344 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



But perhaps the passage is such a one as the prophecy 

 against Moab in Isaiah xv., xvi. Here we have the 

 picture of a hostile invasion sweeping over Moab. The 

 Moabites flee southward and apply for protection to 

 the king of Judah. But he remains loyal to his obliga 

 tions of loyalty to the Israelites of the North, the old 

 enemies of Moab, and refuses to trust the promises of 

 the treacherous Moabites, whose destruction is thus 

 rendered inevitable and the powerlessness of their false 

 gods manifested. Looked at in an unhistorical manner 

 a prophecy like this is very puzzling: unless unlimited 

 freedom is given to an arbitrary typology only one or 

 two minor points attract the expositor, and these have 

 no individuality to give the prophecy special importance. 

 The powerlessness of Moab s religion, for example, 

 which appears to be the main lesson, is a lesson which 

 runs through the whole Old Testament with a reiteration 

 certainly not needed to impress upon the modern reader 

 the vanity of polytheism. 



Accordingly those who are not disposed to treat Moab 

 as a type in which case, by the way, the prophecy again 

 loses all individuality and becomes one of a hundred 

 typical expressions of the ultimate fall of the Kingdom 

 of the World or who are not disposed to find arbitrary 

 references to modern events ; those, I say, who are too 

 sober for such exegesis and who yet value prophecy 

 only as an inspired lesson spoken directly to us, now, 

 will be able to make nothing of these chapters except 

 as a part of the evidence of prophecy, as one of many 

 marvellous predictions confirming the reality of Revela 

 tion. And here the difficulty arises that we have no 

 proof that the prophecy was ever fulfilled to the letter. 

 Or, rather, we are tolerably certain that it never was 

 so fulfilled. Such is a very simple example of the hope 

 lessness of any study of the prophecies which ignores 

 the necessity of basing all theological use of these parts 

 of the Old Testament on an historical study of the meaning 



