take me to glory.  Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee.  My flesh and my heart faileth:  God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Psa. 73:24-26)—­words that are inexplicable except as containing the anticipation of a blessed immortality with God in heaven; “The wicked is driven away in his wickedness; but the righteous hath hope in his death” (Prov. 14:32); etc.  But there is a class of interpreters who, having adopted the maxim that the Old Testament, at least in its earlier writings, contains no anticipations of a blessed life with God after death, are constrained to give to the passage in question the frigid meaning:  I shall be satisfied with thy likeness when I awake to-morrow, as if the psalm were intended to be an evening song or prayer; or, whenever I awake, that is, from natural sleep.

(2.) A sound judgment will also keep the biblical scholar from interpretations that are contrary to the known nature of the subject.

A familiar example is the declaration made by Moses of God’s view of man’s wickedness:  “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”  Gen. 6:6.  The robust common sense of any plain reader will at once adjust the interpretation of these words to God’s known omniscience and immutability; just as he will the prayer of the psalmist:  “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  Psa. 139:23, 24.  The immutable God does nothing which is not in accordance with his eternal counsels.  The omniscient God, to whom all truth is ever present, does not literally institute a process of searching that he may know what is in man.  But in these and numberless other passages, he condescends to speak according to human modes of thought and action.

When it is said, again, that “the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh;” that “God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem” (Judg. 9:23); that he sent a lying spirit to deceive Ahab through his prophets (1 Kings 22:21-23); that he sent Isaiah with the command:  “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes” (Isa. 6:10); that he made the covenant people to err from his ways, and hardened their heart from his fear (Isa. 63:17), we instinctively interpret these and other like passages in harmony with the fundamental principle announced by the apostle:  “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man.  But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.”  Jas. 1:13, 14.  The Scriptures ascribe every actual event to God in such a sense that it comes into the plan of his universal providence; but they reject with abhorrence the idea that he can excite wicked thoughts in men, or prompt them to wicked deeds.