I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.

When I originally taught this series, I took one week and dedicated it to walking chronologically through the Bible in about one hour. I split it into much smaller chunks here. If you want to read the whole thing, it's available PDF format. I’ll be posting these a little more often than once a week since each one is so short.

God Calls

In Genesis 12, God calls a nomadic Chaldean named Abraham from an area that would later be called Babylon (about 55 miles south of modern Baghdad). We get the impression from Scripture and historical records that Abraham was just as idolatrous as any other person in his area (Josh 24:2); he probably worshiped the moon or a god associated with it. God tells Abraham to go to the land of Canaan (later called Israel), a significant journey; He promises to make Abraham a great nation and to bless him (12:1–2). God also promises to give Abraham offspring and to give the land of Canaan (Israel) to his offspring. Most importantly to us gentiles, God promises to bless all the nations (families) of the earth through Abraham (12:3). This covenant with Abraham was unconditional, there was nothing expected of man for God to follow through with His promise.

The ultimate fulfillment of these promises is truly found in Jesus (Gal 3:16). The more immediate realizations of the fulfillment of this promise, however, are going to be found in the nation of Israel. Abraham and his wife are very old, Hebrews even says that Abraham was as good as dead (Heb 11:2); even in spite of the difficulties, though, God gives Abraham a son named Isaac. Isaac doesn’t get too much attention in the Bible (Genesis 22 is perhaps the most notable bit), so we’ll not say much about him.

Isaac (21:1–7) marries a woman named Rebekah; she gives birth to twins: Jacob and Esau. Jacob (whose name could be translated “circumventor”) is the younger brother and does not deserve his brother’s blessing or birthright, but through some sneaky actions manages to acquire both (ch. 25, 27). God later changes Jacob’s name to Israel (32:28), which means “he fights (or fought) with God,” a fitting description for both Jacob and the nation of Israel throughout the Bible.

From Jacob (Israel) come the 12 tribes of Israel (ch 29, 30). His most important sons in terms of the flow of the story are Joseph and Judah. Judah is important because through his line would eventually come David and later Jesus (both of whom we will eventually address). Joseph is more important to our story for the time being because of what happens to him. He is thrown in a pit, sold as a slave (ch 37), promoted to head of a prominent house in Egypt, falsely accused of rape, and thrown in prison (ch 39). In prison, Joseph still does well, mostly because of his God-given ability to interpret dreams, and eventually is promoted to second in command of Egypt (ch 40-41). A famine prompts Joseph’s entire family to move into the land of Egypt; Joseph is gracious to his brothers and gets Pharaoh to let them live in the fertile land of Goshen (in Egypt), see chapters 42-45.

At the end of Genesis we find God working in in spite of the Fall; He is fulfilling His promise to Abraham. Abraham has children (seed/offspring), they are living comfortably (blessing), but they are not living in the land promised to Abraham. That’s okay, though, because God said it would take 400 years for Israel to move into the Promised Land (15:13). Everything is going according to God’s plan.

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.

When I originally taught this series, I took one week and dedicated it to walking chronologically through the Bible in about one hour. I split it into much smaller chunks here. If you want to read the whole thing, it's available PDF format. I’ll be posting these a little more often than once a week since each one is so short.

Genesis 3

Everything was going great until the serpent entered the picture. We know him better as Satan; his name in Hebrew is Ha-Satan: “the accuser.” Satan shows up in the garden and begins tempting Eve (though her husband is close by). The accuser starts by accusing God of being unloving and unreasonable; he asks her if God had really forbidden them from eating from any tree in the garden (3:1, note that virtually every time the serpent uses the word “you,” it is a plural pronoun).

Eve starts off rather poorly; she seeks to defend God, but adds something onto the rule that He had given her, putting a fence around the protection God had already given. She says that God had given them permission to eat from any tree in the garden but forbidden them from eating or touching fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden (the bit about touching was added, not a part of God’s command as it was revealed to us) lest they die (3:2–3). Satan then accuses God of lying, telling Eve that they would not die but would in fact become like God (3:4–5). Eve takes the bait and also gives some of the fruit to her husband, whom Genesis records as being with her (3:6).

