession:

How far intercession was regarded as a special duty of the priesthood it is not very easy to determine. The priestly office itself was undoubtedly intercessory. In the Priest and offering of the sacrifice even for the individual, and certainly in the national functions, both of the regular and the occasional ceremonies, the priest represented the individual or the community. In Joel 2:17 the priests are distinctly bidden to "weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Yahweh." Mal 1:9 appeals to them for intercession to God, and the graphic scene in 1 Macc 7:33-38 shows the priests interceding on behalf of the people against Nicanor.

11. Intercession in the Gospels:

In the New Testament, all prayer necessarily takes a new form from its relation to our Lord, and in this intercessory prayer shares. At the outset, Christ teaches prayer on behalf of those "which despitefully use you" (Mt 5:44 the King James Version). How completely does this change the entire spirit of prayer! We breathe a new atmosphere of the higher revelation of love. The Lord's Prayer (Mt 6:9-13) is of this character. Its initial word is social, domestic; prayer is the address of children to the Father. Even though some of the petitions are not original, yet their place in the prayer, and the general tone of the Master's teaching, exhibit the social and altruistic spirit, not so pervasive of the older dispensation. "Thy kingdom come" leads the Order of petitions, with its essentially intercessory character. The forgiveness of others, which is the measure and plea of our own forgiveness, brings even those who have wronged us upon the same plane as ourselves, and if the plea be genuine, how can we refuse to pray for them? And if for our enemies, then surely for our friends. In Mt 7:11 f, the good things sought of the Father are to be interpreted as among those that if we desire from others we should do to them. And from this spirit the intercessory prayer cannot be absent. We find the spirit of intercession in the pleas of those who sought Christ's help for their friends, which He was always so quick to recognize: the centurion for his servant (Mt 8:13); the friends of the paralytic (Mt 9:2-6), where the miracle was wrought on the ground of the friends' faith. Of a similar character are the requests of the woman for her child and the Lord's response (Mt 15:28); of the man for his lunatic son (Mt 17:14-21). There is the suggestion of the intercessory spirit in the law of trespass, specifically followed by the promise of the answer to the prayer of the two or three, agreed and in fellowship (Mt 18:15-20), with the immediately attached precepts of forgiveness (Mt 18:21-35). A remarkable instance of intercession is recorded in Mt 20:20-23, where the mother of Zebedee's sons makes a request on behalf of her children; the added expression, "worshipping him," raises the occasion into one of intercessory prayer. our Lord's rebuke is not to the prayer, but to its lack of wisdom.

It is needless to review the cases in the other Gospels. But the statement of Mk 6:5 f, that Christ could not perform mighty works because of unbelief, sheds a flood of light upon one of the important conditions of successful intercession, when contrasted with the healing conditioned by the faith of others than the healed. One of the most distinct examples of intercessory prayer is that of the Lord's intercession for Peter (Lk 22:31 f), and for those who crucified Him (Lk 23:34). The place of intercession in the work of Christ is seen clearly in our Lord's intercessory prayer (see INTERCESSION OF CHRIST ), where it is commanded by definite precept and promise of acceptance. The promise of the answer to prayer in the name of Christ is very definite (Jn 16:24). Christ's high-priestly prayer is the sublimest height of prayer to God and is intercessory throughout (Jn 17); Jn 16:26 does not, as some have held, deny His intercession for His disciples; it only throws open the approach to God Himself.

12. Intercessory Prayers of the Church:

Acts introduces us to the working of the fresh elements which Christ gave to life. Hence, the prayers of the church become Christian prayers, involving the wider outlook on others and on the world at large which Christianity has bestowed on men. The prayer of the assembled believers upon the liberation of the apostles breathes this spirit (Acts 4:24-30). The consecrating prayer for the seven was probably intercessory (Acts 6:6; compare Acts 1:24). How pathetic is the plea of Stephen for his murderers (Acts 7:60)! How natural is intercession (Acts 8:24)! Peter at Joppa (Acts 9:40); the church making prayer with-out ceasing for Peter (Acts 12:5,12); the prayer for Barnabas and Saul at Antioch (Acts 13:3); Paul and Barnabas praying for the churches (Acts 14:23); the church at Antioch commending Paul and Silas to the grace of God (Acts 15:40); Paul and the elders of Ephesus (Acts 20:36), are all examples, more or less defined, of intercessory prayer.

