Philip Dampier's Blog

One Thing to Mean Another

Isaiah chapter eleven talks about the coming of Jesus as the shoot of the root of Jesse. This is of course figurative language and the entire chapter is couched in figurative language that describes the impact the coming of Jesus would bring. It is a wonderful example of the use of one idea to describe another. It is not literal language at all.

This is easy to understand when we get to the middle of the chapter and read the familiar verses about the coming of the King and His kingdom. The prophet uses figurative language to describe the coming peace of the kingdom, a new world order. The figurative language is so stark as to make mistaking it for literal language unthinkable. The prophet uses this stark contrast of figurative to prove his point of what would happen literally.

We look at verse eight to see this at work. “The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.”

Obviously, no one hearing the prophet’s words or reading them thought he was speaking of a real event happening as he describes it. Babies would not literally play with deadly snakes upon the arrival of the Messiah and no Jew would have expected it. That the Messiah would bring a change in man’s relationship with God and thus with evil was expected.

Task for Today: When you read figurative language in the scriptures understand that it is a message of some reality but not the reality itself. Jesus came but wolves still devoured lambs and Jesus says as much.