every sound principle of interpretation.  “As the words, ‘This is my body,’ and ’This is my blood,’ were spoken BEFORE Christ’s body was broken upon the cross, and BEFORE his blood was shed, he could not pronounce them with the intention that they should be taken and interpreted literally by his disciples.  He could not take his body in his hands, nor offer them his blood in the cup; for it had not yet been shed.”  Horne, vol. 2, p. 319.

(2.) In ascertaining figurative language, the interpreter will naturally take into account the scope, the context, and the general analogy of scriptural teaching.  If the literal sense, though possible in the nature of things, is inept or contrary to the general tenor of Scripture, it must be rejected.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that, under the future reign of the Messiah, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, the lion eat straw like the ox, and the child play with impunity on the hole of the asp.  Isa. 11:6-8.  It is possible to conceive of this state of things as effected by a change in the physical nature of all noxious animals.  But the writer immediately adds:  “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (ver. 9).  Since then the change is effected by the universal diffusion of “the knowledge of the Lord,” it must be a moral change—­a transformation of the character of wicked men figuratively described as wolves, leopards, bears, lions, and vipers.  The general analogy of prophetic language, which, as will be hereafter shown, abounds in figurative forms of representation, strengthens this conclusion.

By the prophet Haggai, again, God says:  “Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land.”  Chap. 2:6.  The key to the meaning of these words is given in the following verse:  “And I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come:  and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.”  In such a connection, and with such a result, nothing could be more vapid than to understand this shaking of heaven and earth, sea and land, in a physical sense.  It is the mighty overturnings among the nations, social, moral, and political, that are here predicted, as Jehovah says by Ezekiel:  “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is, and I will give it to him.”  Chap. 21:27.  Compare Isa. 13:13; Jer. 4:24; Ezek. 38:20; Joel 3:16.  So when God announces that he “will cause the sun to go down at noon, and darken the earth in the clear day” (Amos 8:9), we understand at once that under this figure he forewarns the covenant people of the sudden approach of great calamity.  Compare Deut. 28:29; Job 5:14; Isa. 13:10; Jer. 4:23-28; Ezek. 32:7, 8; Joel 2:31; 3:15; etc.  This subject will be further discussed under the head of the interpretation of prophecy.