Note 397 — SERMON IV.[390]

"With the idea of a Prophet," (says Gesenius in his Hebrew Lexicon, on the noun,) "there was this necessarily attached; that he spoke not his own words, but those which he had divinely received; (see Philo, t. iv. p. 116, ed. Pfeifferi,—προφήτης γὰρ ἴδιον μὲν οὐδὲν ἀποφθέγγεται, ἀλλότρια δὲ πάντα ὑπηχοῦντος ἑτέρου); and that he was the messenger of God, and the declarer of His will. This is clear from a passage of peculiar authority in this matter, (Ex. vii. 1,)—where God says to Moses,—'I have made thee a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.'" ... Elsewhere, (speaking of the Hebrew verb, 'to prophesy,') Gesenius has the following remarkable statement:—"The passive forms, Niphal and Hithpael, are used in this verb; from the Divine Prophets having been supposed to be moved rather by another's powers than their own." (Just as if the Oracles of God were not express on the subject! viz. "No prophecy ever came by the will of Man; but, [because they were] borne along (φερόμενοι) by the Holy Ghost, spake those holy men of God."—2 St. Pet. i. 21.)

Προφήτης, in fact, means 'an interpreter' rather than 'a prophet,' (for which, in our popular sense, the Greek is rather μάντις:) hence the use of the words προφήτης, προφητεύω, προφητεία in the New Testament, e.g. 1 Thess. v. 20. 1 Cor. xi. 4: xii. 10. Rom. xii. 6, (where see Wordsworth.) See also 1 Cor. xiv. 1, 3, 4, 5, &c.: in all which places, the προφήτης was what we should rather now call a preacher. But then, the expounding of God's Word is the special function of the preacher's office from which he takes this name.—The reader is referred to Blomfield's Glossary, Agam. v. 399, and to Liddell and Scott's Lexicon; (in both of which, some important references are given:) also to Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament, pp. 22-26.