DREAM
The orientals, and in particular the Jews, greatly regarded dreams, and applied for their interpretation to those who undertook to explain them. We see the antiquity of this custom in the history of Pharaoh’s butler and baker, Gen 40:1-23 ; and Pharaoh himself and Nebuchadnezzar are also instances. God expressly forbade his people to observe dreams, and to consult explainers of them. He condemned to death all who pretended to have prophetic dreams, even though what they foretold came to pass, if they had any tendency to promote idolatry, Deu 13:1-3 . But they were not forbidden, when they thought they had a significant dream, to address the prophets of the Lord, or the high priest in his ephod, to have it explained. The Lord frequently made known his will in dreams, and enabled persons to explain them, Gen 20:3-7 28:12-15 1Sa 28:6 Dan 2:1-49 Joe 2:28 Mat 1:20 Mal 27:22 . Supernatural dreams are distinguished from visions, in that the former occurred during sleep, and the latter when the person was awake. God spoke to Abimelech in a dream, but to Abraham by vision. In both cases he left on the mind an assurance of the certainty of whatever he revealed. Both are now superseded by the Bible, our sure and sufficient guide through earth to heaven.
Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
Dream
Dream may be defined as a series of thoughts, images, or other mental states, which are experienced during sleep. The words that are most frequently translated dream in the Bible are are . In the OT dreams are described somewhat in detail, especially those of Jacob (Gen 28:10-22), of Joseph (Gen 37:5-10), of Nebuchadrezzar (Daniel 2, 4), and of Daniel (Daniel 7). In the NT, the only instances given are those of the appearance of the angel to Joseph (Mat 1:20-23; Mat 2:13; Mat 2:19-20), the dream of the Magi (Mat 2:12), and the notable dream of Pilates wife (Mat 27:19). In spite of the fact that certain dreams are set out with considerable fullness of detail, the instances recorded are not numerous, which seems to indicate that Gods revelations by this medium are to be regarded as exceptional and providential rather than as the usual means of communication of the Divine will. The Fathers were in the habit of warning the Christians against the tendency to consider dreams as omens in a superstitions sense.
The only references to dreams or dreaming in the apostolic writings are Act 2:17 your old men shall dream dreams (quoted from Joe 2:28), and Jud 1:8 these also (the false teachers of v. 4) in their dreamings defile the flesh: the reference is understood by Bigg (Second Pet. and Jude [International Critical Commentary , 1901]), following von Soden and Spitta, to be to the attempt of the false teachers to support their doctrines by revelations.
The earliest theories present the dream-world as real but remote-a region where the second self wanders in company with other second selves. The next stage is that of symbolic pictures unfolded to the inner organs of perception by some supernatural being. the general depression of vital activities during sleep may produce complete unconsciousness, especially during the early part of the night, but portions of the brain may be in activity in dreaming, with the accompanying partial consciousness. It was asserted by the Cartesians and Leibniz, and as stoutly denied by Locke, that the soul is always thinking; but many modern writers consider that dreaming takes place only during the process of waking. It is generally admitted that, whilst for the most part the material of our dreams is drawn from our waking experiences, the stimuli, external or internal, acting upon the sense organs during sleep produce the exaggerated and fantastic impressions in the mind which are woven into the fabric of our dreams. On the other hand, F. W. H. Myers (Human Personality) regards dreams, with certain other mental states, as being uprushes from the subliminal self, and sleep with all its phenomena as the refreshing of the soul by the influences of the world of spirit. This view, if correct, would afford scope for the revelation of Gods will as narrated in the biblical accounts, if not in exceptional experiences of the present time. At any rate, there is nothing in modern psychology to preclude the possibility of Divine manifestations in dreams. Many recent writers enjoin the cultivation of restfulness and repose of the soul in order that sleep may be beneficial and may not be disturbed by unpleasant dreams. George Macdonald sings in his Evening Hymn:
Nor let me wander all in vain
Through dreams that mock and flee;
But even in visions of the brain
Go wandering toward Thee.
Literature.-Article Dreams in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) , Dream In Dict. of Christ and the Gospels , and Dreams and Sleep in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ; J. Sully, Illusions (ISS [Note: SS International Science Series.] , 1882); F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality, new ed., 1907; G. T. Ladd, Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, 1883, ii. 429-436; S Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900 (Eng. translation , The Interpretation of Dreams, 1913). A full bibliography will be found in Baldwins Dict. of Philosophy and psychology, vol. iii. Pt. ii. [1905] p. 1034.
J. G. James.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
Dream
(, chalom’; Sept. ; but and in Matthew are generally used for “in a dream”). Dreams have been the subject of much curious speculation in all ages. The ancients had various theories respecting them, the most notable of which for our present purpose is that of Homer (Iliad, 1:63), who declares that “they come from Jove.” The most philosophic opinion of antiquity respecting dreams was that of Aristotle, who thought that every object of sense produces upon the human soul a certain impression, which remains for some time after the object that made it is removed; and which, being afterwards recognised by the perceptive faculty in sleep, gives rise to the varied images which present themselves. This view nearly approaches that of modern mental science, which teaches that dreams are ordinarily the re-embodiment of thoughts which have before, in some shape or other, occupied our minds (Elwin, Operations of the Mind in Sleep, Lond. 1843). They are broken fragments of our former conceptions revived, and heterogeneously brought together. If they break off from their connecting chain and become loosely associated, they exhibit oft-times absurd combinations, but the elements still subsist. If, for instance, any irritation, such as pain, fever, etc., should excite the perceptive organs while the reflective ones are under the influence of sleep, we have a consciousness of objects, colors, or sounds being presented to us, just as if the former organs were actually stimulated by having such impressions communicated to them by the external senses; whilst, in consequence of the repose of the reflecting power, we are unable to rectify the illusion, and conceive that the scenes passing before us, or the sounds that we hear, have a real existence. This want of mutual cooperation between the different faculties of the mind may account for the disjointed character of dreams. This is in accordance with the theory of dreams alluded to in Ecc 5:7; Isa 29:8.