13. Intercession Found in the Epistles:

In the Epistles we may expect to find intercession more distinctly filled with the relation of prayer through Christ. Paul gives us many examples in his Epistles: for the Romans (Rom 1:9); the Spirit's interceding (8:27); Paul's prayer for his race (10:1); his request for prayers (15:30); the help that he found from the prayer of his friends (2 Cor 1:11); prayer for the Corinthian church (2 Cor 13:7); for the Ephesians (Eph 1:16-23; 3:14-21; see also Eph 6:18; Phil 1:3-11,19; Col 1:3,9; 4:3; 1 Thess 1:2; 5:23,15; 2 Thess 1:2); a definite command that intercession be made for all men and for kings and those in authority (1 Tim 2:1,2); his prayer for Timothy (2 Tim 1:3); for Philemon (1:4); and prayer to be offered for the sick by the elders of the church (Jas 5:14-18: see also Heb 13:18-21; 1 Jn 5:14 ff).

II. Intercession Perfected in Christ's Office and in the Church.

This review of the intercession of the Scriptures prepares us for the development of a specific office of intercession, perfectly realized in Christ. We have seen Moses complying with the people's request to represent them before God. In a large and generous spirit the leader of Israel intercedes with God for his nation. It was natural that this striking example of intercessory prayer should be followed by other leaders, and that the gradually developed system of religious worship should furnish the conception of the priest, and especially the high priest, as the intercessor for those who came to the sacrifice. This was particularly the significance of the great Day of Atonement, when after offering for himself, the high priest offered the sacrifice for the whole people. This official act, however, does not do away with the intercessory character of prayer as offered by men. We have seen how it runs through the whole history of Israel. But it is found much more distinctly in the Christian life and apparently in the practice of the Christian assembly itself. Paul continually refers to his own intercessory prayers, and seeks for a similar service on his own behalf from those to whom he writes. Intercession is thus based upon the natural tendency of the heart filled by love and a deep sympathetic sense of relation to others. Christ's intercessory prayer is the highest example and pattern of this form of prayer. His intercessions for His disciples, for His crucifiers, are recorded, and the sacred record rises to the supreme height in the prayer of Jn 17. In this prayer the following characteristics are to be found: (1) It is based upon the intimate relation of Jesus to the Father. This gives to such prayer its justification; may it be said, its right. (2) It follows the completest fulfillment of duty. It is not the mere expression of desire, even for others. It is the crown of effort on their behalf. He has revealed God to His disciples. He has given to them God's words; therefore He prays for them (Jn 17:6,7-9). (3) It recognizes the Divine, unbroken relation to the object of the prayer: "I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep," etc. (17:11). (4) The supreme end of the prayer is salvation from the evil of the world (17:15). (5) The wide sweep of the prayer and its chief objects--unity with God, and the presence with Christ, and the indwelling of the Divine love. The prayer is a model for all intercessory prayer.

See, further, INTERCESSION OF CHRIST; PRAYERS OF CHRIST; OFFICES OF CHRIST.

