Plowshares & Pruning Hooks, Rethinking the Language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic, D. Brent Sandy

   "The moon turning to blood,""a beast with seven heads and ten horns," "giant scorpions stinging men during the last days." What are we to make of such disruptions? How do we interpret them? Of course, those of us who believe the Bible through and through are compelled by our faith to make every effort to allow Scripture to say what God intends it to say. That being said, we must never approach Scripture with a simplistic attitude. The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture declares that the knowledge of salvation through Jesus Christ is plainly presented through the overarching storyline of the Old and New Testament. On the other hand, there are things in God's Word that the world's most profound minds have labored to understand. 

   In Plowshares & Pruning Hooks D. Brent Sandy helps us begin to understand the linguistic peculiarities of the hardest genre in Scripture, prophecy and the apocalyptic. The Reformers were adamant that Scripture interprets Scripture and Sandy's book seeks no variance with this interpretive principle. On the contrary, Sandy quite thoroughly shows that the only way to interpret biblical prophecy and apocalyptic literature is to apply the Bible's own definitions to metaphorical and symbolic passages. 

   This is a book expressly for pastors and those who handle the Word. Do not pick up this book and think you will understand it without hard work. But to all those who toil over Plowshares & Pruning Hooks there is great interpretive reward. It was such a profound blessing to me that I read it twice! And though Plowshares & Pruning Hooks is probably not for many laymen, it is for some. Sandy has written a classic in the discipline of biblical hermeneutics. Every seminarian should digest this book before pontificating upon biblical texts that fall into the prophetic and apocalyptic genre.

Post tenebras lux, 

Scott