“The main difference between our sleeping and waking thoughts appears to lie in this, that in the former case the perceptive faculties of the mind (the sensational powers [not their organs; see Butler, Analogy, part 1, c. 1], and the imagination which combines the impressions derived from them) are active, while the reflective powers (the reason or judgment by which we control those impressions, and distinguish between those which are imaginary or subjective and those which correspond to, and are produced by, objective realities) are generally asleep. Milton’s account of dreams (in Par. Lost, 5:100-113) seems as accurate as it is striking. Thus it is that the impressions of dreams are in themselves vivid, natural, and picturesque, occasionally gifted with an intuition beyond our ordinary powers, but strangely incongruous and often grotesque; the emotion of surprise or incredulity, which arises from a sense of incongruity, or of unlikeness to the ordinary course of events, being in dreams a thing unknown. The mind seems to be surrendered to that power of association by which, even in its waking hours, if it be inactive and inclined to ‘musing,’ it is often carried through a series of thoughts connected together by some vague and accidental association, until the reason, when it starts again into activity, is scarcely able to trace back the slender line of connection. The difference is that, in this latter case, we are aware that the connection is of our own making, while in sleep it appears to be caused by an actual succession of events. Such is usually the case; yet there is a class of dreams, seldom noticed, and, in. deed, less common, but recognized by the experience of many, in which the reason is not wholly asleep. In these cases it seems to look on as it were from without, and so to have a double consciousness: on the one hand we enter into the events of the dream, as though real; on the other we have a sense that it is but a dream, and a fear lest we should awake and its pageant should pass away. In either case the ideas suggested are accepted by the mind in dreams at once and inevitably, instead of being weighed and tested, as in our waking hours.
But it is evident that the method of such suggestion is still undetermined, and, in fact, is no more capable of being accounted for by any single cause than the suggestion of waking thoughts. The material of these latter is supplied either by ourselves, through the senses, the memory, and the imagination, or by other men, generally through the medium of words, or, lastly, by the direct action of the Spirit of God, or of created spirits of orders superior to our own, or the spirit within us. So also it is in dreams. In the first place, although memory and imagination supply most of the material of dreams, yet physical sensations of cold and heat, of pain or of relief, even actual impressions of sound or of light will often mold or suggest dreams, and the physical organs of speech will occasionally be made use of to express the emotions of the dreamer. In the second place, instances have been known where a few words whispered into a sleeper’s ear have produced a dream corresponding to their subject. On these two points experience gives undoubted testimony; as to the third, it can, from the nature of the case, speak but vaguely and uncertainly. The Scripture declares, not as any strange thing, but as a thing of course, that the influence of the Spirit of God upon the soul extends to its sleeping as well as its waking thoughts. It declares that God communicates with the spirit of man directly in dreams, and also that he permits created spirits to have a like communication with it. Its declaration is to be weighed, not as an isolated thing, but in connection with the general doctrine of spiritual influence, because any theory of dreams must be regarded as a part of the general theory of the origination of all thought.”
Whatever may be the difficulties attending the subject, still we know that dreams have formed a channel through which Jehovah was pleased in former times to reveal his character and dispensations to his people. This method of divine communication is alluded to in Job 33:14. The most remarkable instances recorded in the Old Testament are those of Abimelech with regard to Abraham (Gen 20:3), Jacob on his way to Padan-Aram (Gen 28:8), and again on returning thence (Gen 31:10), Laban in pursuing Jacob (Gen 31:24), Joseph respecting his future advancement (Gen 37:6-11), Gideon (Judges 7) and Solomon (1Ki 3:5). In the New Testament (as was predicted, Joe 2:28) we have the equally clear cases of Joseph respecting the infant Jesus (Mat 1:20; Mat 2:12-13; Mat 2:19), Paul (Act 16:9; Act 18:9; Act 27:23), and perhaps Pilate’s wife (Mat 27:19).
“It must be observed that, in accordance with the principle enunciated by Paul in 1Co 14:15, dreams, in which the understanding is asleep, are recognized indeed as a method of divine revelation, but placed below the visions of prophecy, in which the understanding plays its part. It is true that the book of Job, standing as it does on the basis of ‘natural religion,’ dwells on dreams and ‘visions of deep sleep’ as the chosen method of God’s revelation of himself to man (see Job 4:13; Job 7:14; Job 33:15). But in Num 12:6; Deu 13:1; Deu 13:3; Deu 13:5; Jer 27:9; Joe 2:28, etc., dreamers of dreams, whether true or false, are placed below ‘prophets,’ and even below ‘diviners;’ and similarly in the climax of 1Sa 28:6, we read that ,’the Lord answered Saul not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim [by symbol], nor by prophets.’ Under the Christian dispensation, while we frequently read of trances () and visions (, ), dreams are not referred to as regular vehicles of divine revelation. In exact accordance with this principle are the actual records of the dreams sent by God. The greater number of such dreams were granted, for prediction or for warning, to those who were aliens to the Jewish covenant. Thus we have the record of the dreams of Abimelech (Gen 20:3-7); Laban (Gen 31:24); of the chief butler and baker (Gen 40:5); of Pharaoh (Gen 41:1-8); of the Midianite (Jdg 7:13); of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 2:1, etc.; Dan 4:10-18); of the magi (Mat 2:12), and of Pilate’s wife (Mat 27:19). Many of these dreams, moreover, were symbolical and obscure, so as to require an interpreter. Again, where dreams are recorded as means of God’s revelation to his chosen servants; they are almost always referred to the periods of their earliest and most imperfect knowledge of him. ‘So it is in the case. of Abraham (Gen 15:12, and perhaps 1-9), of Jacob (Gen 28:12-15), of Joseph (Gen 37:5-10), of Solomon (1Ki 3:5), and, in the N.T., a similar analogy prevails in the case of the otherwise uninspired Joseph (Mat 1:20; Mat 2:13; Mat 2:19; Mat 2:22). It is to be observed, moreover, that they belong especially to the earliest age, and become less frequent as the revelations of prophecy increase. The only exception to this (at least in the O.T.) is found in the dreams and ‘visions of the night’ given to Daniel (2:19; 7:1), apparently in order to put to shame the falsehoods of the Chaldaean belief in prophetic dreams and in the power of interpretation, and yet to bring out the truth latent therein (comp. Paul’s miracles at Ephesus, Act 19:11-12, and their effect, 18-20).