III. Intercession of the Holy Spirit.

In connection with the subject of intercession, there arises a most interesting question as to whether the Holy Spirit is not presented in Scriptures as an intercessor. The text in which the doctrine seems to be taught is that of Rom 8:26 f: "In like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." By far the larger number of expositors have understood by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The older commentators, in general, refer to the Holy Spirit. Tholuck, Ewald, Philippi, Meyer, most of the American theologians and English commentators, as Shedd, Alford, Jowett, Wordsworth, interpret it in the same way. Lange and Olshausen refer it to the human spirit. Undoubtedly, the "groanings" have led to the denial of the reference to the Holy Spirit. But the very form of the word translated "helpeth" indicates cooperation, and this must be of something other than the spirit of man himself. The undoubted difficulties of the passage, which are strongly urged by Lange (see Lange's Commentary on Rom 8:26), must be acknowledged. At the same time the statement seems to be very clear and definite. An explanation has been given that the Holy Spirit is here referred to as dwelling in us, and thus making intercession. The Divine Spirit is said to be a Spirit of supplication (Zec 12:10). The distinction which is made between the intercession of Christ in heaven in His priestly office and that of the Holy Spirit interceding within the souls of believers, referred to by Shedd (see Commentary on Romans), must be carefully used, for if pressed to its extreme it would lead to the materialization and localization of the Divine nature. Moreover, may not the intercession of our Lord be regarded as being partially exemplified in that of the Spirit whom He has declared to be His agent and representative? If Christ dwells in believers by His Spirit, His intercession, especially if subjective in and with their spirits, may properly be described as the intercession of the Holy Ghost.

L. D. Bevan


INTERCESSION OF CHRIST

The general conception of our Lord's mediatorial office is specially summed up in His intercession in which He appears in His high-priestly office, and also as interceding with the Father on behalf of that humanity whose cause He had espoused.

1. Christ's Intercession Viewed in Its Priestly Aspect:

The function of priesthood as developed under Judaism involved the position of mediation between man and God. The priest represented man, and on man's behalf approached God; thus he offered sacrifice, interceded and gave to the offerer whom he represented the benediction and expression of the Divine acceptance. (For the various forms of these offerings, see special articles.) As in sacrifice, so in the work of Christ, we find the proprietary rights of the offerer in the sacrifice. For man, Christ as one with man, and yet in His own personal right, offers Himself (see Rom 5; and compare Gal 4:5 with Heb 2:11). There was also the transfer of guilt and its conditions, typically by laying the hand on the head of the animal, which then bore the sins of the offerer and was presented to God by the priest. The acknowledgment of sin and the surrender to God is completely fulfilled in Christ's offering of Himself, and His death (compare Lev 3:2,8,13; 16:21; with Isa 53:6; 2 Cor 5:21). our Lord's intercessory quality in the sacrifice of Himself is not only indicated by the imputation of guilt to Him as representing the sinner, but also in the victory of His life over death, which is then given to man in God's acceptance of His representative and substitute.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the intercessory character of our Lord's high-priestly office is transferred to the heavenly condition and work of Christ, where the relation of Christ's work to man's condition is regarded as being still continued in the heavenly place (see Heb 9:11-28). This entrance into heaven is once for all, and in the person of the high priest the way is open to the very presence of God. From one point of view (Heb 10:12) the priestly service of the Lord was concluded and gathered up into His kingly office (Heb 10:13,14-18). But from another point of view, we ourselves are bidden to enter into the Holiest Place; as if in union with Christ we too become a kingly priesthood (Heb 10:19-22; and compare 1 Pet 2:9).

It must not be forgotten, however, that this right of entrance into the most Holy Place is one that depends entirely upon our vital union with Christ, He appears in heaven for us and we with Him, and in this sense He fulfills the second duty of His high-priestly office as intercessor, with the added conception drawn from the legal advocacy of the Roman court. The term translated "Advocate" in 1 Jn 2:2 is parakletos, which in Jn 14:16 is translated "Comforter." The word is of familiar use in Greek for the legal advocate or patronus who appeared on behalf of his client. Thus, in the double sense of priestly and legal representative, our Lord is our intercessor in Heaven.

Of the modes in which Christ carries out His intercessory office, we can have no knowledge except so far as we may fairly deduce them from the phraseology and suggested ideas of Scripture. As high priest, it may surely be right for us to aid our weak faith by assuring ourselves that our Lord pleads for us, while at the same time we must be careful not to deprave our thought concerning the glorified Lord by the metaphors and analogies of earthly relationship.

