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I have also spoken - I have used every means, and employed every method, to instruct and save you. I have sent prophets, who spake plainly, exhorting, warning, and beseeching you to return to me. They have had Divine visions, which they have declared and interpreted. They have used similitudes, symbols, metaphors, allegories, etc., in order to fix your attention, and bring you back to your duty and interest. And, alas! all is in vain; you have not profited by my condescension. This text St. Paul seems to have had full in view, when he wrote, Hebrews 1:1; (note): "God who, at Sundry Times and in Divers Manners, spake in time past unto the Fathers by the Prophets." See the note on the above.
Dr. Dodd supposes that there are three distinct kinds of prophecy mentioned here:
3. Parables and apt resemblances.
I have also spoken by the prophets - Literally, “upon the prophets,” the revelation coming down from heaven upon them. Somewhat like this, is what Ezekiel says, “the hand of the Lord was strong upon me” (Ezekiel 3:14, … ). God declares, in what way He had been their God “from the land of Egypt.” Their ignorance of Him was without excuse, for He had always taught them, although they ever sought the false prophets, and persecuted the true. He taught them continually and in divers ways, if so be any impression might be made upon them. He taught them, either in plain words, or in the “visions” which He “multiplied” to the prophets; or in the “similitudes” or parables, which He taught through their ministry. In the “vision,” God is understood to have represented the things to come, as a picture, to the prophet‘s mind,, “whether the picture were presented to his bodily eyes, or impressed on his imagination, and that, either in a dream, or without a dream.”
The “similitude,” which God says that He repeatedly, continually, used, seems to have been the parable, as when God compared His people to a vine, Himself to the Lord of the vineyard, or when He directed His prophets to do acts which should shadow forth some truth, as in the marriage of Hosea himself. God had said to Aaron, that He would thus make Himself known by the prophets. “If there be a prophet among you, I, the Lord, will make Myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all My house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches” Numbers 12:6-8. “The dark speech” in Moses answers to the “similitude” of Hosea; the “vision” and “dream” in Moses are comprehended in “visions,” as used by Hosea. The prophet Joel also says, “your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions” Joel 2:28. So little ground then have they, who speak of the visions of Daniel and Zechariah, as if they belonged to a later age.: “I have instructed,” God saith, “men of God, to form thee to piety, enlightening their minds with manifold knowledge of the things of God. And because the light of divine wisdom could not otherwise shine on people placed here below in the prison-house of the body, I had them taught through figures and corporeal images, that, through them, they might rise to the incorporeal, and receive some knowledge of divine and heavenly things. And thou, how didst thou requite me? How didst thou shew thy teachableness? It follows;”