“The general conclusion therefore is, first, that the Scripture claims the dream, as it does every other action of the human mind, as a medium through which God may speak to man either directly, that is, as we call it, ‘providentially,’ or indirectly in virtue of a general influence upon all his thoughts; and, secondly, that it lays far greater stress on that divine influence by which the understanding also is affected, and leads us to believe that as such influence extends more and more, revelation by dreams, unless in very peculiar circumstances, might be expected to pass away.” (See the [Am.] Christ. Rev. October 1857.)
The Orientals, and in particular the Hebrews, greatly regarded dreams, and applied for their interpretation to those who undertook to explain them. Such diviners have been usually called oneirocritics, and the art itself oneiromancy. We see the antiquity of this custom in the history of Pharaoh’s butler and baker (Gen 40:1-23); and Pharaoh himself, and Nebuchadnezzar, are also instances. SEE DIVINATION. It is quite clear from the inspired history that dreams were looked upon by the earliest nations of antiquity as premonitions from their idol gods of future events. One part of Jehovah’s great plan in revealing, through this channel, his designs towards Egypt, Joseph individually, and his brethren generally, was to correct this notion. The same principle is apparent in the divine power bestowed upon Daniel to interpret dreams. Jehovah expressly forbade his people from observing dreams, and from consulting explainers of them. He condemned to death all who pretended to have prophetic dreams, and to foretell events, even though what they foretold came to pass, if they had any tendency to promote idolatry (Deu 13:1-4). But they were not forbidden, when they thought they had a significant dream, to address the prophets of the Lord, or the high-priest in his ephod, to have it explained (Num 12:6; compare the case of Saul, 1Sa 28:6-7). False and true dreams are expressly contrasted in Jer 23:25; Jer 23:28. SEE NIGHT-VISION.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Dream
God has frequently made use of dreams in communicating his will to men. The most remarkable instances of this are recorded in the history of Jacob (Gen. 28:12; 31:10), Laban (31:24), Joseph (37:9-11), Gideon (Judg. 7), and Solomon (1 Kings 3:5). Other significant dreams are also recorded, such as those of Abimelech (Gen. 20:3-7), Pharaoh’s chief butler and baker (40:5), Pharaoh (41:1-8), the Midianites (Judg. 7:13), Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2:1; 4:10, 18), the wise men from the east (Matt. 2:12), and Pilate’s wife (27:19).
To Joseph “the Lord appeared in a dream,” and gave him instructions regarding the infant Jesus (Matt. 1:20; 2:12, 13, 19). In a vision of the night a “man of Macedonia” stood before Paul and said, “Come over into Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9; See also 18:9; 27:23).
Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary
Dream
The revelation of God’s will in dreams is characteristic of the early and less perfect patriarchal times (Gen 28:12; Gen 31:24; Gen 37:5-10); to Solomon, 1Ki 3:5, in commencing his reign; the beginnings of the New Testament dispensation (Mat 1:20; Mat 2:13; Mat 2:19; Mat 2:22); and the communications from God to the rulers of the pagan world powers, Philistia, Egypt, Babylon (Gen 20:3; Gen 40:5; Gen 41:1); Elihu, Job 33:15; Daniel 2; Dan 4:5, etc. The dream form of revelation is that most appropriate to those outside the kingdom of God. So the Midianite (Jdg 7:13), Pilate’s wife (Mat 27:19). But it is the Israelites Joseph and Daniel who interpret; for pagandom is passive, Israel active, in divine things to the glory of the God of Israel. Dreams were a frequent means of imposture and idolatry Deu 13:1-3; Zec 10:2).
The dream form of revelation is placed below that of prophecy and even divination (Num 12:6; Joe 2:28; 1Sa 28:6). “Trances” and “visions” are mentioned in the Christian church, but not dreams. While God has acted and can act on the mind in a dream (wherein the reason and judgment are dormant, but the sensations and imaginations active and uncontrolled by the judgment), His higher mode of revelation is that wherein the understanding is active and conscious; consequently, the former mode appears more in imperfect stages of the development of God’s scheme than in the advanced stages. “In the multitude of dreams are divers vanities” (Ecc 5:7), i.e., God’s service becomes by “dreams” (foolish fancies as to what God requires of worshippers); and random “words,” positive vanity of manifold kinds; compare Mat 6:7, “they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary
DREAM
In everyday life, dreams are often related to matters that a person has been engaged in or been thinking about, and usually have no religious significance (Ecc 5:3). But the Bible records exceptional cases, where dreams did have religious significance. In circumstances where people had no written Word of God to guide them, or where God had an urgent message to pass on, he sometimes spoke to people directly through dreams (Gen 20:3; Gen 31:24; Gen 46:2-4; 1Ki 3:5; Mat 1:20-24; Mat 2:12). Dreams may have had meaning even when God did not speak directly, though these were rare (Gen 37:5-11).
Among people who did not know God, a dream with meaning usually required a person who knew God to interpret it (Gen 40:9-19; Gen 41:1-32; Dan 2:1-45; Dan 4:4-27). Among Gods people, a dream with meaning usually had a fairly obvious interpretation (Gen 37:5-10; 1Ki 3:6-9; Act 16:9-10).
Moses warned people to be careful in believing those who claimed that God had spoken to them through dreams. Such people were often false prophets, who led others astray (Deu 13:1-3; Jer 23:25; Jer 23:32). Moses was well aware that sometimes God may have spoken to the true prophets through dreams, but the Bible writers usually spoke of such experiences as visions rather than dreams (Num 12:6; see VISION).
Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary
Dream
DREAM.The interest of the student of the Gospels in dreams turns upon the occurrence in the opening chapters of Matthew of the record of no fewer than five supernatural dreams (Mat 1:20; Mat 2:12-13; Mat 2:19; Mat 2:22). Later in the same Gospel mention is made of a remarkable dream which came to the wife of Pilate (Mat 27:19). There is no reference to dreams elsewhere in the NT except in a citation from the OT in Act 2:17 and in an obscure verse in Jude (Jud 1:8).