The intercessory work of Christ may thus be represented: He represents man before God in His perfect nature, His exalted office and His completed work. The Scripture word for this is (Heb 9:24) "to appear before the face of God for us." There is also an active intercession. This is the office of our Lord as advocate or parakletos. That this conveys some relation to the aid which one who has broken the law receives from an advocate cannot be overlooked, and we find Christ's intercession in this aspect brought into connection with the texts which refer to justification and its allied ideas (see Rom 8:34; 1 Jn 2:1).

2. Christ's Intercessory Work from the Standpoint of Prayer:

In PRAYERS OF CHRIST (which see), the intercessory character of many of our Lord's prayers, and especially that of Jn 17, is considered. And it has been impossible for Christian thought to divest itself of the idea that the heavenly intercession of Christ is of the order of prayer. It is impossible for us to know; and even if Christ now prays to the Father, it can be in no way analogous to earthly prayers. The thought of some portion of Christendom distinctly combined prayer in the heavenly work of the Lord. There is danger in extreme views. Scriptural expressions must not be driven too far, and, on the other hand, they must not be emptied of all their contents. Modern Protestant teaching has, in its protest against a merely physical conception of our Lord's state and occupation in heaven, almost sublimed reality from His intercessory work. In Lutheran teaching the intercession of our Lord was said to be "vocal," "verbal" and "oral." It has been well remarked that such forms of prayer require flesh and blood, and naturally the teachers of the Reformed churches, for the most part, have contented themselves (as for example Hodge, Syst. Theol., II, 593) with the declaration that "the intercession of Christ includes: (1) His appearing before God in our behalf, as the sacrifice for our sins, as our high priest, on the ground of whose work we receive the remission of our sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and all needed good; (2) defense against the sentence of the law and the charges of Satan, who is the great accuser; (3) His offering Himself as our surety, not only that the demands of justice shall be shown to be satisfied, but that His people shall be obedient and faithful; (4) the oblation of the persons of the redeemed, sanctifying their prayers, and all their services, rendering them acceptable to God, through the savor of his own merits."

Even this expression of the elements which constitute the intercession of the Lord, cautious and spiritual as it is in its application to Christian thought and worship, must be carefully guarded from a too complete and materialistic use. Without this care, worship and devout thought may become degraded and fall into the mechanical forms by which our Lord's position of intercessor has been reduced to very little more than an imaginative and spectacular process which goes on in some heavenly place. It must not be forgotten that the metaphorical and symbolic origin of the ideas which constitute Christ's intercession is always in danger of dominating and materializing the spiritual reality of His intercessional office.

L. D. Bevan


INTEREST

in'-ter-est (neshekh, mashsha'; tokos): The Hebrew word neshekh is from a root which means "to bite"; thus interest is "something bitten off." The other word, mashsa', means "lending on interest." The Greek term is from the root tikto, "to produce" or "beget," hence, interest is something begotten or produced by money. The Hebrew words are usually translated "usury," but this meant the same as interest, all interest being reckoned as usury.

Long before Abraham's time money had been loaned at a fixed rate of interest in Babylonia and almost certainly in Egypt. The Code of Hammurabi gives regulations regarding the lending and borrowing of money, the usual interest being 20 percent. Sometimes it was only 11 2/3 and 13 1/3, as shown by contract tablets. In one case, if the loan was not paid in two months, 18 per cent interest would be charged. Corn (grain), dates, onions, etc., were loaned at interest. Thus Moses and Israel would be familiar with commercial loans and interest. In Israel there was no system of credit or commercial loans in Moses' time and after. A poor man borrowed because he was poor. The law of Moses (Ex 22:25) forbade loaning at interest. There was to be no creditor and no taker of interest among them (Lev 25:36,37). Dt permits them to lend on interest to a foreigner (Dt 23:19,20), but not to a brother Israelite. That this was considered the proper thing in Israel for centuries is seen in Ps 15:5, while Prov 28:8 implies that it was an unusual thing, interest being generally exacted and profit made. Ezekiel condemns it as a heinous sin (Ezek 18:8,13,17) and holds up the ideal of righteousness as not taking interest (22:12). Isa 24:2 implies that it was a business in that age, the lender and borrower being social types. Jeremiah implies that there was not always the best feeling between lenders and borrowers (15:10). According to Neh 5:7,10, rich Jews were lending to others and exacting heavy interest. Nehemiah condemns such conduct and forbids its continuance, citing himself as an example of lending without interest. The lenders restored 1 percent of that exacted.

