Quote:
Originally Posted by armourbearer  Jer. 25:15, 17, "For thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it... "Then took I the cup at the Lord's hand, and made all the nations to drink, unto whom the Lord had sent me."
Literal? or parable?
Zech. 11:4, 7, "Thus saith the Lord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter... And I will feed the flock of the slaughter ... and I fed the flock."
Literal? or parable?
Hos. 1:2, 3, "And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for theland hath committed great whoredoms, departing from the Lord. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son."
Literal? or parable? In all three cases the prophet is told to do something in order to convey the message the Lord had given him, but in none of these cases is there any compelling evidence that the actions were literally done. |
You are far better at defending the position than Calvin
You may be right, the first two may definitely be parables, which might lead to Hosea being one as well. However, I couldn't tell if parts of the two passages you quoted were part of the parables or simply figurative language for what the prophet was doing. In Jeremiah God tells him the message about the sword is the cup of God's wrath, and perhaps Jeremiah really did tell the nations about their impending doom. And in Zechariah God calls the people sheep doomed to slaughter and tells Zechariah to shepherd them. Zechariah may very well have shepherded the people as pastors do today. In which case it isn't either/or. Both would be neither literal nor parable. Although the fact that in Zechariah and in Hosea the actions of the prophet are used to tell a parable definitely may mean that even the actions themselves didn't really happen. That's really interesting, I'll definitely think about this one for awhile. Thanks for your insights.
What seems different still to me in the case of Hosea is the details we might not expect if it was parabolic: what a strange thing to mention what the woman's father's name was. Oh wait. It means fig cakes... perhaps Calvin was right about it being a reference to cakes of figs. Hehe. I better not think too hard about it or I'll realize I need to be defending Calvin here.