For the first time they understand good and evil; the first thing that they see is their own sinfulness. Now they have to be covered, so their solution is to sew fig leaves together (3:7). Now the sound of God moving in the garden, instead of bringing joy, brings fear. Adam and Eve run and hide themselves (3:8). God goes looking for and calling after the man, though he was the last to rebel chronologically (3:9). Adam admits to having been afraid and says that, even though he had sewn his own covering (3:7), he still felt naked (3:10). God knows what’s going on and asks Adam if he had eaten from the tree (3:11). Adam responds by effectively blaming God for giving him a defective woman (3:12). The woman blames the serpent (3:13), and God responds by cursing all parties involved starting with the serpent. The serpent was doomed to crawl on his belly (3:14), which really doesn’t sound too bad. God was just getting started, though.

Genesis 3:15 contains the first direct proclamation of the gospel; theologians call it the protoevangelium because they think Greek sounds cooler than English (and in this case, I must agree). God promises that a seed (a Son, ultimately Jesus) would come from the woman. This seed would be injured by the serpent, but in return would deal the serpent a killing blow to the head. Next God moves onto cursing woman; she is told that her pain in childbirth would increase and that she would desire to control her husband but would instead be ruled over by him (3:16). Adam is told that the ground is cursed because of him; he would henceforth have great difficulty providing for his own needs and the needs of his family; the death penalty is also restated (3:17–19).

God then makes proper coverings for the man and the woman (3:21). He kills an animal and uses its skin to cover Adam and Eve’s skin, thus setting the precedent that sin can only be covered by shed blood. Within a single generation (and just a chapter later), Cain will get this wrong and murder his brother out of anger (4:3–5,8). Although man is still smart and strong, he is no longer loving or just.

Noah

I don’t want to take too much time covering this, but it’s an excellent illustration of what has now happened to mankind. Several generations after Adam and Eve, humanity is described as utterly wicked, everything man thought and wanted was always wicked, 24/7 (6:5). God even goes so far as to say that He was sorry that He had made man (6:6). We don’t have time to explain specifically what that means; for right now we will just say that God is using very strong language to prove His point: man is wicked. Man is so wicked that God decides to wipe out everyone except for one man and his family (6:7).

Noah is said to be the only righteous person on earth (6:9), this righteousness, though, cannot be taken to mean sinless. In Genesis 8:21, God repeats the notion that every thought that man has is wicked even from his youth. This is after God had wiped out everyone but Noah and his family! Noah then proceeds to plant a vineyard, get drunk, and lay naked in his tent; it’s almost as though he is trying to prove God’s point (9:21).  It should be noted that we cannot say that man has completely lost the image of God. After the flood, God essentially institutes the death penalty for anyone who murders (9:6); He says that the reason for it is that man is made in the image of God. We would say that while man still has many of the natural good aspects of being made in the image of God, he has lost any moral good attributes; his thoughts and intentions are “only evil continually” (6:5).

Noah’s son Ham does not respond properly to Noah’s vineyard incident like his brothers Shem and Japheth do (9:22–23). Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan, and blesses Ham’s brothers, blessing Shem the most (Gen 9:25–27). From Shem will eventually (after an incident with a tower and a very different kind of tongues experience – chapter 11) come Abraham, who is the main character in our next main point.

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.

When I originally taught this series, I took one week and dedicated it to walking chronologically through the Bible in about one hour. I split it into much smaller chunks here. If you want to read the whole thing, it's available PDF format. I’ll be posting these a little more often than once a week since each one is so short.

Reason For This

When I first started to set all of the Biblical narratives in their historical context and understand what happened when, it made the Bible make more sense to me. Going to Bible college has made that even clearer to me now by giving me even more information about historical context.

My friends at school and I were talking and they were discussing how much knowing when something happened in relation to other events helps them make sense out of the Bible. These are probably all stories that you’ve heard before; however, I’m hoping that hearing them in order will help you out. If you decide to, you can use these notes and the timeline you’ve been given to determine just what had happened before, after, and during whatever book you decide to study next.

