5. The Parable as Spoken or Acted Riddle
PARABLES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
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CHAPTER V. THE PARABLE AS SPOKEN OR ACTED RIDDLE.
I. The Song of Lamech.— II. The riddle of Samson. — III. The allegory of the Book of Ecclesiastes. — IV. The acted riddles of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, THE parable of fable or allegory leads, by a natural transition, to the “parable in the form of enigma or riddle,” conveyed either in word or in significant action. The object of the enigma, like the primary object of the true parable, is to arrest attention and to stimulate inquiry. Of its use for the attainment of this object we have a well-known example in the New Testament, where our Lord’s enigmatical saying — “ A little while and ye shall not see me; and again a little while and ye shall see me; because I go to the Father” — stirred in the disciples a half-bewildered questioning, which He himself was pleased to anticipate by explanation (John 16:16-24). Of another form of the same enigmatical teaching He was pleased to make use in the question, “If David called Christ Lord, how is He his Son? (Matthew 22:41-46) — a question which, if it had the effect, perhaps the intention, of silencing the insidious questions of His enemies, yet must have had also a positive suggestiveness to those who were ready to learn. But the machinery in the case of the riddle is less subtle and beautiful than in the true parable; it appeals wholly to the curious understanding, not to the heart. It is fit rather to arrest the thoughtless, than to discriminate between the thoughtless and the thoughtful hearer; it has more in it of wit than of wisdom. Moreover, the analogy on which it plays is not, as in the parable proper, a true analogy: it is the very characteristic of the riddle to give a semblance of congruity to ideas or things really incongruous; and upon this, indeed, turns the wit or humour of which the riddle is mostly intended to be the vehicle. It fails, therefore, altogether to reach the deeper meaning of the parable; it does not accord with the highest tone of teaching; it is appropriate only to the superficial, slighter, and more fanciful aspects of truth. Hence it occupies only a secondary place in Holy Scripture (though in early Eastern literature it plays a considerable part), as being better adapted to the minds of children, and those like children, than to the full-grown seriousness of manhood. In the Old Testament we find a few specimens, and only a few, of this form of parable, in no case occupying a prominent or important place.
It is, indeed, true that the word “riddle” (rendered in
I. The parable of Lamech has a strange and mysterious interest — coming to us as the sole fragment of the literature of that antediluvian world, of which, since it belongs not to our own dispensation, it has been judged sufficient to give us only the scantiest glimpses in Holy Scripture. It assumes the antithetical form of Hebrew poetry; and, while it is free from all metaphorical imagery, is obviously couched designedly in enigmatical language. It is the more remarkable that it should have been preserved to us in the Scripture record, because it belongs not to the family “ which called itself by the name of the Lord,” but to the outcast race of Cain. On the general translation of this passage there is little but verbal discrepancy among the various interpreters. It runs thus in our Revised Version: —
“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech; For I have slain a man for wounding me, And a young- man for bruising- me, If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, Truly Lamech seventy and sexen-fold.” As to the meaning and tone of the passage there is more difference of opinion.
It is of course obvious that there is a distinct allusion to the terrible protection of Cain by the “mark” of God, branded upon his forehead (Genesis 4:15). Hence the passage must be interpreted as expressing on Lamech’s part, not (as some contend) a foreboding of punishment, but a certainty of security against vengeance, for the blood-shedding which he avows.
[1] The marginal reading has “ to my wounding... to my hurt”; but the version of the text has higher authority, and coheres better with the idea of the whole.