No allusion is made in the Gospels, or indeed in the whole NT, to dreams as phenomena forming part of the common experience of man. Any such allusions that may occur in Scripture are, of course, purely incidental; they are therefore in the whole extent of Scripture very infrequent. Barely enough exist to assure us that dreams were thought of by the Hebrews very much as they are by men of average good sense in our own day. Men then, too, were visited with pleasant dreams which they knew were too good to be true (Psa 126:1), and afflicted with nightmares which drove rest from their beds (Job 7:14). To them, too, I dreams were the type of the evanescent and shadowy, whatever suddenly flies away and cannot be found (Job 20:8, Psa 73:20). The vanity and deceptiveness of dreams were proverbial (Ecc 5:7, Isa 29:8). The hungry man may dream that he eats, but his soul continues empty; the thirsty man may dream that he drinks, but he remains faint (Isa 29:8). Their roots were set in the multitude of cares, and their issue was emptiness (Ecc 5:3; Ecc 5:7). When the Son of Sirach (Sir 34:1-2) represents them as but reflexions of our waking experiences, to regard which is to catch at a shadow and to follow after the wind, he has in no respect passed beyond the Biblical view. (Cf. Delitzsch, Biblical Psychology, p. 328; Orelli, art. Trume in PRE [Note: RE Real-Encyklopdie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] 2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] ).
The interest of the Bible in dreams is absorbed by the rare instances in which they are made the vehicles of supernatural revelation. That they were occasionally so employed is everywhere recognized, and they therefore find a place in the several enumerations of the modes of revelation (Num 12:6, Deu 13:1-5, 1Sa 28:6; 1Sa 28:15, Joe 2:28, Act 2:17, Jer 23:3; Jer 23:25; Jer 23:28; Jer 23:32; Jer 27:9; Jer 29:8, Zec 10:2; Job 4:13; Job 33:15 stand somewhat apart). In this matter, too, the Son of Sirach retains the Biblical view, explicitly recognizing that dreams may be sent by the Most High in the very passage in which he reproves the folly of looking upon dreams in general as sources of knowledge (Sir 34:6). The superstitions attitude characteristic of the whole heathen world, which regards all dreams as omens, and seeks to utilize them for purposes of divination, receives no support whatever from the Biblical writers. Therefore in Israel there arose no houses of dreams, there was no place for a guild of dream-examiners or dream-critics. When on rare occasions God did vouchsafe symbolical dreams to men, the professed dream-interpreters of the most highly trained castes stood helpless before them (Genesis 37, 40, 41, Daniel 2, 4). The interpretation of really God-sent dreams belonged solely to God Himself, the sender, and only His messengers could read their purport. There could be no more striking indication of the gulf that divides the Biblical and the ethnic views of dreams. If there is a hint of an overestimate of dreams among some Israelites (Jer 23:25 f., Jer 27:9), this is mentioned only to be condemned, and is obviously a trait not native to Israel, but, like all the soothsaying in vogue among the ill-instructed of the land, borrowed from the surrounding heathenism (cf. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei, p. 56). If there are possible suggestions that there were methods by which prophetic dreams were sought (Jer 29:8, 1Sa 28:6; 1Sa 28:15), these suggestions are obscure, and involve no commendation of such usages as prevailed among the heathen. All the supernatural dreams mentioned in the Bible were the unsought gift of Jehovah; and there is not the slightest recommendation in the Scriptural narrative of any of the superstitious practices of either seeking or interpreting dreams which constitute the very nerve of ethnic dream-lore (cf. F. B. Jevons in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible i. 622).
Very exaggerated language is often met with regarding the place which supernatural dreams occupy in Scripture. The writer of the article Songes in Lichtenbergers Encyc. des Sciences Relig. (xi. 641), for example, opens a treatment of the subject dominated by this idea with the statement that, as everywhere in antiquity, dreams play a preponderant rle in the religion of the Hebrews. Even M. Bouch-Leclercq, who usually studies precision, remarks that the Scriptures are filled with apparitions and prophetic dreams (Histoire de la divination dans lantiqut, i. 278). Nothing could be more contrary to the fact. The truth is the supernatural dream is a very uncommon phenomenon in Scripture. Although, as we have seen, dreams are a recognized mode of Divine communication, and dream-revelations may be presumed therefore to have occurred throughout the whole history of revelation; yet very few are actually recorded, and they oddly clustered at two or three critical points in the development of Israel. Of each of the two well-marked types of supernatural dreams (cf. Baur, Symbolik und Mythologie, ii. i. 142)those in which direct Divine revelations are communicated (Gen 15:12; Gen 20:3; Gen 20:6; Gen 28:12; Gen 31:10-11, 1Ki 3:5, Mat 1:20; Mat 2:12-13; Mat 2:19; Mat 2:22; Mat 27:19) and symbolical dreams which receive Divine interpretations (Gen 37:5-6; Gen 37:10; Gen 40:5-16; Gen 41:1; Gen 41:5, Jdg 7:13-15, Dan 2:1; Dan 2:3; Dan 2:26; Dan 4:5; Dan 7:1)only some half-score of clear instances are given. All the symbolical dreams, it will be observed further, with the exception of the one recorded in Jdg 7:13-15 (and this may have been only a providential dream), occur in the histories of Joseph and Daniel; and all the dreams of direct Divine communication, with the exception of the one to Solomon (1Ki 3:5), in the histories of the nativity of Israel or of the nativity of Israels Redeemer. In effect, the patriarchal stories of the Book of Genesis, the story of Daniel at the palace of the king, and the story of the birth of Jesus, are the sole depositions of supernatural dreams in Scripture; the apparent exceptions (Jdg 7:13-15, 1Ki 3:5, Mat 27:19) may be reduced to the single one of 1Ki 3:5.
