As our Lord declared that whatever was written in Scripture must needs be fulfilled (Mt.26:54; Lk.22:37; 24:44), so His followers explained one of the most startling facts which had occurred in their experience by pointing out that “it was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spake before by the mouth of David” (Act.1:16). Here the ground of this constant appeal to Scripture, so that it is enough that a thing “is contained in scripture” (1Pet.2:6) for it to be of indefectible authority, is plainly enough declared: Scripture must needs be fulfilled, for what is contained in it is the declaration of the Holy Ghost through the human author. What Scripture says, God says; and accordingly we read such remarkable declarations as these: “For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up” (Rom.9:17); “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham,... In thee shall all the nations be blessed” (Gal.3:8). These are not instances of simple personification of Scripture, which is itself a sufficiently remarkable usage (Mk.15:28; Jn.7:38,42; 19:37; Rom.4:3; 10:11; 11:2; Gal.4:30; 1Tim.5:18; Jas.2:23; 4:5 f), vocal with the conviction expressed by James (Jas.4:5) that Scripture cannot speak in vain. They indicate a certain confusion in current speech between “Scripture” and “God,” the outgrowth of a deep-seated conviction that the word of Scripture is the word of God. It was not “Scripture” that spoke to Pharaoh, or gave his great promise to Abraham, but God. But “Scripture” and “God” lay so close together in the minds of the writers of the New Testament that they could naturally speak of “Scripture” doing what Scripture records God as doing. It was, however, even more natural to them to speak casually of God saying what the Scriptures say; and accordingly we meet with forms of speech such as these: “Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, Today if ye shall hear His voice,” etc. (Heb.3:7, quoting Ps.95:7); “Thou art God ... who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage,” etc. (Act.4:25 the King James Version, quoting Ps.2:1); “He that raised him from the dead ... hath spoken on this wise, I will give you ... because he saith also in another (place) ....” (Act.13:34, quoting Is.55:3 and Ps.16:10), and the like. The words put into God's mouth in each case are not words of God recorded in the Scriptures, but just Scripture words in themselves. When we take the two classes of passages together, in the one of which the Scriptures are spoken of as God, while in the other God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures, we may perceive how close the identification of the two was in the minds of the writers of the New Testament.
This identification is strikingly observable in certain catenae of quotations, in which there are brought together a number of passages of Scripture closely connected with one another. The first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies an example. We may begin with Heb.1:5 :”For unto which of the angels said he” - the subject being necessarily “God” - “at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?” - the citation being from Ps.2:7 and very appropriate in the mouth of God - “and again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?” - from 2Sam.7:14, again a declaration of God's own - “And when he again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him” - from Dt.32:43, Septuagint, or Ps.97:7, in neither of which is God the speaker - “And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire” - from Ps.104:4, where again God is not the speaker but is spoken of in the third person - “but of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, etc.” - from Ps.45:6,7 where again God is not the speaker, but is addressed - “And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning,” etc. - from Ps.102:25-27, where again God is not the speaker but is addressed - “But of which of the angels hath he said at any time, Sit thou on my right hand?” etc. - from Ps.110:1, in which God is the speaker. Here we have passages in which God is the speaker and passages in which God is not the speaker, but is addressed or spoken of, indiscriminately assigned to God, because they all have it in common that they are words of Scripture, and as words of Scripture are words of God. Similarly in Rom.15:9 we have a series of citations the first of which is introduced by “as it is written,” and the next two by “again he saith,” and “again,” and the last by “and again, Isaiah saith,” the first being from Ps.18:49; the second from Dt.32:43; the third from Ps.117:1; and the last from Is.11:10. Only the last (the only one here assigned to the human author) is a word of God in the text of the Old Testament.
