246 The Fundamentals This principle on the whole is sound, but it can easily be overworked. Certain cautions are necessary, for exampl e : ( 1 ) It is impossible t o trace each separate section of prophecy, independently of its context, to a definite historical situation. Besides, the prophets often speak in poetry, and poetry ought not as a rule to be taken literally. (2) It is not necessarily the greatest event in a nation's history or the event about which we happen to know the most, that may actually have given birth, humanly speaking, to a particular prophecy. Israel's history is full of crises and events, any one of which may easily be claimed to furnish an appropriate, or at least a possible, background for a given prophecy. (3) The prophets usually spoke directly to the needs of their own generation, but they spoke also to the generations yet to come. Isaiah, for example, commanded, "Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among My disciples" (8 :16)u; that is, preserve My teachings for the future. Again in 30 :8, he says, "Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever." And also in 42 :23, "Who is there among you that will give ear to this? that will hearken and hear for the time to comer" ALLEGED EXTERNAL EVIDENCE AGAINST UNITY Recently certain writers have appealed to the author of 2 Chronicles to prove that chapters 40-66 existed as a separate collection in his age. Whitehouse in the New Century Bible ("Isaiah", Vol. I, p. 70), says: "This is clear from 2 Chron. 36 :22 ff, in which the passage Isa. 44 :28 (that Cyrus ยท would m ca i u a s h e . th T e h te e m s p o l - e ca t l o le b d e 'D bu e i u lt t ) ero is -I t s r a e i a a t h e ' d ( a c s hs t . he 40 w -6 o 6 rd ) o m f u J st er a e t that time (c. 300 B. C.) have been regarded as a body of literature standing quite apart from the Isaianic collection or collections which then existed." But the evidence obtained from this source is so doubtful that it is well-nigh valueless.
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