The significance of the marked clustering of recorded supernatural dreams at just these historical points it is not easy to be perfectly sure of. Perhaps it is only a part of the general tendency of the supernatural manifestations recorded in Scripture to gather to the great historical crises; throughout Scripture the creative epochs are the supernaturalistic epochs. Perhaps, on the other hand, it may be connected with the circumstance that at just these particular periods Gods people were brought into particularly close relations with the outside world. We have but to think of Abraham and Abimelech, of Jacob and Laban, of Joseph and Pharaoh, of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, of Joseph and the Magi, to observe how near at hand the suggestion lies that the choice of dreams in these instances as the medium of revelation has some connexion with the relation in which the recipient stood at the moment to influences arising from the outer world, or at least to some special interaction between Israel and that world.
In entertaining such a conjecture we must beware, however, of imagining that there was something heathenish in the recognition of dreams as vehicles of revelation; or even of unduly depreciating dreams among the vehicles of revelation. It has become quite usual to speak of dreams as the lowest of the media of revelation, with the general implication either that the revelations given through them cannot rise very high in the scale of revelations, or at least that the choice of dreams as their vehicle implies something inferior in the qualification of the recipients for receiving revelations. There is very little Scriptural support for such representations. No doubt, there is a certain gradation in dignity indicated in the methods of revelation. Moses pre-eminence was marked by Jehovah speaking with him mouth to mouth, manifestly, while to others He made Himself known in a vision, or in a dream (Num 12:6). And it is possible that the order in which the various methods of revelation are enumerated in such passages as Deu 13:1, 1Sa 28:6; 1Sa 28:15, Joe 2:28, Act 2:17 may imply a gradation in which revelation through dreams may stand at the foot. But these very passages establish dreams among the media statedly used by God for the revelation of His will, and drop no word depreciatory of them; nor is there discoverable in Scripture any justification for conceiving the revelations made through them as less valuable than those made through other media (cf. Knig, Offenbarungsbegriff, i. 55, ii. 9 f., 63 f.).
It is very misleading to say, for example (Barry in Smiths DB [Note: Dictionary of the Bible.] i. 617; cf. Orelli, op. cit.), that the greater number of the recorded supernatural dreams were granted, for prediction or for warning, to those who were aliens to the Jewish covenant; and when they were given to Gods chosen servants, they were almost always referred to the periods of their earliest and most imperfect knowledge of Him; and, moreover, they belong especially to the earliest age, and became less frequent as the revelations of prophecy increase. As many of these dreams were granted to Israelites as to aliens; they do not mark any particular stage of religious development in their recipients; they do not gradually decrease with the progress of revelation; they no more characterize the patriarchal age than that of the exile or the opening of the new dispensation. If no example is recorded during the whole period from Solomon to Daniel; so none is recorded from the patriarchs to Solomon, or again from Daniel to our Lord. If the great writing-prophets assign none of their revelations to dreams, they yet refer to revelations by dreams in such a way as to manifest their recognition of them as an ordinary medium of revelation (Jer 23:25; Jer 23:28; Jer 23:32; Jer 27:9; Jer 29:8, Zec 10:2). These passages are often adduced, to be sure, as suggesting that appeal especially to dreams was a characteristic of the false prophets of the day; and it is even sometimes represented that Jeremiah means to brand dream-revelations as such as lying revelations. Jeremiahs polemic, however, is not directed against any one particular method of revelation, but against false claims to revelation by any method. His zeal burns no more hot against the prophet that hath a dream than against him that hath the Lords word (Jer 23:28); no more against those that cry, I have dreamed, I have dreamed, than against those who take their tongue and say, He saith (Jer 23:25; Jer 23:31). Nor does Zechariahs careful definition of his visions as received waking, though coming to him at night (Zec 1:8; Zec 4:1), involve a depreciation of revelations through dreams; it merely calls our attention to the fact, otherwise copiously illustrated, that all night-visions are not dreams (cf. Gen 15:12; Gen 26:24; Gen 46:2, Num 22:20, 1Ch 17:3, 2Ch 7:12, Job 4:13; Job 20:8; Job 33:15, Dan 2:19, Act 16:9; Act 18:9; Act 23:11; Act 27:24).
The citation in Act 2:17 of the prediction of Joe 2:8 suffices to show that there rested no shadow upon the dreaming of dreams in the estimation of the writers of the NT. Rather this was in their view one of the tokens of the Messianic glory. Nevertheless, as we have seen, none of them except Matthew records instances of the supernatural dream. In the Gospel of Matthew, however, no fewer than five or six instances occur. Some doubt may attach, to be sure, to the nature of the dream of Pilates wife (Mat 27:19). The mention of it was certainly not introduced by Matthew idly, or for its own sake; it forms rather one of the incidents which he accumulates to exhibit the atrocity of the judicial murder of Jesus. Is his meaning that thus God Himself intervened to render Pilate utterly without excuse in his terrible crime (so Keil, in loc.)? Even so the question would still remain open whether the Divine intervention was direct and immediate, in the mode of a special revelation, or indirect and mediate, in the mode of a providential determination. In the latter contingency, this dream would take its place in a large class, naturally mediated, but induced by God for the guidance of the affairs of menanother instance of which, we have already suggested, may be discovered in the dream of the Midianitish man mentioned in Jdg 7:13-15 (so Nsgen, in loc.). In this case, the five instances of the directly supernatural dream which Matthew records in his Gospel of the infancy stand alone in the NT.
