Notes on the New Testament, Explanatory and Practical: Revelation. Albert 1798-1870 Barnes
lay prostrate was declared to symbolize the years of their punishment. Here, then, we have a plain precedent showing that in symbolical representations days stand for years. The argument is equally valid whether we suppose the symbolical actions represented things past or things future. The principle is the same. The probability is, that at the time of the representation a few years of the 390 had yet to run; and the design was to show that Jerusalem should be destroyed, and the inhabitants led away captive into Babylon. It is not our province, however, to enter into any exposition of the prophecy. The grand objection made to the argument from this passage is, that in it the symbolic significancy of the days “is expressly stated at the outset.”29 “It is expressly stated that God had appointed a day for a year, whereas in Daniel and John no such information is given.”30 But what if there had not been an “express statement” of the principle? That omission, we imagine, would have been eagerly laid hold on as an evidence that no such principle was contained in it. The “express statement,” then, so far from being an argument against using this passage as a precedent, is in reality a strong argument in favour of so doing. Can anything be more unreasonable than to object to the passages furnishing a clue or key for certain difficulties elsewhere, that they are plain and express? Nothing, we apprehend, unless to object next that the passages for which a key is sought are not plain and express. We had thought that it belonged to the very nature of key-passages that they should be plain, and to the very nature of the passages for which the key was needed, that they should not be plain. The demand that there shall be the express statement in these latter which belongs to the former, is just to demand that there shall be no mystery about the times at all—that they shall be revealed with perfect clearness, and that no wisdom and diligence be called for in evolving a principle and applying it to special cases. Bush’s reply to Stuart on this point is, we think, triumphant. “The obvious reply to all this (the want of express statement in Daniel and the Apocalypse) is, that the instances now adduced are to be considered as merely giving us a clue to a general principle of interpretation. Here are two or three striking examples of predictions constructed on the plan of miniature symbolic representation in which the involved periods of time are reduced to a scale proportioned to that of the events themselves. What, then, more natural or legitimate, than that, when we meet with other prophecies constructed on precisely the same principle, we should interpret their chronological periods by the same rule? Instead of yielding to a demand to adduce authority for this mode of interpretation, I feel at liberty to demand the authority for departing from it. Manente ratione manet lex is an apothegm which is surely applicable here if anywhere. You repeatedly, in the course of your pages, appeal to the oracles of common sense, as the grand arbiter in deciding upon the principles of hermeneutics. I make my appeal to the same authority in the present case. I demand, in the name of common sense, a reason why the symbolical prophecies of Daniel and John should not be interpreted on the same principle with other prophecies of the same class. But however loud and urgent my demand on this head, I expect nothing else than that hill and dale will re-echo it, even to the ‘crack of doom,’ before a satisfactory response from your pages falls on my ear. All the answer I obtain is the following:—‘Instead of being aided by an appeal to Ezekiel iv. 5, 6, we find that a principle is recognized there which makes directly against the interpretation we are calling in question. The express exception as to the usual modes of reckoning goes directly to show, that the general rule would necessitate a different interpretation.’ I may possibly be over sanguine, but I cannot well resist the belief, that the reader will perceive that that which you regard as the exception, is in fact the rule.”31
Dr. Maitland’s famous objection, that in Ezekiel the case is one of representing, whereas in Daniel and the Apocalypse it is one of interpreting, has already been met in a previous part of this Preface. The objection of Bishop Horsley is not very grave—namely, that because the day of temptation in the wilderness was forty years, and one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, we might as well conclude that a day is forty years or a thousand years, as that it represents but one year. So might we, indeed, if a number of passages could be produced in which a day has such significancy, and another set of passages could be produced to which the first set furnish a key that seems exactly to answer. In the meantime, we must recognize the difference between what is merely figurative language, and therefore loose and shifting, and the language of symbol.
But the case of Isaiah32 has been supposed to neutralize any argument built upon that of Ezekiel: “The Lord spake by Isaiah, go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years, for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners.” Now, it is argued that here “three years correspond to three years, not three days to three years. It is arbitrary to suppose with Lowth that the original reading was three days, or to supply three days, with Vitringa. The text must stand as it is.”33 But the interpretation of Lowth and Vitringa is not the only mode in which we may escape from the difficulty, as this learned writer seems to hint. We are not shut up to conjectural emendations. The “three years” in the third verse may be connected with what follows, as well as with what goes before; then the verse will run, “Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot; a three years’ sign and wonder,” which relieves us entirely from the supposition that Isaiah walked three years barefoot, and, by consequence, from the objection that is founded on it. All that is intimated is, that in some way or other (the passage does not say how) the prophet was a three years’ sign—a sign, that is, of a calamity that would last during that time, or commence from that time. In proof of the justice of this arrangement, it may be noticed that the Masoretic interpunction throws the three years into the second clause; that the Septuagint gives both solutions, by repeating τρία ἔτη;34 and that in a period of such alarm, when Ashdod was taken and the Assyrian pressing on them, it is not likely the symbolical representation would be continued so long. Indeed, this opinion seems to meet with little or no countenance.35 The opinion that seems generally to prevail is, that Isaiah indicated the three years’ captivity either by exhibiting himself in the manner described in the text for three days, which would intimate three years, or by appearing in this manner once only, and at the same time verbally declaring his design in so doing.
We come next to what is confessedly a main pillar of the Year-day theory, the prophecy of the seventy weeks in Daniel.36 “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the prince, &c.” Now, the all but universal agreement that this prophecy was fulfilled in a period of 490 years, usually reckoned from the 7th of Artaxerxes, and extending to A.D. 33, the year in which Christ died, seems at once to settle the question regarding the mode of computation. There are, indeed, those37 who maintain that this prediction has yet to be fulfilled, and they profess to look for its fulfilment in seventy weeks of days; but the number holding this opinion is exceedingly small. The great mass of writers, even of those who contend for literal times, reject it as quite untenable. This mode of cutting the knot, however, indicates the difficulty that is felt by some “Day-dayists” in reconciling the passage with their theory, and their dissatisfaction with the more usual method of reconciliation. That method adopts a new rendering. The words, it is said, ought to be translated seventy sevens; and these are assumed to be sevens of years, because in the early part of the chapter Daniel had been meditating on Jeremiah’s prophecy regarding the seventy years’ captivity. By thus understanding the sevens at once of years, without the intervention of symbolic days or weeks, the argument for the Year-day principle, it will be seen, is entirely destroyed.
It would be difficult and tedious to trace the course of discussion fully to which the passage has given rise. A very general outline must suffice. It had been maintained by some who contended for “sevens of years,” that the word translated weeks (שָׁבֻעִים shabuim) was the regular masculine plural of שֶׁבַע (sheba),