In the New Testament, references to interest occur in the parable of the Pounds (Lk 19:23) and of the Talents (Mt 25:27). Here the men were expected to put their master's money out at interest, and condemnation followed the failure to do so. Thus the principle of receiving interest is not condemned in the Old Testament, only it was not to be taken from a brother Israelite. In the New Testament it is distinctly encouraged.

See also USURY .

J. J. Reeve


INTERMEDDLE

in-ter-med'-'-l (`arabh, "to mix up (self) with something," "mingle in," "share," "take interest in"): The word occurs only once (Prov 14:10) in a passage descriptive of "the ultimate solitude of each man's soul at all times." "The heart knoweth its own bitterness."

"Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh."

(Compare 1 Ki 8:38.) Something there is in every sorrow which no one else can share. "And a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy," not necessarily in an interfering or any offensive way, but simply does not share or take any interest in the other's joy.

For "intermeddleth with" (Prov 18:1 the King James Version), the Revised Version (British and American) gives "rageth against" (margin "quarrelleth with").

M. O. Evans


INTERMEDIATE, STATE

in-ter-me'-di-at.

See ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT .


INTERPRETATION

in-tur-pre-ta'-shun:

1. General Principles:

Is a generic term and may refer to any work of literature. Referred specifically to the sacred Scriptures, the science of interpretation is generally known as hermeneutics, while the practical application of the principles of this science is exegesis. In nearly all cases, interpretation has in mind the thoughts of another, and then, further, these thoughts expressed in another language than that of the interpreter. In this sense it is used in Biblical research. A person has interpreted the thoughts of another when he has in his own mind a correct reproduction or photograph of the thought as it was conceived in the mind of the original writer or speaker. It is accordingly a purely reproductive process, involving no originality of thought on the part of the interpreter. If the latter adds anything of his own it is eisegesis and not exegesis. The moment the Bible student has in his own mind what was in the mind of the author or authors of the Biblical books when these were written, he has interpreted the thought of the Scriptures.

The interpretation of any specimen of literature will depend on the character of the work under consideration. A piece of poetry and a chapter of history will not be interpreted according to the same principles or rules. Particular rules that are legitimate in the explanation of a work of fiction would be entirely out of place in dealing with a record of facts. Accordingly, the rules of the correct interpretation of the Scriptures will depend upon the character of these writings themselves, and the principles which an interpreter will employ in his interpretation of the Scriptures will be in harmony with his ideas of what the Scriptures are as to origin, character, history, etc. In the nature of the case the dogmatical stand of the interpreter will materially influence his hermeneutics and exegesis. In the legitimate sense of the term, every interpreter of the Bible is "prejudiced," i.e. is guided by certain principles which he holds antecedently to his work of interpretation. If the modern advanced critic is right in maintaining that the Biblical books do not differ in kind or character from the religious books of other ancient peoples, such as the Indians or the Persians, then the same principles that he applies in the case of the Rig Veda or the Zend Avesta he will employ also in his exposition of the Scriptures. If, on the other hand, the Bible is for him a unique collection of writings, Divinely inspired and a revelation from the source of all truth, the Bible student will hesitate long before accepting contradictions, errors, mistakes, etc., in the Scriptures.