In any event, this remarkable series of direct Divine revelations through dreams (Mat 1:20; Mat 2:12-13; Mat 2:19; Mat 2:22) forms a notable feature of this section of Matthews Gospel, and contributes its share to marking it off as a section apart. On this account, as on others, accordingly, this section is sometimes contrasted unfavourably with the corresponding section of the Gospel of Luke. In that, remarks, for example, Reuss (La Bible, NT, i. 138), the angel visitants address waking hearers, the inspiration of the Spirit of God renews veritable prophecy, it is a living world, conscious of itself, that appears before us; in this, on the contrary, the form of communication from on high is the dream,the form the least perfect, the least elevated, the least reassuring. Others, less preoccupied with literary problems, fancy that it is the recipients of these dream-revelations rather than the author of the narrative to whom they are derogatory. Thus, for example, we are told that, like the Magi of the East and the wife of Pilate, Joseph was thought worthy of communion with the unseen world and of communications from Gods messenger only when in an unconscious state, seeing that he was not ripe for the manifestation of the angel to him, as to Zacharias and Mary, when awake (Nebe, Kindheitsgeschichte, 212, cf. 368). Of course, there is nothing of all this in the narrative, as there is nothing to justify it in any Scripture reference to the significance of revelation through dreams. The narrative is notable chiefly for its simple dignity and directness. In three of the instances we are merely told that an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, and in the other two that he or the Magi were warned of God in a dream, i.e. either by way of, or during, a dream. The term employed for appearing () marks the phenomenal objectivity of the object: Joseph did not see in his dream-image something which he merely interpreted to stand for an angel, but an angel in his proper phenomenal presentation (see Grimm-Thayer, s.v. , ad fon.; Trench, Syn. NT, lxxx.; Schmidt, Griech. Syn. circa (about) 15). The term translated warned of God () imports simply an authoritative communication of a declaration of the Divine will (so, e.g., Weiss, Keil, Alexander, Broadus, Nebe), and does not presuppose a precedent inquiry (as is assumed, e.g., by Bengel, Meyer, Fritzsche). The narratives confine themselves, therefore, purely to declaring, in the simplest and most direct manner, that the dream-communications recorded were from the Lord. Any hesitancy we may experience in reading them is not suggested by them, but is imported from our own personal estimate of the fitness of dreams to serve as media of Divine communications.
It is probable that the mere appearance of dreams among the media of revelation recognized by Scripture constitutes more or less of a stumbling-block to most readers of the Bible. The disordered phantasmagoria of dreams seems to render them peculiarly unfit for such a use. The superstitious employment of them by all nations in the lower stages of culture, including not only the nations of classical antiquity, but also those ancient peoples with whom Israel stood in closest relations, suggests further hesitancy. We naturally question whether we are not to look upon their presence in the Scripture narrative just as we look upon them in the Gilgames epic or the annals of Assurbanipal, on the stle of Bentrest or the inscriptions of Karnak, in the verses of Homer or the histories of Herodotus. We are not without temptation to say shortly with Kant (Anthropologie, i. 29), We must not accept dream-tales as revelations from the invisible world. And we are pretty sure, if we begin, with Witsius, with a faithful recognition of the fact that God has seen fit to reveal Himself not only to the waking, but sometimes also to the sleeping, to lapse, like him, at once into an apologetical vein, and to raise the question seriously, Why should God wish to manifest Himself in this singular way, by night, and to the sleeping, when the manifestation must appear obscure, uncertain, and little suited either to the dignity of the matters revealed or to the use of those to whom the revelation is made? (de Prophetis et Prophetia, ch. v. in Miscell. Sacra, i. pp. 2227; cf. also Spanheim, Dubia Evangelica, 2nd pt., Geneva, 1700, pp. 239240, and Rivetus, in Gen. [Note: Geneva NT 1557, Bible 1560.] Exercit. cxxiv.).
We have already pointed out how little there is in common between the occasional employment of dreams for revelations, such as meets us in Scripture, and the superstitious view of dreams prevalent among the ancients. It is an under-statement when it is remarked that the Scriptures start from a spiritual height to which the religious consciousness of the heathen world attained only after a long course of evolution, and then only in the case of an isolated genius like Plato (Jevons, loc. cit. 622). The difference is not a matter of degree, but of kind. No special sacredness or significance is ascribed by the Scriptures to dreams in general. No class or variety of dreams is recommended by them to our scrutiny that we may through this or that method of interpretation seek guidance from them for our life. The Scriptures merely affirm that God has on certain specific occasions, in making known His will to men, chosen to approach them through the medium of their night-visions; and has through these warned them of danger, awakened them to a sense of wrong-doing, communicated to them His will, or made known His purposes. The question that is raised by the affirmation of such an occasional Divine employment of dreams is obviously not whether dreams as such possess a supernatural quality and bear a supernatural message if only we could get at it, but rather whether there is anything inherent in their very nature which renders it impossible that God should have made such occasional use of them, or derogatory to Him to suppose that He has done so.
Surely we should bear in mind, in any consideration of such a question, the infinite condescension involved in Gods speaking to man through any medium of communication. There is a sense in which it is derogatory to God to suppose Him to hold any commerce with man at all, particularly with sinful man. If we realized, as we should, the distance which separates the infinite and infinitely holy God from sin-stricken humanity, we should be little inclined to raise questions with respect to the relative condescension involved in His approaching us in these or those particular circumstances. In any revelation which God makes to man He stoops infinitelyand there are no degrees in the infinite. Gods thoughts are not as our thoughts, and the clothing of His messages in the forms of human conception and language involves an infinite derogation. Looked at sub specic aeternitatis, the difference between Gods approaching man through the medium of a dream or through the medium of his waking apprehension, shrinks into practical nothingness. The cry of the heart which has really seen or heard God must in any case be, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?
It should also be kept clearly in view that the subject of dreams, too, is, after all, the human spirit. It is the same soul that is active in the waking consciousness which is active also in the dream-consciousness,the same soul acting according to the same laws (cf. Lehmann, op. cit. p. 397). No doubt there are some dreams which we should find difficulty in believing were direct inspirations of God. Are there not some waking thoughts also of which the same may be said? This does not in the least suggest that the Divine Spirit may not on suitable occasion enter into the dream-consciousness, as into the waking, and impress upon it, with that force of conviction which He alone knows how to produce, the assurance of His presence and the terms of His message.
The psychology of dreams and visions, writes Dr. G. T. Ladd, so far as we can speak of such a psychology, furnishes us with neither sufficient motive nor sufficient means for denying the truth of the Biblical narratives. On the contrary, there are certain grounds for confirming the truth of some of these narratives. Even in ordinary dreams, the dreamer is still the human soul. The soul acts, then, even in dreaming, as a unity, which involves within itself the functions and activities of the higher, even of the ethical and religious powers. The possibility of even the highest forms of ethical and religions activities in dreams cannot be denied. There is nothing in the physiological or psychical conditions of dream-life to prevent such psychical activity for the reception of revealed truth. It remains in general true that the Bible does not transgress the safe limits of possible or even actual experience (The Doctr. of Sacred Scripture, ii. 436).
