upon the prophet while he is awake, but it no sooner surpriseth him than all his external senses are bound; and so it often declines into a true dream, as Maimonides, in the place forenamed', proves by the example of Abraham, where the vision in which God had appeared to him (as it is related Gen. xv. 1) passed into a sleep: And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him.' These words seem to be nothing else but a description of that passage which he had, by sleep, out of his vision into a dream. Now to these ecstatical impressions, whereby the imagination and mind of the prophet was thus ravished from itself, and was made subject wholly to some agent intellect informing it and shining upon it, I suppose St Paul had respect. Now we see δι' ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι-by a glass, in riddles or parables';' for so he seems to compare the highest illuminations which we have here, with that constant irradiation of the Divinity upon the souls of men in the life to come: and this glassing of divine things by hieroglyphics and emblems in the fancy which he speaks of, was the proper way of prophetical inspiration. For the further clearing of this, I shall take notice of one passage more out of a Jewish writer, that is, R. Bechai, concerning this present argument. Voluit Deus assimilare prophetiam reliquorum prophetarum homini speculum inspicienti, prout innuunt Rabbini nostri illo axiomate proverbiali, nemo inspiciat speculum sabbato. Illud speculum est vitreum, in quo reflectitur homini sua ipsius forma et imago per vim reflexivam speculi, cum revera nihil ejusmodi in speculo realiter existat. Talis erat prophetia reliquorum prophetarum, eo quod contuebantur sacras et puras imagines et lumina superna, ex medio splendoris et puritatis istorum luminum realium, visæ sunt illis similitudines, visa sunt illis tales formæ quales sunt formæ humanæ'. By this he seems to refer to those images of the living creatures represented, in a prophetical vision, to Isaiah and Ezekiel; but he generally intimates thus much to us-that the light and splendour of prophetical illumination was not so triumphant over the prophet's fancy, but that he viewed his own image, and saw like a man, and understood things after the manner of men in all these prophetical visions. CHAPTER III. How the prophetical dreams did differ from all other kinds of dreams recorded in Scripture. This further illustrated out of several passages of Philo Judæus pertinent to this purpose. WE have now taken a general survey of the nature of prophecy, which is always attended, as we have shown, with a vision or a dream, though indeed there is no dream properly without a vision. And here, before we pass from hence, it will be necessary to take notice of a main distinction the Hebrew doctors are wont to make of dreams, lest we mistake all those dreams which we meet with in Scripture, and take them all for prophetical, whereas many of them were not such. For though, רצה להמשיל נבואת שאר 1 מתוך שרואין אותן הצורות הקדושות הטהורות והמאורות העליונים מתוך הנביאים למי שמסתכל במראה והוא זוהר ובהירות האורות העצומים ההם לשון רבותינו ז"ל אין רואין במראה בשבת והיא מראה של זכוכית נראים להם דמיונות ורואין שם שהמסתכל בו, נראת לו מתוכו דמות ,R. Bechai צורתם כצורת בן אדם: צורתו מכח לטישת המראה אבל אין .1546 .Venet בתוכו כלום כן נבואת שאר הנביאים Comm. in Num. xii. 6. fol. 1636. 2 ed. indeed, they were all Оеóπεμπтα-sent by God-yet many were sent as monitions and instructions, and had not the true force and vigour of prophetical dreams in them; and so they are wont commonly to distinguish between -There are somnia vera and som .חלום נבואיי and חלום צדק nia prophetica; and these Maimonides hath thus generally characterized: 'When it is said in Holy Writ, that God came to such a man in a dream of the night, that cannot be called a prophecy, nor such a man a prophet; for the meaning is no more than this, that some admonition or instruction was given by God to such a man, and that it was in a dream'.' Of this sort he and the rest of the Hebrew writers hold those dreams to be which were sent to Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Abimelech, and Laban; upon which last two our author observes the great caution of Onkelos the proselyte, who was instructed in the Jewish learning by R. Eleazar and R. Joshua, the most famous doctors of that age, that in his preface to those dreams of Laban and Abimelech he says, et venit verbum a Domino: but doth not say, as when the dreams were prophetical, et revelavit se Dominus. Besides, a main reason for which they deny those dreams to be prophetical is, that they that were made partakers of them were unsanctified men; whereas it is a tradition amongst them, that the spirit of prophecy was not communicated to any but good men3. But, indeed, the