How To Interpret Prophecy (6)

By: Pak Hendrik Wieland

The literal approach has produced a lot of failed prophecies, and a lot of disappointment.

Other schools of interpretation have their problems, too, all of which emphasizes our need to be cautious in our approach.

Amos' prophecy of blessings (Amos 9:13) illustrates some problems of literal interpretation: "The days are coming…when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes.

New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills."

Will the reaper really be overtaken by the plowman?

Why wouldn't the plowman simply stop and help the reaper?

How can the grape-treader, who works in a wine press, overtake the planter, who works in a field?

If streams of wine flow from the hills (other verses might make us wonder whether there will be any hills), why would anyone need a grape-treader?

Obviously, this is not meant literally. But how much of it is figurative?

Will there be plowmen and grapetreaders at all?

The verse itself cannot answer that question.

When we read that "mountains and hills will burst into song, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands'' (Isaiah 55:12), we usually interpret it symbolically, because a literal fulfillment isn't possible – that is, not possible without a miracle.

But when we read that "the lion will eat straw like the ox'' (Isaiah 11:7), we find something equally impossible without a miracle.

Maybe it isn’t meant literally, either.

When we read that everyone will sit under his vine and fig tree (Micah 4:4), we need not insist that everyone will have a vine and fig tree.

We need to look at the picture before we look at the details.