It seems at least highly probable, judging by the context, that this utterance is closely connected with the record of the discovery by Tubal Cain of the power of working in brass and iron — a power, which (as all history unfortunately bears witness) is instant])applied to the fabrication of weapons.[1] The old Rabbinical traditions (quoted by St. Jerome and others), working out these connexions into legendary inventions, told of a slaughter of Cain himself by Lamech, intentional or unintentional, wrought by the weapons supplied by Tubal Cain; and so certainly gave a peculiar force and vividness to the passage. But putting these aside, as not improbably invented for the occasion, the certain connexion with the curse on Cain, and the probable connexion with the invention of Tubal Cain, still remain. The sense, accordingly, seems to be something like this. We have first a boast on the part of Lamech, that he has slain men, in vengeance for any wound, or even any hurt, they might inflict on him— a bold assertion of the power and right of unlimited self-defence, more than requiting the assailant. We have, next, an expression of confidence, that, it Cain was protected by God’s threat of seven-fold vengeance on his slayer, Lamech shall be protected seventy and seven-fold. Some will have it that this protection is viewed as simply due to the righteousness of his act, as one of pure self-defence. But the allusion to some protection infinitely better than the awful curse of the Lord, certainly seems to savour more of ’’the Titanic arrogance” which others ascribe to it — the arrogance of one who, like the robber spoken of by Job (Job 12:6}, “ carries his god in his right hand,” and worships the newly-invented sword as the only deity worth regarding. So interpreted, the utterance comes to us from the dim past of the ancient world, as the first of many utterances of human pride, using its discoveries for conflict and vengeance, delighting in conscious strength, and by a virtual idolatry making its own power the only god.
It accords only too well with the whole picture of the ancient world, gradually darkening “ till the Flood came and took them all away.”
II. Judges 14:5-20. — “Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnah, and came to the vineyards of Timnah: and, behold a young lion roared against him. And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done. And he went down and talked with the woman; and she pleased Samson well. And after a while he returned to take her> and he turned aside to sec the carcase of the Hon; and, behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the Hon, and honey. And he took it into his hands, and went on, eating as he went, and he came to his fatlier and mother, and gave unto them, and they did eat: but he told them not that he had taken the honey out of the body of the lion. And his father went down unto the woman: and Samson made there a feast; for so used the young men to do. And it came to pass, when they saw him, that they brought thirty companions to be with him. And Samson said unto them. Let me now put forth a riddle unto you: if ye can declare it me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of raiment: but if ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of raiment. And they said unto him, Put forth thy riddle, that we may hear it. And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, And out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days declare the riddle. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson’s wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire: have ye called us to impoverish us? is it not so? And Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto her, Behold, I have not told it my father nor my mother, and shall I tell thee? And she wept before him the seven days, while their feast lasted: and it came to pass on the seventh day, that he told her, because she pressed him sore: and she told the riddle to the children of her people. And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my heifer, Ye had not found out my riddle. And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and smote thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave the changes of raiment unto them that declared the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and he went up to his father’s house. But Samson’s wife was given to his companion, whom he had used as his friend.” The riddle of Samson, put forth to the heathen guests at his marriage with a Philistine maiden, belongs to the half-barbaric times of the Judges, and accords well in tone with the reckless sportiveness of the character of its utterer. It is literally a riddle in the modern sense of the word, of which the reader holds, in the incident just recorded, a key unknown to those who heard the riddle. In the riddle itself, in the answer of the Philistines, and in Samson’s rejoinder, we trace throughout the figurative character which belongs to the idea of a parable. It has in it a certain bright ingenuity.
“He said unto them, Out of the cater came forth meat;
Out of the strong came forth sweetness.’’
“And they said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion? “
“And he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my heifer, Ye had not found out my riddle,” The whole story, indeed, has a picturesque vividness about it. It is a characteristic introduction to the history of that strangest of all the appointed deliverers of the people of God — relying on the lowest form of strength, of gigantic bodily prowess, and using it with an exulting recklessness, which the Nazaritic vow (we may suppose) was intended to •chasten. This spirit, indeed, shows itself throughout the history of Samson, but nowhere more plainly than in this the opening scene. In fact, the riddle, like the history in which it is contained, stands alone in Holy Scripture. It is the single representative of that large class of enigmatical sayings — at once the •exercises and the toys of intellectual ingenuity — with which we become familiar in Eastern literature and tradition. It gives a bright and lifelike interest to the narrative; but it yields no further instruction.