So little, indeed, do emptiness and disorder enter into the very essence of dreaming, that common experience supplies innumerable examples of dreams thoroughly coherent and consequent. The literature of the subject is filled with instances in which even a heightened activity of human faculty is exhibited in dreams, and that throughout every department of mental endowment. Jurists have in their dreams prepared briefs of which they have been only too glad to avail themselves in their waking hours; statesmen have in their dreams obtained their best insight into policy; lecturers have elaborated their discourses; mathematicians solved their most puzzling problems; authors composed their most admired productions; artists worked out their most inspired motives. Dr. Franklin told Cabanis that the bearings and issues of political events which had baffled his inquisition when awake were not infrequently unfolded to him in his dreams. It was in a dream that Reinhold worked out his table of categories. Condorcet informs us that he often completed his imperfect calculations in his dreams; and the same experience has been shared by many other mathematicians, as, for example, by Maignan, Gns, Whnert. Condillac, when engaged upon his Cours dtudes, repeatedly developed and finished in his dreams a subject which he had broken off on retiring to rest. The story of the origin of Coleridges Kubla Khan in a dream is well known. Possibly no more instructive instance is on record, however, than the account given by Robert Louis Stevenson, in his delightful Chapter on Dreams (Thistle ed. of Works, xv. 250 ff.), of how the little people of his brain, who had been wont to amuse him with absurd farragos, harnessed themselves to their task and dreamed for him consecutively and artistically when he became a craftsman in the art of story-telling. Now, they trimmed and pared their dream-stories, and set them on all fours, and made them run from a beginning to an end, and fitted them to the laws of life, and even filled them with dramatic situations of guileful art, making the conduct of the actors psychologically correct, and aptly graduating the emotion up to the climax. (See Abercrombie, Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers, etc., part iii. iv., esp. pp. 216221; Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology, p. 524 f.; Lehmann as cited, p. 411; Volkelt, Die Traumphantasie, No. 15; Myers, Human Personality, etc., Nos. 417 f., 430, with corresponding Appendixes).
Instances of this heightened mental action in dreams are so numerous and so striking in fact, that they have given rise to an hypothesis which provokes Wundts scoff at those who are inclined to think that when we dream the mind has burst the fetters of the body, and that dream fancies transcend the activity of the waking consciousness, with its narrow confinement to the limitations of space and time (Vorlesungen ber die Menschen- und Thierseele, Lect. xxii. pp. 366370, English translation pp. 323324). The well-known essay of Lange On the Double Consciousness, especially on the Night-Consciousness and its polar relation to the Day-Consciousness of Man, printed in the Deutsche Zeitschrift fr christliche Wissenschaft und christliches Leben for 1851 (Nos. 30, 31, and 32), still provides one of the most readable and instructive statements of this theory. But English readers will be apt to turn for it first of all to the voluminous discussions of the late Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (London, 1903), where it is given a new statement on a fresh and more empirical basis. In Mr. Myers view, the sleeping state is more plastic than the waking, exhibiting some trace of the souls less exclusive absorption in the activity of the organism, by which is possibly increased the souls power of operating in that spiritual world to which sleep has drawn it nearer (vol. i. pp. 151152; cf. p. 135). Accordingly, these subliminal uprushes which we call dreams, these bubbles breaking on the surface from the deep below, may be counted upon to bring us messages, now and again, from a spiritual environment to which our waking consciousness is closed. On hypotheses like these it is often argued that the sleeping state is the most favourable for the reception of spiritual communications. It is not necessary to commit ourselves to such speculations. But their existence among investigators who have given close study to the phenomena of dreams, strongly suggests to us that those phenomena, in the mass, are not such as to exclude the possibility or the propriety of the occasional employment by the Divine Spirit of dreams as vehicles of revelation.
That powerful influences should occasionally arise out of dreams, affecting the conduct and the destiny of men, is only natural, and is illustrated by numerous examples. Literature is crowded with instances of the effect of dreams upon life, for good and evil; and the personal experience of each of us will add additional ones. There is no one of us who has not been conscious of the influence of night visions in deterring him from evil and leading him to good. The annals of religion are sown with instances in which the careers of men have been swayed and their outlook for time and eternity altered by a dream. We may recall the dream of Evagrius of Pontus, recorded by Socrates, for example, by which he was nerved to resist temptation, and his whole life determined. Or we may recall the dream of Patrick, given in his Confession, on which hung his whole work as apostle of the Irish. Or we may recall the dream of Elizabeth Fry, by which she was rescued from the indecision and doubt into which she fell after her conversion. The part played by dreams in the conversion of John Bunyan, John Newton, James Gardiner, Alexander Duff, are but well-known instances of a phenomenon illustrated copiously from every age of the Churchs experience. Converting dreams are indeed a recognized variety (cf. Myers as cited, No. 409, i. pp. 126, 127), and are in nowise stranger than many of their fellows. They are the natural result of the action of the stirred conscience obtruding itself into the visions of the night, and, as psychological phenomena, are of precisely the same order as the completion of mathematical problems in dreams, or the familiar experience of the invasion of our dreams by our waking anxieties. In the providence of God, however, they have been used as instruments of Divine grace, and levers by which not only individual destiny has been determined, but the very world has been moved. (Cf. Delitzsch, as cited, and Dreams and the Moral Life, in the Homiletic Review, Sept. 1890).
