Why the prophets spoke in riddles

But if he had been fair in his accusation, he ought to have set out the prophecies word for word, whether those in which the speaker announced himself to be God almighty, or those in which he announced himself the Son of God, or those in which the speaker was believed to be the Holy Spirit. For then he would have been making a real effort to overturn what was said and to show that the words were not inspired, words that contain a call to turn from sins, a rebuke of the people of that day, and foreknowledge of things to come. That is why those who lived in the prophets’ own time wrote down their prophecies and preserved them: so that later generations too, reading them, might marvel at them as words of God; and, helped not only by the rebukes and calls to conversion but also by the predictions, and convinced by the outcome of events that it was a divine Spirit who had foretold them, might persevere in practising the piety that accords with the word, obeying the law and the prophets.

The prophets, then, in accordance with the will of God, spoke without any concealment whatever their hearers could usefully understand at once and whatever helped to correct their conduct. But what was more mystical, more for the eyes of the initiated, and bound up with a contemplation beyond what the common ear can take in, they set forth “through riddles” (Numbers 12:8), through allegories, through what are called dark sayings, and through what are named parables or proverbs (Proverbs 1:6). They did this so that those who do not shrink from toil, but take on every labour for the sake of virtue and truth, might examine and find, and, having found, might put what they found to use as reason requires.

But the noble Celsus, as though angry at not having understood such words of the prophets, reviled them, saying: “Having brandished all this, they go on to add unintelligible, frenzied and altogether obscure words, whose meaning no one with any sense could discover; for they are unclear and mean nothing, but they give any fool or sorcerer an opening to seize on what was said and make it his own, on any matter and in whatever way he wishes.” He seems to me to have said this with cunning, wishing, so far as lay in his power, to keep readers of the prophecies from testing and examining their meaning. And something has happened to him like what happened to those who said of a certain prophet, who had gone in to someone and foretold the future to him: “Why did this madman come in to you?” (2 Kings 9:11).