III. Great is the change, when we pass from the wild sportiveness of Samson to the mature sadness of the writer of Ecclesiastes, and from the crude simplicity of the ancient riddle to the highly elaborate and imaginative passage (Ecclesiastes 12:1-8) which closes that later book. It is a passage descriptive of the approach of old age, and the senile decay which ends in death. The description is wrought out with a remarkable subtlety and variety of metaphor, and a not less remarkable pathetic beauty. In many points of detail the meaning of the original is doubtful; but the general line of thought is not hard to trace.
It opens with the exhortation: —
Ecclesiastes 12:1-2. — “Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; or even the sun, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, be darkened, and the clouds return after the rain.” The time of old age is here first described as a time of dimness and gloom, both physical and mental — dimness in the loss of power to enjoy- either the warm sunshine and the light of day, or the quieter and softer beauty of the moon and stars — gloom in the gathering of thick clouds of apprehension on the firmament of life, even after the bursting of the storms of adversity, which should have dispersed them once for all. Such day’s must be to the natural man “ days of evil,” — years out of which all pleasure has died. In the Old Testament (as we see in the Psalms and the Book of Job, as well as in the Book of Ecclesiastes), if there is certainly some light on the horizon in the gradual realisation of another life, yet it is but dim in comparison with the “ life and immortality brought to light “ in the New Testament.
Hence the gloominess of such a passage as this, the utterance of a man who had sought happiness everywhere — in the individual and social life, in the sensuous and spiritual spheres of experience — and found all to be “ vanity of vanities,” both in itself and in the sense of the sure approach of death. Still it has this redeeming feature, that it turns this sense of transitoriness of life, not to the epicurean preference, “ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” but to the higher counsel of consecration to the Creator of the bright days of youth, which He has given as the short flower of life.
Next we have a description of the human body as a house or tent, in which all the various organs and faculties, personified as the inmates of the house, are marked as passing under different phases of decay.
“When the keepers of the house (the hands) shall tremble, When the strong bearers (the legs) shall bow themselves; When the grinders (the teeth) shall rest from work.
Because they are few; When they who look out of the windows (the eyes) shall be darkened; When the doors towards the street (the lips) shall close, While the sound of grinding within (by the teeth) is low, When it (the voice) shall rise into the twittering of the sparrow; When all the singers (the tones of voice) shall be brought low.” The metaphor, it will be observed, is wrought out in singular perfection of detail, reminding us of the allegories of advanced modern literature, while yet there is but little impression of artificiality, and therefore no loss of beauty. In the next section the metaphor is partly laid aside, and partly changed.
“When he shall be afraid of that which is high, And terrors shall be in the way, When the almond-tree shall bloom, When the locust shall become torpid, When the caper-berry shall burst” (or “fail”). The first distich seems to descend to prose, describing simply the weakness which shrinks from the heights, once easily surmounted, and the senile timidity, which dreads perils even in the beaten path. In the next three lines, on the contrary, the metaphor becomes more subtle. The almond-tree, with its white blossoms blooming out before the leaves come and in the cold season, is the type of the hoary head of wintry age. The locust, becoming torpid before it dies, marks the stiffening of youthful agility. The bursting of the pod of the caper-berry is the type of the throwing off the vesture of the flesh.[1] We have here a subtle and beautiful gradation of thought. The whitening hair marks the drying-up of the juices of the body; the growing torpidity the gradual decay of muscular energy; and then the breaking up of the vesture of the flesh prepares us for the idea of death, plainly wrought out in the next verse: —
“Because man goeth to his long home, And the mourners go about the streets.”
Lastly, the parable passes on to that which is beyond death —
“ As soon as the silver chain gives way, And the golden vessel (hanging from it) is shattered. Or the pitcher over the spring is broken, Or the wheel (for raising water) at the well split asunder.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, And the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” The first couplet tells us how the silver chain, hanging from the ceiling of the room, or the top of the tent, and sustaining the golden lamp in which burns the oil of life, suddenly gives way, shattering the one and spilling the other; and so describes the •extinction of the light of life. The next rather describes the cessation of both the easier and the harder work of life — the breaking of the pitcher, by which the water of the spring is so easily made useful, and of the wheel by which the water is drawn with exertion from below.[1] The last, dropping all metaphor, declares that when the light of life is thus quenched, and its work cut short, the body shall pass as “dust to dust,” and the spirit return to God who gave it. The writer has answered for himself his own former question (iii. 21), “Who knoweth the spirit of a man, whether it goeth upward? “ In entire accordance with the conception running through so many of the Psalms, and brought out again and again in the Book of Job, there is here a strongly grasped conviction of a future in Sheol, the world unseen— shadowy, indeed, and vague, but still a real existence, and one in which the soul is in some way able to return to God.
