During my senior year I took several short story classes in college. Had I taken them sooner, I would have been an English major. In English, as in Sociology, students study human nature, philosophy, culture and social interaction- but the reading is infinitely more interesting.
As we learned to analyze and write short fiction, a major literary tool that we studied was 'foreshadowing'. For an author to foreshadow a story's conclusion was almost never to 'spell it out' to the reader ahead of time. In fact, foreshadowing was not used to inform the reader of what was to come at all. Instead, foreshadowing was most powerfully used when the author sought to prepare the reader for the nearing conclusion. Foreshadowing occurrs when an author introduces elements of the conclusion (colors, sounds, feelings, phrases, pictures, etc.), before the conclusion, such that, when the conclusion arrives, it feels familiar, fitting, right. Miraculous resolutions in stories can often feel forced or manipulated, a 'deus ex machina' rather than an honest resolution to conflict. Foreshadowing prepares the reader for a powerful conclusion, by making the conclusion more beautiful and more fitting that it would have been otherwise. Rarely does the reader know that foreshadowing is being used- but it's effects are undeniably felt. *
We often approach the Old Testament looking for exact representations of Christ. We want prophecies that prove that He was the messiah to come, that He was the 'heel to crush the serpent's head', the 'prophet greater than Moses', the 'suffering servant' of Isaiah. We want these stories to give us exact measurements of His body, a perfect copy of His thumbprint. But perhaps these stories were not intended to prove Jesus- perhaps they were intended to prepare us for Him.
The Old Testament was not written so that we could accurately describe Jesus on a test. The Old Testament was written so that, by the inspiration of the Spirit, we might recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of God's redemptive plan from before all time, and through all time- that we might perceive Him to be as beautiful and fitting a conclusion as He is. And this is a crucial distinction, for if we seek exact, one-for-one representations of Christ in the Old Testament, then of course we will never find them. Metaphors always fall short. A representation, by definition, lacks something of the real thing. It is something other than the real thing; but something that points to the real thing.
The stories of our forefathers, the poems and prayers of the kings of Israel, the images and promises of the prophets- these do not exist to prove Christ, but to prepare us for Christ. They are not to inform our minds such that they can fully grasp Him; instead, they prepare our eyes to see Him, and our hearts to love Him. Our mind, wrestling to grasp His nature and work, often lags behind. And I don't think that's a bad thing, at least not for an over-thinker like myself.
Read the Bible not to prove Christ, but to know Him. I suspect you fill find Him much more beautiful, much more fitting, if you do.
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*Flannery O'Connor uses foreshadowing in nearly every one of her short stories. 'The Lame Shall Enter First' is an excellent example. Re-read the story (after reading through to the conclusion once), and see how many elements of the conclusion are present throughout the story. Had they not been previously mentioned, the ending would have felt contrived. But because the images of the attic, the stars, the rope, are already in the reader's mind, the conclusion feels eerily appropriate.
Foreshadowing could be thought of like this- a river forcing it's way through a canyon will crash and splash over rocks and into gullies, without order and being quite overtly powerful, but unfocused and distracted by its obstacles. Were you to carve out sections of the canyon floor ahead of time, then when the river rushes through it, the river's flow would not be distracted by the rocks or walls, but would be focussed on its conclusion. Foreshadowing is the carving out of pathways in the reader's mind, such that when the story flows to its conclusion, it is not distracted by this and that obstacle, but instead is channeled in the direction in which the author desires for it to flow.