2. Special Principles:

The Scriptures are a Divine and human product combined. That the holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Spirit is the claim of the Scriptures themselves. Just where the line of demarcation is to be drawn between the human and the Divine factors in the production of the sacred Scriptures materially affects the principles of interpreting these writings (see INSPIRATION ). That the human factor was sufficiently potent to shape the form of thought in the Scriptures is evident on all hands. Paul does not write as Peter does, nor John as James; the individuality of the writer of the different books appears not only in the style, choice of words, etc., but in the whole form of thought also. There are such things as a Pauline, a Johannine and a Petrine type of Christian thought, although there is only one body of Christian truth underlying all types. Insofar as the Bible is exactly like other books, it must be interpreted as we do other works of literature. The Scriptures are written in Hebrew and in Greek, and the principles of forms and of syntax that would apply to the explanation of other works written in these languages and under these circumstances must be applied to the Old Testament and New Testament also. Again, the Bible is written for men, and its thoughts are those of mankind and not of angels or creatures of a different or higher spiritual or intellectual character; and accordingly there is no specifically Biblical logic, or rhetoric, or grammar. The laws of thought and of the interpretation of thought in these matters pertain to the Bible as they do to other writings.

But in regard to the material contents of the Scriptures, matters are different and the principles of interpretation must be different. God is the author of the Scriptures which He has given through human agencies. Hence, the contents of the Scriptures, to a great extent, must be far above the ordinary concepts of the human mind. When John declares that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to redeem it, the interpreter does not do justice to the writer if he finds in the word "God" only the general philosophical #conception of the Deity and not that God who is our Father through Christ; for it was the latter thought that was in the mind of the writer when he penned these words. Thus, too, it is a false interpretation to find in "Our Father" anything but this specifically Biblical conception of God, nor is it possible for anybody but a believing Christian to utter this prayer (Mt 6:9) in the sense which Christ, who taught it to His disciples, intended.

Again, the example of Christ and His disciples in their treatment of the Old Testament teaches the principle that the ipse dixit of a Scriptural passage is to be interpreted as decisive as to its meaning. In the about 400 citations from the Old Testament found in the New Testament, there is not one in which the mere "It is written" is not regarded as settling its meaning. Whatever may be a Bible student's theory of inspiration, the teachings and the examples of interpretation found in the Scriptures are in perfect. harmony in this matter.

These latter facts, too, show that in the interpretation of the Scriptures principles must be applied that are not applicable in the explanation of other books. As God is the author of the Scriptures He may have had, and, as a matter of fact, in certain cases did have in mind more than the human agents through whom He spoke did themselves understand. The fact that, in the New Testament, persons like Aaron and David, institutions like the law, the sacrificial system, the priesthood and the like, are interpreted as typical of persons and things under the New Covenant shows that the true significance, e.g. of the Levitical system, can be found only when studied in the light of the New Testament fulfillment.

Again, the principle of parallelism, not for illustrative but for argumentative purposes, is a rule that can, in the nature of the case, be applied to the interpretation of the Scriptures alone and not elsewhere. As the Scriptures represent one body of truth, though in a kaleidoscopic variety of forms, a statement on a particular subject in one place can be accepted as in harmony with a statement on the same subject elsewhere. In short, in all of those characteristics in which the Scriptures are unlike other literary productions, the principles of interpretation of the Scriptures must also be unlike those employed in other cases.

3. Historical Data:

Owing chiefly to the dogmatical basis of hermeneutics as a science, there has been a great divergence of views in the history of the church as to the proper methods of interpretation. It is one of the characteristic and instructive features of the New Testament writers that they absolutely refrain from the allegorical method of interpretation current in those times, particularly in the writings of Philo. Not even Gal 4:22, correctly understood, is an exception, since this, if an allegorical interpretation at all, is an argumentum ad hominem. The sober and grammatical method of interpretation in the New Testament writers stands out, too, in bold and creditable contrast to that of the early Christian exegetes, even of Origen. Only the Syrian fathers seemed to be an exception to the fantasies of the allegorical methods. The Middle Ages produced nothing new in this sphere; but the Reformation, with its formal principle that the Bible and the Bible alone is the rule of faith and life, made the correct grammatical interpretation of the Scriptures practically a matter of necessity. In modern times, not at all prolific in scientific discussions of hermeneutical principles and practices, the exegetical methods of different interpreters are chiefly controlled by their views as to the origin and character of the Scriptural books, particularly in regard to their inspiration.