“This whole passage stands alone in Holy Scripture in its perfection and subtlety as a symbolic allegory, couched in enigmatic form, which has passed in many of its expressions into much modern literature. It forms a natural and most beautiful close of the deeply reflective and imaginative book of Ecclesiastes.
There is in it a pensiveness, which is not despondency, and it stands out in singular contrast with the straightforward simplicity of the epilogue, in which weary of thought and knowledge and study of books and life, the writer comes back to the “ beginning of wisdom,” learnt in his childish days: “ Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
IV. The treatment of this branch of the subject would not be complete without some passing reference to the “acted riddles” — the symbolical actions, mostly strange and startling, by which the prophets were bidden to arrest the attention of the people, to call out the inquiry, “ Wilt thou not tell us what these things mean? “ and then to declare plainly the message of the Lord. It is obvious that these furnish simply another form of the same kind of teaching, addressed not to the ear but to the eye.
They belong, indeed, in essence to a large and fundamental method of teaching. The use of the symbolism of visible action in general has a far reaching and almost universal scope. As necessarily underlying all ritual ceremony, both of sacrifice and of worship, it finds a full and elaborate exemplification in the whole Levitical ritual; in relation to which it was wrought out by later Jewish imagination into a strange fantastic minuteness of detail. Thus, to take but two examples, the whole ritual of the Passover, if it is commemorative, is also plainly symbolic; and as such, eminently fit to draw out the traditional inquiry, “What mean ye by this service? “ and even more evident and striking is the symbolism of the ritual of the Great Day of Atonement, in the sacrifice of the one goat, and in the dismissal of the other (the “ scapegoat “y to bear away the burden of the sins of the people, solemnly confessed over it To work out this symbolism of ritual would be to examine and describe the whole of the Mosaic ritual itself So, again, the various “ signs “ given to or by the prophets from time to time— the rending of the altar at Bethel, and the pouring out of the ashes (1 Kings 13:3-5), the retreat of the shadow upon the sun-dial of Ahaz (2 Kings 20:8-11), and the like,— are in all cases not merely evidences of the reality of prophetic mission, but symbols also of the truth conveyed in the prophetic utterance. In fact, the connexion of visible symbol with spoken word is so frequent as to be almost invariable. It appeals to human nature at all times, especially in the earlier ages of the world. But we may confine our attention now to the deli berate use of symbolic action (to be interpreted hereafter in word) as a distinct part of the prophetic utterance. Of this we have many instances in the Old Testament, to which it will be sufficient briefly to refer.
Thus, in the book of Isaiah, we may note the symbolic action of the prophet (Isaiah 20:2-4) walking for three years among the people “naked and barefoot,” to foreshadow the shameful captivity of Egypt and Ethiopia. Such naked enthusiasts are not uncommon in the East. But the character and dignity of Isaiah were such as to render this wild appearance startling and exceptional, and therefore fit to serve the purpose of an acted parable. In the Book of Jeremiah we have more frequent instances of this form of teaching. In c. xiii. we read of the hiding of the linen girdle in a hole of the rock near the Euphrates, till it was “ marred and good for nothing,” — a homely symbol of the marring in those plains of Babylon of the pride of the people of Israel, once made to cleave to the Lord, as a girdle to the loins, but now outcast through sin and idolatry. In c. xviii. we have the more famous parable, which has passed into a proverb, of the vessel marred on the wheel of the potter, and, by a touch of his hand, silently and swiftly changed to another form, — the type of the apparent mutability of the purpose of God, for good or for evil, according to the change, for good or evil, of the “vessels of His wrath or mercy.” From this we pass to the simple symbolism of the breaking of the potter’s vessel by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 19:1-2, Jeremiah 19:10) before the ancients of the people and the priests in the valley of Tophet, the scene of the vile and cruel idolatries of Judah; and the declaration, which they might have easily anticipated, “ Even so will I break this people and this city, so that it cannot be made whole again.”