How to Use this

Once you have a basic idea of the flow of redemptive history, you should find that you have an easier time making sense out of what people might have been thinking. The notes have chapter and verse references for many of the major events in Biblical history, as well as some dates. You can use these as a reference as you try to place whatever book you are studying within redemptive history.

Make sure you allow the scale of redemptive history to affect you. In the Bible God is telling a really big story. Keeping in mind everything that is going on should help you interpret the Bible; you will begin to see what you’re studying as a smaller part of a much bigger picture. This will make individual events seem both more and less important. They will seem less important because they’re just a small part of a really big story, but they will seem more important because they take place within the greatest story ever told.

Creation

Let’s dig right in and go to the first book in the Bible, Genesis. Moses starts off by telling us that God created everything in six days; six times, upon completing a work, God declared what He had made to be good (Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25). On the sixth day, we are told that God made man in His own image (Genesis 1:27). God, the King, blesses them and commands them to bless and rule over His creation (Genesis 1:28). God’s plan was to have an entire planet of people made in His image: enjoying and then praising God for His creation and for Him. After making man in His own image, God looked at everything He had made and declared it to be very good (Genesis 1:31).

For clarity, we should try to define goodness.  We know that God is good, and God said that man was created good. For our purposes we’ll do what many theologians like to do and divide goodness up into two categories; this will make things easier to deal with later. The first category is called “natural good.”  Natural good is a quality that is good to have, but is morally neutral. Happiness, strength, knowledge, power, and wisdom are all examples of natural good; they are good to have, but it’s not evil to lack them. Man was created naturally good. The second category is moral good; examples of moral good would include love, honesty, mercy, faithfulness, and justice. Man was created naturally and morally good; he was wise and he would use that wisdom to love God and his neighbor. This is why we are told that man and woman were naked and not ashamed (Genesis 2:25); they had nothing to hide, they had no sin.

The only rule God gave man was that they not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16–17). This was not intended as a kill-joy. God was not holding any good thing back; He was a loving Father protecting His children. He warned that they would die in the day they ate of it. He was being kind to them even in that rule.

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. This post is about using various tools to help you understand the Bible. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.

Why use tools?

By tools I mean those things which can aid you in understanding a given text. Dictionaries, other translations, commentaries, study Bible notes, and the like. The problem is that our culture is so far removed from the culture of the Biblical audiences, that we need help understanding many things if we are to understand the Bible properly. Many of the questions you asked when you marked up your text are going to be hard to answer without someone else’s help. Hopefully, we’re not so prideful that we cannot accept the help of others who have studied these things more than we have.

Tools for understanding words

Other Translations

Translations are the first step we take toward understanding an original text. The Bible was not written in English; parts of it were written in Hebrew, parts in Aramaic, and parts in Greek. Some translations aim to capture the thoughts of the original author and translate them (the niv, nlt, cev, etc.); this results in a more readable translation. Other translations seek to translate word for word what the author originally said, seeking to let you do the work of understanding the author’s thoughts. Translations like this include the nasb, the esv, the nkjv, the kjv, the ylt, and others. One other type of translation is a paraphrase (“the Message,” “the Living Bible”), these should be avoided because they sacrifice far too much.

For studying purposes, a word-for-word translation is best. There’s nothing wrong with reading a thought-for-thought translation, but when you’re studying you want to get as close to the original text as you can. The nasb and the esv are my two favorites, but there is no such thing as a perfect translation. All translations have their problems. The nasb tends to sacrifice the feeling of a passage in favor of having a more precise translation; it sounds rigid or wooden at times when it probably shouldn’t. The esv tends to be less precise while trying to preserve the original feeling of the text. I like to read both.

The kjv and the ylt were both translated a very long time ago and were not translated from the same manuscripts as modern translations. That means that sometimes the kjv or ylt will have an extra word or even an extra verse. The debate over which manuscripts are closer to the originals is outside of the scope of this series; I personally prefer the manuscripts from which the newer translations are made (they’ve been proven to be older). The problem with using the older translations, outside of the manuscripts issue, is that they will use language that we don’t use anymore. That adds another layer of obfuscation between the reader and the text because not many people know (for example) what Rebekah did in Genesis 24:64 when the kjv says she “lighted off the camel.”

