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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadThe Revelation of Law in Scripture by Patrick Fairbairn: 19. Appendix G, Page 116: Interpretation Of 2Pe_1:21
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Appendix G, Page 116: Interpretation Of 2Pe_1:21
THE rendering given in the text of 2Pe_1:21, is the strictly literal one: and as so rendered the passage exhibits more distinctly the contrast between the human and the divine in prophecy, denying it to be of the one, and affirming it to be of the other; at the same time, representing the mental state of those to whom and through whom it came, to have been of a quite supernatural description. The statement contained in the passage is given as a reason for the more general declaration which immediately precedes, that “Scripture prophecy is not of private interpretation,” or, as it should rather be, “no Scripture prophecy comes of one’s own solution”—literally, loosing out, ἐπιλύσεως. The word is peculiar, but its use here is to be accounted for by prophecy being contemplated according to its fundamental character, as an unravelling, or opening out of the secret counsels of heaven. As such it comes, the apostle tells us, from no private solving of the hidden mystery, on the part of those who uttered it; it was not of one’s own (viz., the prophet’s) unfolding. This seems to us by far the most natural sense of the passage; as it is also the one which fits most suitably in to what follows. It is only thus, too, that we preserve the force of the verb γίνεται, which is comparatively lost in our common version; for the real import of the apostle’s statement is, not that no Scripture prophecy it, but that none comes in the manner specified; it does not so take its being and form. The question is not, as it is put by Bishop Horsley and many others, how the meaning of prophecy is to be made out or interpreted, but how prophecy itself came into existence, whence it drew its origin. And besides, to say of all prophecy alike, as such persons understand the declaration, that it is not of self-interpretation, but can only be understood as to its proper bearing when the events it contemplates have actually occurred, is not true as regards some prophecies (for example, 1Ti_4:1, “The Spirit speaketh expressly”), and would virtually contradict what the apostle had said of prophecy immediately before, when he represented it as “a light shining in a, dark place.” With what propriety could it be designated a shining light, if itself necessarily remained without any sure interpretation, till outwardly shone upon by the events of Providence!