The scene is night time beside the chalk cliffs of Dover. It is about 10pm on an August night in 1916. Two friends, Holmes and Watson stand and chat in intimate converse for a few minutes, recalling once again the days of the past, while their prisoner spy (Von Bork) wriggles in the car vainly trying to undo the bonds that hold him. As they reluctantly return to the car Holmes looks reflectively over the silvered sea to the east, saying wistfully;
Holmes “I think there is an east wind coming, Watson.”
Watson. “I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.”
Holmes. (Laughs) “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There is an east wind coming all the
same, such a wind as never before blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many
may whither before its blast. But it is God’s wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the
sunshine when the storm has cleared.” (His Last Bow)
Poor Dr Watson. Holmes says; “east wind,” and Watson literally thinks Holmes is talking about the English weather. However Holmes is not talking about the east wind of weather, but the east wind of the bible, and thinks Watson’s blooper is funny – and it is. But if Holmes is not talking about the weather, why does he say; ‘There is an east wind coming that is cold and bitter?’ When is east not east? When is wind not moving air? When are compass points not literal directions?
Orientation To understand the bible east wind you must literally orient yourself to bible places and times. This means
-east in the taking ourselves out of our own country of now to understand the old biblical world of the prophets –where, like
prophets. Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, words mean have specific meanings. When I was younger I used to read the bible on the East coast of Australia. There the westerly wind blew hot gusts off inland deserts making us swelter in summer, but the east wind from off the Pacific Ocean brought a cool change over our steaming city. In bible lands the effects were exactly opposite to my hometown. If you look at a map of the holy lands and imagine yourself near Jerusalem, what will you see? It will look similar to this rough schema.
NORTH
Mediterranean Sea | Arabian Desert
__________________________________
WEST Jerusalem. EAST
X
YOU ARE HERE
SOUTH
Egypt Wilderness
Usage of In the world of the prophets directional words came to mean fortunes. How? In Israel the East wind came off the
East wind. desert. It was a hot, dry, blasting wind that regularly scorched the earth and sometimes brought insects, such as locusts, and always destruction. Observe the usage of East wind in these passages.
Gen 41:23 Joseph saw corn thin, withered and scorched by East wind. + famine
Ex 10:13 In Egypt East wind brought locusts that ate every plant. + destruction
Job 1:19 Wind from the wilderness (east) destroyed Job’s house + destruction
27:21 East winds carries him away and he is no more + destruction
Ps 48:7 East wind breaks the ships of Tarshish + destruction
Is 27:8 He expelled them on the day of the East wind + destruction
Jer 18:17 Like an East wind I will scatter them in the day of calamity + destruction
Ezek 27:26 East wind has broken you in midst of seas + destruction
Hos 12:1 Ephraim feeds on the East wind - lies and violence + inevitable destruction
Jonah 3:8 A vehement East wind beat on Jonah’s head + affliction
Meaning of What is found? Biblically the East wind brings ill-fortune: locusts and famine, destruction, evil winds bringing
East wind. plagues, scorching the earth with heat and death both on land and sea from Egypt to Tarshish. In the case of locusts they were carried over the hot desert sands with no food or water for days. They arrive in Egypt like huge dark clouds covering square kilometers. They are totally ravenous. On landing the locusts eat anything and everything that can be eaten with a rapacious appetite, stripping the earth of crops and leaving it barren and clean. It is this destructive property that is embedded in the term East wind. The East wind is God’s agent of resolution. The Day of the East wind resolves and determines an altered state of affairs.
Properties Oppositely the west wind blows off the Mediterranean (the great sea Josh 1:4, 15:47) produces rain, resulting
of the West in relief, growth, and rejuvenation. The west wind is the counterpoint of the east wind in that it brings
wind. a positive effect. This idea of wind = change is an easy transfer of meaning. Jesus acted in both literal and figurative (weatherman and prophet) roles when He rebuked the Jews saying;
‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it turns out. And when
you see a south wind blowing, you say, ‘It will be a hot day,’ and it turns out that way. You hypocrites! You know how to
analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this
present time? Lk 12:54-56
Observe the East wind brought the plague of destructive locusts, but when pharaoh repented;
the Lord shifted the wind to a very strong west wind that blew the locusts into the
Red Sea. Ex 10:1
Hence it was that a west wind from the sea brought relief from the plague locusts. Observe later that when Israel was starving in the wilderness;
There went forth a wind from the Lord that brought quail from the sea - westward. Num 11:31
And again when Elijah prayed to God to end the drought sent upon the land;
Behold a cloud as small as a mans hand coming up from the sea [blown by a west wind, and it
rained.] 1 Kgs 18:44
From this example it may be seen that the primary semantic property of the west wind is positive in that: it brings showers, relieves drought and heat by sending rain clouds, and brings relief from starvation by providing birds as food. We may sympathize with our good friend Dr Watson. He had not researched these things, so how could he know?
Holmes’ Watson’s literalism produced his natural confusion when talking to the great detective, but the principle is,
meaning. bible terms mean what the prophets use them to mean in the bible neither more nor less. In this case the good doctor misinterpreted prophetic fortune to mean weather. Winds are a sign of change because they bring different weather patterns, as political powers bring change. Holmes, (obviously a close bible reader) simply transferred his bible reading of the winds in the natural heavens to change in the political heavens with no indication or cue of the transference to his friend and colleague: wind = change. It was a very Hebrew prophet-like thing to do.
Here the original meaning of ‘east wind’ has not disappeared, but the physical-world term wind with its properties: +movement, +change, +potential for good or evil, has been transferred to a conceptual idea or an agent of change (in this case the German army) which Holmes sees as an imminent threat to England, but a threat productive of an improved state of affairs. Holme’s reference to ‘cold and bitter’ means difficult and undesirable times, but biblically speaking the east wind is certainly not cold, rather it is hot and scorching, for it blows across the sun-heated sands of the desert.
Conclusion This short article on the East Wind is a brief consideration of the multi-faceted term wind, which has many meanings in scripture. It also offers the rational option: ‘Only biblical meanings are biblical,’ to the prescriptive:‘Only literal meanings are biblical.’ The method of Preterist is to proceed by induction – study many observations to determine bible meanings - rather than imposing a preconception on the biblical data. Studying the first-century usage of bible terms gives first-century bible meanings.
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