In short, read lots of translations. Seeing how each translation did things should help you a lot. Your primary Bible for studying, though, should probably be a nasb or an esv.

Dictionaries

In the days of old the only way to look up a word in the Bible was to have an absolutely massive dictionary that indexed every word in the Bible; this dictionary was named the “Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance” after the man who made it and (presumably) how he felt after he was done making it. Fast forward to today and you can do Bible word lookups on your computer or even iPhone. There are lots of choices on how to do this: e-Sword is a really good free option for PC’s.

These dictionaries are directly tied into a translation. Translations don’t always translate a word in the original text the same way throughout the entire Bible. Often (but not always), this is for good reason; words in the original languages sometimes had more than one meaning. Looking through the Bible to see how a particular Greek word is translated in other places can give you a better idea of what that word means. Doing this is far better than going to a normal English dictionary because you are closer to the original text. Websites like biblestudytools.com will let you go to a passage in the nasb and see all the words as links that you can click in; clicking on a link will take you to a page where you can see the original Greek word, some notes about its translation, and all the other places in the Bible where that word is used.

Other Tools

Cross-References

Cross-references can be extremely useful. Sometimes they’re related to the original language, showing where another word or phrase has been used before. Other times they are just things that the translators thought looked related; these aren’t as helpful, but they can provide useful insight. Cross references in the New Testament that reference the Old Testament are often my favorites; they’re often very helpful.

Commentaries

There are many kinds of commentaries, and you need to be careful. Some commentaries are more like sermons; explaining the message of the book instead of just giving you the information you need to find the message for yourself. That’s not the kind of commentary you’re looking for if you want to be serious about Bible study. You’re looking for exegetical, technical commentaries. They will almost certainly be a little over your head (hard to understand), but they will allow you to figure out for yourself what the author is saying, rather than simply being told. BestCommentaries.com provides a helpful list of user-rated and categorized commentaries.

Websites

You need to be careful with websites; they’re not always reliable. Still, though, looking up a place or a concept on Wikipedia (or elsewhere) can be a helpful and quick way to get a brief overview of something. Another helpful site is net.bible.org; they provide insights into why the net committee translated things the way they did. Bibleplaces.com is great for pictures of Biblical locations, and bibleatlas.org is helpful for maps. There’s also Google.

Other People

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are probably people at your church or school who know more about the Bible than you do. There are also probably people who simply have a unique perspective on things. Don’t be afraid to ask; I’m sure they’d love to help. Even if they can’t help you understand something, you might end up accidentally helping them with something; that’s always cool. You should also make a point to ask people who you know will disagree with you, not to correct them but with a heart that is willing to learn.

Pray

We’ve talked about this before, so I won’t spend too much time on it. God can teach anyone He wants anything He wants, regardless of how dumb or inadequate we feel. You need to humble yourself and ask Him for help. Your Father will help you get to know Him if you ask Him; He loves you.

Summary

There are lots of tools out there. Try them out. If you need help, ask. Make sure, though, that your goal is to understand the original author’s message. There is a lot out there and it’s easy to be led away from the text and spend all your time reading other things. God’s words are found in His Word. The tools exist to help you understand it, not to take its place.

We’ll go over, in more detail, how to use each of the tools in class.

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. This post is about summarizing large quantities of text into smaller bits so that you can better understand the big picture. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.

Why summarize?

The idea behind summarizing is to move from the specific to the general. Books contain messages (an argument, if you will). Every section of the book, then, will contribute to the communicating of the author’s message; each part of the book will have some part in making the author’s overall point. Turning large sections of text into summary statements will enable you to deal with the author’s concepts more easily. You can see the flow of the message much more clearly.

Books were often read in one sitting, making it easier to get a feel for the author’s overall message. Longer books, however, are not easy to read in one sitting; summarizing enables us to see the author’s arguments that make up the whole argument much more quickly. Summarizing also forces us to try to understand each part of the original author’s message and decide what the overall message is. It’s easy to focus on individual words, phrases, and concepts without paying attention to the book as a whole; summarizing should help us to avoid that.