Once more, we find an example of the same symbolic teaching (27:2, 3) in the making of yokes, and sending them to the kings of Edom, Moab, Amnion, Tyre, and Zidon, when their ambassadors came to Zedekiah to form an inauspicious league against the great king of Assyria; and in the replacing the yoke of wood, broken by Hananiah the false prophet by a heavier yoke of iron (xxviii.10-14). But it is in the book of Ezekiel, the great prophet of symbolic vision, that there occur naturally far more frequent and more elaborate specimens of symbolic action. In their minute and prosaic detail, they stand in singular contrast with the highly poetic character of the allegories and the mysterious grandeur of the visions of the same prophetic book. The portraying of the beleaguered city of Jerusalem on a tile, the laying the iron pan to enclose it with ’^ a wall of iron,” the alternate lying on the right and the left sides, the gathering in the materials for bread, the eating defiled bread, and drinking water by measure, the burning, the cutting, and the scattering of the hair (except a few hairs still kepi) from his head and beard, — all are interpreted as graphically representing to the people in vivid symbolism the severity of the coming siege, the famine-stricken sufferings of the people, and the slaughter and the dispersion in which all should end (c. iv. v.). Again, the bringing forth of his household stuff by day, and the breaking through the wall. To carry out the rest with veiled head in the darkening” twilight, are made types of a future spoiling, captivity, and dispersion, and draw out the puzzled inquiry. What doest thou? to be followed by prediction in stern and sorrowful plainness of speech (12:3-12). A more striking instance still is found in the pathetic scene, in which, when in his wife’s death “ the desire of his eyes is taken from him with a stroke,” he is forbidden to weep, or to show the outward signs of mourning; till the astonished people ask what these things can mean, and receive the awful prediction of that tearless wretchedness, in which they, worn out with suffering, shall see hereafter the loss of those dearer to them than their own souls (24:15-25) Lastly, the union of the staff inscribed “ For Judah,” and the staff “ For Israel “ (following the grand vision of the resurrection of the dry bones) is made to symbolize to the people the future gathering in one kingdom of God, of the last dispersion of Israel in Assyria, and of Judah in Babylon (37:15-26; when “ David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd “; when God “ will make a covenant of peace with them, and His Tabernacle shall be with them.” But of all instances of symbolic action the most solemn and startling is found in that well-known passage, in which the experience of Hosea is made a life-long symbol of the dispensation of God to His people (Hosea 1-3.). Whatever view we take of the whole passage — whether we consider it to be (as it certainly seems to be) a plain record of actual occurrence, or whether (to avoid what may appear to us strange and repulsive) we explain it as a prophetic vision or apologue — it is in either case the most striking of these acted parables. The prophet takes to wife Gomar, one who had fallen, or was to fall, into unfaithfulness, but who was loved still; she bears him children of ill-omened names: Jezreel [1] Lo-ruhamah (“ Uncompassionated “), Lo-ammi (“ Not my people”). Then again she falls away to adultery; yet still in loving patience he buys her back from her self-chosen slavery of shame, not now to conjugal honour, but to a life of widowhood and repentance. The whole is made (see
All these are instances of the acted enigma, used far more often than the spoken riddle to convey God’s teaching to the people, but virtually the same in idea and principle, and accordingly not even here employed for the highest or deepest form of that teaching. To us, indeed, accustomed to the full light of spiritual manhood, the very use of this method of illustration may seem to involve something of childishness. But to Oriental habits of mind, and to the greater simplicity of earlier days, it was far otherwise. If it fell below the solemnity and depth of direct prophetic utterance, yet it served its purpose, of catching the imagination, and so impressing itself upon the memory.