How can I recognize and understand biblical symbolism?

Scripture abounds with symbols, some parts containing far more than others. Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Revelation are especially full of them. Symbols present, in a concrete form and image, abstract qualities and facts to the mind. In reading scripture, it is necessary to follow carefully the general use of such and such a symbol, throughout the inspired oracles. Thus a lion represents 'force;' the sun represents 'supreme authority;' eagles, 'rapidity of judgement,' etc. There is doubtless an abstract idea in each symbol, though it may not always be easy to discover it, and it might vary somewhat in being applied to different subjects. This principle is altogether violated by taking leaven to signify 'evil' in the offerings in Leviticus, and what is 'good' in the parable of 'the leaven hid in the meal' in Matthew and Luke, as is often done.

Some further details will render these preliminary remarks still clearer, and afford a safeguard against the precipitate use of symbols. When their use is well understood, they will be found to be a regular language, requiring indeed patience, and the power of analysis and abstraction to learn the leading idea of each term, but still, when that is learned, affording considerable assistance in the interpretation of those parts of Scripture in which they are employed.

All Bible-symbols that need interpretation to understand prophecy are explained somewhere in the Bible. Sometimes God plainly explains those symbols; others are more hidden and have to be searched out, but they are all there, whether we find them or not!

The language of Revelation is largely symbolical. One can only explain these symbols in connection with the Holy Scriptures as a whole and especially in connection with prophecy as a whole. For we learn from Peter, in 2 Peter 1:20, “...that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”

The Revelation, as it is the latest, so it is by far the most elaborate, of all prophetic books, consisting throughout of visions, in which symbolic objects fill a larger place than anywhere else in scripture. Still, it is to be observed that the prophet conveys literally what he saw in the plainest language. The objects and acts in the scenes which he in the Spirit saw, and the words announced to his ears, are given with precision. The symbols we have to study and comprehend in the light of general usage and of the particular context; for symbolic forms, though less pliant than the ordinary expressions of thought, are, like the rest, modified by their associations; and the Holy Spirit alone can guide rightly in this and in all else of scripture; as common sense does in the affairs and intercourse of natural life. Save in the symbolism which forms a comparatively small part of prophecy, its language differs only in degree from that of scripture generally, and must be interpreted on exactly the same principle. Indeed even the symbolic portion finds its counterpart in the types not only of the Pentateuch, but of scriptural history as a whole. The form may vary according to divine wisdom, but one mind and purpose will be found to pervade all. Every scripture is inspired of God; and as Christ is the image of the invisible God, and He alone declared the Father, so is He the object of all revelation, and others only appear as related to Him.

Not a word of this could apply to the so-called spiritual Israel, but only to the ancient people of Jehovah; nor could the language consist with Gentiles either. Taken in their ordinary import of the terms the reasoning is as sound as the meaning is important. For we are thereby taught to read Israel in its literal force throughout the prophets as the apostle did; and so Zion, Jerusalem, Judah, Ephraim, and all other names. Figurative language there is abundantly in both the Old Testament and the New. It is so in every-day life, and yet more on occasions when we are more than ordinarily concerned. But the names designate facts, even the well-known objects as they occur, and are never themselves figures. Symbols also are employed, which differ from figures as being a composite of ideas which the prophet saw and describes for the more graphic delineation of the object. There is no uncertainty in the employment of either symbol or figurative expression, but rather to give objects all the more force. The objects are real, not ideal, in every case. As plain language is constantly intermingled with figures, there need never be any great difficulty. So when symbols are employed, there is often an interpretation added: only we have to bear in mind that divine interpretations may and do frequently give more than the statement under explanation. The Holy Spirit gives all requisite guidance in comparing scripture with scripture; and He is needed for profitable understanding of Genesis and John as truly as He is for using Ezekiel and the Revelation aright. The true difficulty is quite independent of figures or symbols, and lies in employing the same object now and then as the vehicle of a lesser primary application, while it also looks onward to a larger and more complete fulfilment in due time; the right apprehension of which is at least occasionally a matter of delicacy.

The fact is that all language is more or less figurative, more especially where it is poetic or impassioned. History, if it be not a dead chronicle, abounds with figures; but none the less does it aim, or at least profess, to give nothing but the truth. Simple language is distinguished from figurative, though both styles are freely used and understood readily in all compositions, as well as in oral address and ordinary conversation. Carnal and spiritual are the true correlatives, as also literal and mystical; but these respectively apply to the sense of what is said or written, rather than to the diction. Allegory, parable (or its abbreviation in proverb), and symbol, again, are varieties of form in which truth may be conveyed, but they ought not to be confounded with figurative language. A symbol may be a material object, actually existing, and applied morally; or it may be made up by combining in one a variety of existing objects, so as to give God's moral view of what is thus revealed, as the four beasts or Gentile imperial powers of Dan. 7, the fourth of which reappears in Rev. 11—19. But symbolic language is exceptional, and seems limited to prophecy during the times of the Gentiles. It is in no way characteristic of prophecy in general. In every case what was conveyed was real, not artificial: when accomplished, it is history from the divine side.

A figure is simply the use of some known fact or object in nature, or some material act, to represent, and present sensibly, what is moral or mental. It runs into every part of language, and is used unconsciously, e.g., he drew a lovely picture of virtue - "drawing a lovely picture" is a mere figure, at once intelligible, and hardly felt to be a figure and so of almost every sentence we use, which is not simply speaking of material things - "he dragged me into an argument" - "hammered away at his subject."

A symbol goes further; it does borrow images, but it uses them, not merely to render a mental thought more sensible by material objects, but to create a positive object of thought, often combining various circumstances, and characteristics, to give the moral idea of the object whose existence it thus reveals characteristically and as a whole, so that it may be recognised by these characteristics. The mere figurative speech thus takes some sensible fact, as the vivid expression of what is mentally known, or communicated; the symbol takes any known elements or objects to create a new idea - to express a new fact.

1884 28 Of the numerous kinds of figures used in Scripture there are four most frequent, of which the characteristics should be remembered. The simile is any case where a resemblance is drawn between two objects; as "the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree." The metaphor is the putting of one thing, because of its analogy, to express another, as "Ephraim is a cake not turned." The symbol is the designed use of one object to represent some other object or thought to which it has an affinity, as baptism to represent death and resurrection. And the type is the same as the symbol, except that the type relates to some future thing (called the antitype), whereas the symbol relates to something past or present. There are about a dozen others figures: but I think most of them explain themselves, and the distinction between them (metonymy, synecdoche, and so forth) are chiefly of interest to grammarians and rhetoricians.

It is consequently oftentimes accurate to say such and such a thing is a figure, simile, or illustration, where it would not be safe to call it a type or symbol. It is well to be careful in such matters; but we may be sure there is a "via media" of truth lying somewhere between the extremes of mysticism and hard literalism. If God uses figures, He wishes to teach us something by them. We should consider them attentively and reverently, desiring to discover what His meaning is. This meaning generally consists of some broad primal truth connected with the most striking features of each figure; and then subordinate features of more or less interest will be found to reveal themselves as details are examined.