How to Summarize

The idea is to move from the specific to the broad. When summarizing, it’s usually best to start with paragraphs. Take a paragraph unit in your Bible (paragraph beginnings are marked in bold in the nasb) and summarize it into a sentence or two. Look for the thrust of the message throughout the paragraph, the point the author is making and summarize it into as few words as possible. Once you’ve summarized all the paragraphs in a chapter, you can take those summaries and form a summary of the chapter. Once you’ve summarized all the chapters, you can take a shot at summarizing the book.

If your summaries appear disjointed and it seems like the author is just randomly changing topics, you might be doing something wrong. Take a look through your text again. Make sure to note any time that the author says “therefore” or “so.”  You need to try to understand why it makes sense that the author sees the concepts before and after as being related. “I am wearing my green socks, therefore my feet are cold” does not make sense unless you understand that the author’s green socks are wet. This information would probably have been given to you earlier in the book; if you missed it, you’d be confused.

You will find that you’ll need to rework your summaries a lot. You may have an idea of where an author is going, but then be surprised as you move further into the book. It will obviously be helpful to have read the book several times so you have an idea of what’s coming. In any case, though, you’ll probably end up revising your summaries a lot. Don’t be discouraged; it’s a sign that you’re letting the text speak for itself.

The Message of Scripture

There are some important things we should try to remember before moving on. We will be prone to reading the Bible in light of our culture instead of the culture to which the book was originally written. We’re very prone to make the Bible out to be about us. The Bible isn’t about us, though, it’s about Jesus (we talked about that during chapter one). It’s a good thing that the Bible isn’t about us. First of all the Bible would be really boring if it was about us; we’re just not that interesting. More importantly, though, the fact that the Bible is about Jesus is good because Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15); Jesus is how we know God. He is also how we find life (we talked about that when we discussed John 5 in chapter one).

How does all that work out, though? People jump to crazy conclusions sometimes and there have to be rules, right? Well, there are rules. We’ll talk a little bit more about them inlater, but for now I want to lay out a general principal. You need to make sure that you understand how an Old Testament audience would have understood a message before you apply the New Testament to it. Let me give a quick example and then we’ll move on.

The book of Judges repeats “In those days there was no king in Israel” many times (see Judges 17:6, 18:1, 19:1, and 21:25). It is clear, even from just reading the book a few times, that the author wanted to make the point that Israel needed a king. More research would probably reveal that the author was specifically trying to promote the idea of a king from Judah (like David). He paints a particularly ugly picture of Benjamites and seems to really like Judah. The message the original audience would have gotten was that Israel needed a king, and that he should probably come from Judah (this makes extra sense in light of Genesis 49:10). The original audience would not have assumed this was Jesus; they would have assumed it was David. We need to understand that. Once we have that idea down, we can take a look at the story and message in light of all of redemptive history.

Having a king was better for Israel than having no king, and King David was a better King than Saul. The trouble is, though, that even David had flaws; most notably, he sinned and eventually died. A Christocentric message we can take from the book of Judges is that we need a better king than David; we need a King who will never sin or die. We need Jesus.

So yeah, the book of Judges is about Jesus. We didn’t, though, have to make silly jumps like saying that the cutting of Samson’s hair was like plucking Jesus’ beard. We asked what the original message was, and then we sought to understand how it applies to us. In your summaries, make sure you are going after the message to the original audience; don’t jump ahead.  We’ll talk more about this toward the end of this series..

Often times in literature, and especially the Bible, there are certain themes that run consistently throughout the text, pointing to a specific culmination. The Bible is no exception, and all the themes point to Jesus – either an aspect of His work or what it accomplished.  D. A. Carson calls these themes, “trajectories”; I have often explained them in terms of snowballs.  

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. This post is about questions that you should be asking any text you are exegeting. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.