With such dreams and the issues which have flowed from them in mind, we surely can find no difficulty in recognizing the possibility and propriety of occasional Divine employment of dreams for the highest of ends. Obviously dreams have not been deemed by Providence too empty and bizarre to be used as instruments of the most far-reaching effects. Indeed, we must extend the control of Divine Providence to the whole world of dreams. Of course, no dream visits us in our sleep, any more than any occurrence takes place during our waking hours, apart from the appointment and direction of Him who Himself never either slumbers or sleeps, and in whose hands all things work together for the execution of His ends. We may, now and again, be able to trace with especial clearness the hand of the great Potter, moulding the vessel to its destined uses, in, say, an unusual dream, producing a profoundly arresting effect upon the consciousness. But in all the dreams that visit us, we must believe the guidance of the universal Governor to be present, working out His will. It will hardly be possible, however, to recognize this providential guidance of dreams, and especially the Divine employment of particularly moving dreams in the mode of what we commonly call special providences, without removing all legitimate ground for hesitation in thinking of His employment of special dreams also as media of revelation. The God of providence and the God of revelation are one God; and His providential and revelational actions flow together into one harmonious effect. It is not possible to believe that the instrumentalities employed by Him freely in the one sphere of His operation can be unworthy of use by Him in the other. Those whom He has brought by His providential dealings with them into such a state of mind that they are prepared to meet with Him in the night watches, and to receive on the prepared surface of their souls the impressions which He designs to convey to them, He surely may visit according to His will, not merely by the immediate operation of His grace, but also in revealing visions, whether these visions themselves are wrought through the media of their own experiences or by His own creative energy. It is difficult to perceive in what the one mode of action would be more unfitting than the other.
Literature.Some of the special literature has been suggested in the course of the article. A good general account of dreams in their relations to the supernatural may be found in Alf. Lehmanns Aberglaube und Zauberei, Ger. translation , Stuttgart, 1898, p. 389 f. At the foot of p. 548 is given an excellently selected list of books on the general subject. On the history of the estimate of dreams in the nations into contact with which the Biblical writers came, see Lehmann (Index), and also the following: Ebers, Aegypten, und die Bcher Moses, 321; Lenormant, La divination et la science de prsages chez les Chaldens, 126149; Bouch-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans lantiquit, i. 276329; Vaschide and Piron, Prophetic Dreams in Greek and Roman Antiquity in The Monist for Jan. 1901, IX., ii. 161194; Audenrieds ed. of Ngelsbachs Homerische Theologie, 2529, pp. 172176; Aust, Die Relig. der Rmer, 79, 108, 139, 160; Granger, The Worship of the Romans, 2852. For dreams among the later Jews, see Hamburgers RE [Note: E Realencyklopdie.] i. 996998; Jewish Encyc. iv. 655657; and cf. Philo. de Somniis. For Patristic views: Tertullians On the Soul, cc. 4250; Synesius On Dreams; and the interesting correspondence between Evodius and Augustine (Aug. Epp. 158, 159) may be profitably read. For the anthropological view see Tylors Primitive Culture (Index).
Benjamin B. Warfield.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Dream
Evanescent
Job 20:8
Vanity of
Ecc 5:3; Ecc 5:7
Instances of:
– Abimelech, concerning Sarah
Gen 20:3
– Jacob:
b Concerning the ladder
Gen 28:12
b The ring-streaked cattle
Gen 31:10-13
b Concerning his going down into Egypt
Gen 46:2
– Laban, concerning Jacob
Gen 31:24
– Joseph, concerning the sheaves
Gen 37:5-10
– The Midianite, concerning the cake of barley
Jdg 7:13
– Solomon, concerning his choice of wisdom
1Ki 3:3-15
– Eliphaz, of a spirit speaking to him
Job 4:12-21
– Daniel, concerning the four beasts
Dan 7
– Joseph:
b Concerning Mary’s innocence
Mat 1:20-21
b Concerning the flight into Egypt
Mat 2:13
b Concerning the return into Palestine
Mat 2:19-22
– Pilate’s wife, concerning Jesus
Mat 27:19
– Cornelius’ vision, concerning Peter
Act 10:3-6
– Peter’s vision of the unclean beasts
Act 10:10-16
– Paul’s vision:
b Of the man in Macedonia, crying, »Come over into Macedonia«
Act 16:9
b Relating to his going to Rome
Act 23:11
b Concerning the shipwreck, and the safety of all on board
Act 28:23-24
Revelations by:
– General references
Num 12:6; Jer 23:28; Joe 2:28; Act 2:17
– The dreams of the butler and baker
Gen 40:8-23
– The dreams of Pharaoh
Gen 41:1-36
Interpreted by:
– Joseph
Gen 40:12-13; Gen 40:18-19; Gen 41:25-32
– Daniel
Dan 2:16-23; Dan 2:28-30; Dan 4
Delusive
Isa 29:7-8
False prophets pretended to receive revelations through
Deu 13:1-5; Jer 23:25-32; Jer 27:9; Jer 29:8; Zec 10:2 Vision
Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible
Dream
Dream. One mode of divine communication to the mind of man has been by dreams. Num 12:6. While bodily organs were asleep and yet the perception active, God has sometimes spoken, sometimes in the way of direct message, occasionally by symbolic representation, for which afterwards an interpreter was needed. The prophetic dream must be distinguished from the prophetic vision. The latter might be in the night, Act 18:9; Act 23:11; Act 27:23; but the senses were not wrapped up in sleep. It was by means of dreams that God communicated with those who were not of his covenant people. Gen 20:3-7; Gen 31:24; Gen 40:5; Gen 41:1-8; Jdg 7:13; Dan 2:1; Dan 4:5; Dan 4:10-18; Mat 2:12; Mat 27:19. Often, indeed, it was by a dream that God spoke to his most favored servants. Gen 16:12-16; Gen 37:6-10; Mat 1:20-21. God communicated by a dream with Solomon, not only while he was young, 1Ki 3:5-15, but also in his mature life. 1Ki 9:2-9. We can only say that the Lord acts herein according to his good pleasure. The false dreaming of a dreamer of dreams, it may be added, was censured and to be punished. Deu 13:1-5.
Fuente: People’s Dictionary of the Bible
Dream
Job 20:8 (a) By this figure is described the evanescent and transient character of the wicked man who appears on earth for a little while, and then disappears. (See also Isa 29:7).
Psa 73:20 (a) All the prosperity and activity of the wicked has no more value in GOD’s sight than a dream has to any person after he awakens.
Psa 126:1 (a) The marvelous transformation of Israel, from being the tail of the nations to being the head, did not seem to be a reality. They could hardly believe it was true.
Jer 23:28 (a) The vagaries and mental wanderings of ungodly, religious leaders are called “dreams” and are contrasted with GOD’s Word. Dreams are like the chaff, having no value whatever. GOD’s Word is like the wheat, which contains life, and gives life.