From several of these passages it will be seen that when the future has to be translated as a past tense, some further reason must be given than the mere presence of the accompanying particle, or the colouring of the context, in which the solution has been sometimes imagined to lie.

F

CHAPTER IV.

ON HEBREW INTERPRETATION.

IT would be a vast satisfaction to Christian readers if we could show, even with any degree of probability, that this fourfold method of interpretation demanded by the Scriptures is not the invention of Christian theologians—not a thing of comparatively recent growth, and traceable (it might be suspected) to the exigencies of Christian controversy; but rather that it is a thing which we have inherited along with the Scriptures themselves from the Hebrews who gave us them--a method which has been handed along from we know not when, as the traditional key for the devout understanding of the Scriptures, and which, so far as we can judge, those Scriptures have never been without.

By the nature of the case, it is not possible to give a mathematical proof of such a position; because the older Scriptures date from an age of which they are the sole surviving monuments. But in the earliest

Hebrew writings that we have, the method in question discovers itself, and the expositions so conveyed and ascribed to their national tradition* are carried back to an antiquity of which no one knows the date. Many examples of such exposition will be found in the Targum and the Hebrew doctors quoted in the following commentary; examples which may make us feel that Christian exegesis is but a part of a chain very much longer than Christianity itself; and that when S. Jerome, one of the most systematic of the early writers on Scripture, was working at exposition with his Rabbi in Palestine, he was employing a method that was perfectly familiar to the Rabbi.

Indeed, it would not be too much to say that the multiplication of the senses of Scripture has been carried to a much greater extent in Hebrew exegesis than it has ever reached among ourselves. The Law has seventy faces, says the great grammatical commentator, Aben Ezra, at the close of his rhythmical Preface to the Pentateuch.

And the methods by

* Maimonides actually puts down, name by name, the literary descent of pupil from teacher, beginning with Rabbi Judah, the compiler of the Talmud, back to Ezra, and thence to Jeremiah. Maim. in Seder Zeraim Præfat.

which the scope of Scripture has been developed are very much more formal and more systematic than any which (so far as I know) Christian writers have ever tabulated. As to the exact number of these methods, there is no uniformity of opinion amongst the ancient authorities of Hebrew interpretation. Hillel, for example, who was President of the Sanhedrim at the time of our Lord's Nativity, expounded seven modes of handling the phrases of Scripture.* Another authority laid down thirteen modes, which some have thought should be extended to sixteen ; while, finally, we have no less than thirty-two modes recognised by some writers.

These, however, are rather rules for arriving at the senses of Scripture than senses themselves. They may be seen discussed at length in the Rabbinic treatise quoted above; but inasmuch as they have never, to my knowledge, been submitted to English readers before, it will be worth while to give some idea of them here. It is often very hard to understand them; but I have done my best to put them into intelligible English, and to exemplify them.

The first rule is the argument from the greater to * See the Rabbinic treatise by Gate 4, Section 1.