main difference between these two sorts of dreams seems to consist in this-that such as were not prophetical were much weaker in their energy upon the imagination than the others were, insomuch 2 Maimon. ibid. אמנם מה שיאמר בו ויבא אלהים 1 אל פלוני בחלום הלילה אינה נבואה כאמרם ז"ל חסידות מביא לידי 3 כלל ולא האיש ההוא נביא כי עניינו As the Rabbins of blessed רוח הקדש שבאה ההערה מאת השם לאיש ההוא ואחר כן באר לנו שההערה ההיא : Dibna ñnın More Nevoch. Pars II. c. 41. memory have said, Piety conducts a man that they wanted the strength and force of a divine evidence, so as to give a plenary assurance to the mind of him who was the subject of them, of their divine original; as we see in those dreams of Solomon', where it is said of him, 'when he awoke he said, Behold it was a dream;' as if he had not been effectually confirmed, from the energy of the dream itself, that it was a true prophetical influx. But there is yet another difference they are wont to make between them, which is that these somnia vera, or VOVETIKά, ordinarily contained in them something that was apyór, or void of reality: as in that dream of Joseph concerning the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowing down to him; whereas his mother, who should there have been signified by the moon, was dead and buried before, and so incapable of performing that respect to him which the other at last did. Upon occasion of which dream, the Gemarist doctors have framed this axiom: 'As there is no corn without straw, so neither is there any mere dream without something that is apyór-void of reality, and insignificant'.' Accordingly Rab. Albo hath framed this distinction between them; There is no mere dream without something in it that is apyór; but prophecy is a thing wholly and most exactly true.' 1 1 Kings iii. 5-15, and ix. 2. moon, &c." whereas at that time his mother was no more.'-Ibid. -Gem. Talm. Babylon, Berachoth, cap. כשם שאי אפשר לבר בלא תבן 3 כך אי אפשר לחלום בלא דברים בטלים: אין חלום בלא דברים בטלים 3 .Lib. iii והנבואה כלה ענין צודק ואמתי: argues against the objection raised by חלום אע"פ שמקצתו מתקיים כולו אינו מתקיים מנלן מיוסף דכתיב והנה השמש והירח וכו': וההיא שעתא אימיה : A dream, though it may be partially true, yet is it not wholly so. Whence do we learn this? From the example of Joseph, respecting whom it is written, "And, behold, the sun and the cap. 9 sub fin. In this chapter Albo some on account of the different ways in which the Divine will was communicated to the prophets, and with various degrees of obscurity, whereas God Himself is one and unchangeable, and the object, viz. the direction of man to happiness, always the same. To this he replies, that the differ The general difference between prophetical dreams and those that are merely nouthetical or monitory, and all else which we find recorded in Scripture, Philo Judæus in his Tract de Somniis and elsewhere, hath at large laid down. The proper character of those that were prophetical he clearly insinuates to be that ecstatical rapture whereby, in all prophetical dreams, some more potent cause, acting upon the mind and imagination of the prophets, snatched them from themselves, and so left more potent and evident impressions upon them. I shall the more largely set down his notion, because it tends to the clearing of the business in hand, and is, I think, much obscured, if not totally corrupted, by his translator Gelenius. His design is indeed to show, that Moses taught these several ways whereby dreams are conveyed from heaven, that so his sublime and recondite doctrine might be the better hid up therein; and, therefore, sailing between Cabbalism and Platonism, he gropes after an allegorical and mystical meaning in them all. His first sort of divine dreams he thus defines: 'The first kind was when God Himself did begin the motion in the fancy, and secretly whispered such things as are unknown indeed to us, but perfectly known to Himself'.' And of this sort he makes Joseph's dreams, the sense whereof was unknown to Joseph himself at first, and then runs out into an allegorical exposition of them in the book entitled 'Joseph.' ence arises from the variety in the characters of the prophets themselves and their capabilities. Fire, says he, possesses fixed properties, but it produces effects varying according to the nature of the substances submitted to its influence, liquefying wax, but hardening salt. The limitation here made in the interpretation of a dream is similar to that which is confessedly to be made in the explanation of a parable—that the general scope is to be regarded, while some minor points are not to be urged as possessing particular significance. 1 τὸ μὲν πρῶτον, ἣν ἄρχοντος τῆς κι νήσεως Θεοῦ, καὶ ὑπηχοῦντος ἀοράτως τὰ ἡμῖν μὲν ἄδηλα, γνώριμα δὲ ἑαυτῷ. Phil. Jud. Vol. v. p. 116. |