was sent. From these doubts he was delivered by the
announcement that, at the place where he had been called, he, at the
head of the delivered people, should serve his God. This was to him a
_sign_ that God was in earnest in calling him. 2. In other instances
the assurance given by the sign consists in its perceptibility and
corporeality; so that the word assumes, as it were, flesh and blood. A
case of this kind it is, _e.g._, when, in chap. viii. 18, Isaiah calls
his two sons, to whom, at the command of God, he had given symbolical
names, expressive of the future salvation of the covenant-people,
"Signs and wonders in Israel;" farther, chap. xx. 3, where the Prophet
walks naked and barefoot for a sign of the calamity impending over
Egypt and Ethiopia in three years. 3. In another class of signs, a fact
is announced which is, in itself, natural, but not to be foreseen by
any human combination, the coming to pass of which, in the immediate
future, furnishes the proof that, at a distant future, that will be
fulfilled which was foretold as impending. The wonderful element, and
the demonstrative power do not, in such a case, lie in the matter of
the sign, but in the telling of it beforehand. It is in this sense
that, in 1 Sam. x., Samuel gives several _signs_ to Saul, that God had
destined him to be king, _e.g._, that in a place exactly fixed, he
would meet two men who would bring him the intelligence that the lost
asses were found; that, farther onwards, he would meet with three men,
one of whom would be carrying three kids, another, three loaves of
bread, and another, a bottle of wine, &c. In 1 Sam. ii. 34, the sudden
death of his two sons is given to Eli as a sign that all the calamities
threatened against his family should certainly come to pass. In Jer.
xliv. 29, 30, the impending defeat of Pharaoh-Hophras is given as a
_sign_ of the divine vengeance breaking in upon the Jews in Egypt. Even
before the [Pg 40] thing came to pass, it could not in such a case, be
otherwise than that the previous condition and foundation brought
before the eyes in a lively manner (Jer. xliv. 30: "_Behold_, I give
Pharaoh-Hophras into the hands of his enemies") gave a powerful shock
to the doubts as to whether the fact in question would come to pass. 4.
In other cases, the assurance was given in such a manner, that all
doubts as to the truth of the announcement were set at rest by the
immediate performance of a miraculous work going beyond th