Anointed. — In the plural, “my anointed ones.” As referring to the patriarchs, the expression is not technical, since they were never, like priests, prophets, and kings in later times, actually anointed. But the terms being sometimes applied to the covenant people as a whole (see Psalms 89:38; Psalms 89:51), its application to the founders of the race, especially those to whom the “promises came,” is very just.
As to the term “prophet,” the poet found it expressly conferred on Abraham in Genesis 20:7.