LITERATURE.

Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics, New York, 1884. Here the literature is fully given, as also in Weidner's Theological Encyclopedia, I, 266 ff.

G. H. Schodde


INTERPRETATION OF TONGUES

See TONGUES ,INTERPRETATION OF .


INTERROGATION

in-ter-o-ga'-shun (eperotema): This word is not found at all in the King James Version, and once only in the American Standard Revised Version (1 Pet 3:21), where it replaces the word "answer" of the King James Version. This change according to Alford and Bengel is correct. "The interrogation of a good conscience" may refer to the question asked of a convert before baptism (compare Acts 8:37), or the appeal of the convert to God (compare 1 Jn 3:20-21). The opportunity to do this was given in baptism.


INTREAT; INTREATY; (ENTREAT)

in-tret', in-tret'-i: The two forms are derived from the same verb. In 1611 the spelling was indifferently "intreat" or "entreat." In editions of the King James Version since 1760 "intreat" is used in the sense of "to beg"; "entreat" in the sense of "deal with." As examples of "intreat" see Ex 8:8, "Intreat the Lord" (tsa`aq); Ruth 1:16, "Intreat me not to leave thee" (pagha`); 2 Cor 8:4, "praying us with much entreaty" paraklesis). In Gen 25:21 "intreat" is used to indicate the success of a petition. For entreat see Gen 12:16, "He entreated Abraham well"; Acts 27:3, "And Julius courteously entreated Paul" (philanthropos chresamenos, literally, "to use in a philanthropic way"); compare also Jas 3:17, where eupeithes, literally, "easily persuaded," is translated "easy to be entreated."

The Revised Version changes all passages of the King James Version where "intreat" is found to "entreat," with the exception of those mentioned below. The meaning of "entreat" is "to ask," "to beseech," "to supplicate": Job 19:17 reads "and my supplication to the children" (hannothi, the King James Version "though I entreated for the children," the Revised Version, margin "I make supplication"). Jer 15:11 reads, "I will cause the enemy to make supplication" (hiphga'ti), instead, the King James Version "I will cause the enemy to entreat" (the Revised Version margin "I will intercede for thee with the enemy"). 1 Tim 5:1 changes the King James Version "intreat" to "exhort." Phil 4:3 renders the King James Version "entreat" by "beseech."

Russell Benjamin Miller


INWARD MAN

in'-werd: A Pauline term, nearly identical with the "hidden man of the heart" (1 Pet 3:4). The Greek original, 5 ho eso (also esothen) anthropos (Rom 7:22) is lexigraphically defined "the internal man," i.e. "soul," "conscience." It is the immaterial part of man--mind, spirit--in distinction from the "outward man" which "perishes" (2 Cor 4:16 the King James Version). As the seat of spiritual influences it is the sphere in which the Holy Spirit does His renewing and saving work (Eph 3:16). The term "inward man" cannot be used interchangeably with "the new man," for it may still be "corrupt," and subject to "vanity" and "alienated from the life of God." Briefly stated, it is mind, soul, spirit--God's image in man--man's higher nature, intellectual, moral, and spiritual.

Dwight M. Pratt


INWARD PART

A symbolic expression in the Old Testament represented by three Hebrew words: chedher, "chamber," hence, inmost bowels or breast; tuchoth, "the reins"; qerebh, "midst," "middle," hence, heart. Once in the New Testament (esothen, "from within," Lk 11:39). The viscera (heart, liver, kidneys) were supposed by the ancients to be the seat of the mind, feelings, affections: the highest organs of the psyche, "the soul." The term includes the intellect ("wisdom in the inward parts," Job 38:36); the moral nature ("inward part is very wickedness," Ps 5:9); the spiritual ("my law in their inward parts," Jer 31:33). Its adverbial equivalent in Biblical use is "inwardly." INWARD MAN (which see) is identical in meaning.

Dwight M. Pratt



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