Why does the Lord use so much symbolic language to teach His children? Why does He not just say clearly what He wants them to know? While one probably cannot understand all of the Lord’s purposes for using symbolism to teach His children, the following reasons seem to be important: Symbolic language and imagery have the power to convey important truths through many languages and cultures with great power and impact. A figurative image can provide powerful teaching impact. For example, in the midst of lengthy prophecies of judgment upon Israel, Isaiah gave what at first seems to be a difficult and obscure passage: “Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech.
“Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground?
“When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the
cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place?
“For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.
“For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
“Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen.
“This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.” (Isaiah 28:23–29.)
The imagery Isaiah used unfolds a lesson with great teaching power. Isaiah used the symbol of a farmer and how he deals with his fields and crops to show the purposes of God. Israel is the field of Jehovah. Because of her wickedness and apostasy she has become hardened and incapable of producing much fruit. As the husbandman plows the soil, breaking up the hardness with the blade and turning over the soil in preparation for planting, so the judgments and punishments sent upon the covenant people are the plow and the harrow of God (compare
Mormon’s commentary in Helaman 12:1–6 on the nature of God’s children). But note Isaiah’s question, “Does the plowman plow all day to sow?” The answer is no. The plowman does not plow the field over and over and over. He plows just enough to prepare the soil for planting the fitches, the cumin (two kinds of herbs) and the wheat. Likewise, in the image of the farmer threshing his crops is illustrated the divine discretion of God. Different crops are threshed in different ways. Wheat is threshed with a threshing sled, a heavy instrument dragged behind an ox or a donkey. But other means are used to thresh the more tender fitches and cummin, which would be destroyed by that much weight. So it is with God. His punishments are not sent just to grind the people to destruction. If the wickedness of the people requires only the beating “with the staff,” then that is all the Lord sends. If a heavier form of threshing is required, then it is sent. In some extreme cases, such as those of the Flood or of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fields may have to be burned completely so that a new crop can be started. The Lord could have explained in a more straightforward manner the way He deals with His rebellious children, listing point by point what He wanted all His children to know. But there is more power in imagery than there is in a list. And the power of that imagery carries through numerous translations and various cultures. As Elder Bruce R. McConkie stated
“To crystallize in our minds the eternal verities which we must accept and believe to be saved, to dramatize their true meaning and import with an impact never to be forgotten, to center our attention on these saving truths, again and again and again, the Lord uses similitudes. Abstract principles may easily be forgotten or their deep meaning overlooked, but visual performances and actual experiences are registered on the mind in such a way as never to be lost.” (The Promised Messiah, p. 377.)
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