The Ancient Prophets

By Samuel Logan Brengle


      For about sixty years I have been reading the Bible, and for nearly fifty I have been reading it through regularly, steadily, consecutively, year after year. When I have finished Revelation, I turn back to Genesis and begin over again, and day by day read my chapter or chapters with close and prayerful attention and never without blessing. In this way the Book has become very familiar, but not stale. It is ever new, fresh, illuminating, just as bread and water and sunshine, and the flowers and birds and mountains and seas, and starry heavens are ever new and fresh and inspiring.

The sweet stories (and there are no stories so sweet as Bible stories), the sordid stories (and there are none more sordid), the nobilities and the brutalities, the saintliness and the sin, the chastity of Joseph and the shameful, cruel rape by Amnon; the drunkenness of Noah and the sobriety of the Rechabites; the slaughter of innocent birds and beasts for the sins of men, and the slaughter of Canaanites for their own sins; the drunkenness and incest of Lot, the chaste restraint of Boaz; the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah; the deliverance of Samaria; the cleansing of Naaman of his leprosy, and the smiting of Gehazi with the dread disease; the dastardly wickedness of David followed by his deep penitence as expressed in the fifty-first Psalm, and the dog-like fidelity and devotion of Uriah rewarded only by the seduction of his wife and his pitiful murder; the duplicity and treachery of Absalom, the devoted love of Jonathan; the flaming zeal and despondency and trembling and the triumphant finish of Elijah; the horrid doom and death of Ahab, and painted, powdered Jezebel; the afflictions and dialogues and deliverance of Job; the fall of plotting, rapacious Haman, and the exaltation of Mordecai; the single-eyed devotion of Nehemiah outwitting the wiles of relentless foes and treacherous brethren; the faith and courage of Daniel and his three friends; the swift, sure blow that humbled proud, despotic Nebuchadnezzar, and the overthrow and death of drunken Belshazzar; the storm, the fish, the gourd, the worm, the blistering sun and hot wind With which God gave kindergarten lessons to bigoted, angry Jonah, and His tender mercy to the little children and cattle of Nineveh; the jealousies and envies and contentions of the disciples who each desired to be greatest in the Kingdom of Jesus as they, in their carnal childishness, pictured what that Kingdom would be; the love of Thomas who proposed to go to Jerusalem and die with Jesus, and his stubborn refusal to believe in the resurrection of Jesus unless he could put his fingers into the print of the nails and thrust his hand into his riven side, and the kindly, sure way in which Jesus met the distracted, honest, loving doubter; the swearing and lying of Peter, and his bitter tears of sorrow; the penitent plea of the dying thief on the cross, his death and the glad wonderment of his awakening in Paradise to find Jesus awaiting him there with tender welcome; the awful fate of false Ananias and Sapphira dropping into Hell from the greatest holiness campaign the world has ever known; the stoning of Stephen; the conversion of Paul; the strange apocalyptic mysteries and imageries of Revelation -- all these speak to me in a divine voice with comfort, reproof, correction, admonition, instruction.

Line upon line, precept upon precept, in picture, in parable, in story, in history, biography, drama, tragedy, poetry, song, and prophecy, I hear God in tender entreaty, in patient instruction, in wise rebuke, in faithful Warning, in sweetest promise, in sharp, insistent command, in stern judgment and final sentence, making known to us men His mind, His heart, His holiness, His wisdom, love, and grace. I see God uplifting the oppressed, the fallen, the lowly, the penitent, and setting them on high and casting down from their thrones and seats of pomp and power the proud, the rich, the arrogant, the mighty.