Right and Wrong Questions

A lot of people come to their Bible asking questions it never intended to answer. Our goal in studying the Bible should not be to ask it “What college should I go to?” or “Should I marry this person?” or even “What is this text telling me?” Our goal must first be to understand what the author was saying to his original audience. Using broad, open ended questions is probably the best way to do that. Once we figure out the meaning to the original audience, then we might be able to take whatever we learn and apply it to ​some of​ the above questions.

The question-asking phase is kind of half way between observation and interpretation. When you ask your text questions, you may need to do some interpreting to get the answers. What we’re not doing yet, though, is stating the message of the entire passage. We’re just trying to understand all the little pieces so that we can later put everything together. Howard Hendricks likes to use the “Who? What? Where? When? Why? So what?” method in his book “Living by the Book.”  (though Hendricks was probably not the first to come up with this)They’re great questions. We’ll stick to the basic outline of those questions, but deviate a little bit in how we use them. Note that not all of these are applicable to every type of literature.

Who?

This who goes beyond just the author and the audience; you should already know who they are. Now we’re asking about the who in the text itself. Is the author talking about someone? Who is that person? What do you know about that person? Even just writing down a list of names you see can be helpful.

What?

What is the main subject of this text? Is it a person, place, animal, or thing? Take into account your literature-type. What’s the main point of this text? What’s the author saying? It’s a good idea to look for things in the text that seem to be out of place. The Bible is never wrong, but the behavior and words of people in narratives is often very wrong. Asking what is wrong can be helpful; so can asking what is right. Are people rebelling against God? Is God using them anyway? What’s man doing? What’s God doing? What are the main actions?

Where?

This is a great question to ask. The geography has huge impacts on people’s thoughts and actions. When Abraham was told to leave Ur and travel to Canaan, he was being commanded to go on a huge journey! He couldn’t just travel in a straight line, either. There was a giant desert between him and his destination; he had to go the long way around. Knowledge like that can really change the way you read passages like Genesis 12. You can find some great maps here.

When?

We’ve talked about this a bit before, but now we’re moving beyond just when our book was written. We’re asking when the events actually happened. Moses wasn’t around when Abraham was. That means that Abraham didn’t have any written revelation from God. King David probably only had the Torah and maybe Joshua; the rest of the Old Testament wouldn’t have been written yet, except the Psalms that he himself would have been writing. What kind of Revelation did the people in your story have? Beyond this, though, you might be able to answer questions that will explain the actions of the people in your text. What time of day was it? What had just happened to them? Was it the Monday, or perhaps Sabbath? Knowing what time of year it is can also be very helpful with narratives, since festivals occur and crops are grown based on that.

Why?

This question starts to really get down into interpretation. You’ll probably end up answering these questions multiple times because you’ll look back and see how wrong your first answer was. That said, you still need to ask the “why” questions. Why is this word or phrase in this text? Why is this text in the book? Why is this text in the Bible? Why is this book in the Bible? Why did God care enough about this to preserve this for us to read? In narratives you will want to try to find the motives for people’s actions: why are people doing what they’re doing?

So What?

This deals a bit with application. You’ll want to have gone through the other questions first, possibly multiple times. You’ll also want to have summarized your text. We’ll talk about that in week three. The “so what” you want to ask, though, is usually: “If God said this to this group of people at that time, how does that affect me and others like me today?” We’ll cover the proper asking and answering of that question much later.

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Several posts came before this one. You may want to check them out before you start this one.

​Getting Started

Observation and marking might be the most difficult part of the process to explain. The good news is that the actual process of making observations is not set in stone; you can do it however you’d like. I’ll explain how I (and many others) do it, but you’re free to make changes to the process or even try something else entirely. Basically, you can do this however you want. It should be noted, though, that If your process involves pouring oil on your Bible and only reading the parts that glisten the most, you should probably get some help.

Why mark things?

Before we get into talking about what you should be marking, I think it is a good idea to explain why you’re marking anything at all. Honestly, it isn’t something you need to do. It is something that lots of people do, but it may not be best for you, depending on how you think. The idea behind marking up your text is to force you to make observations and to help you to remember what you’ve observed. If you’ve never done it before, I would advise you to give it a shot.

How To Mark Your Text

You’ll need a copy of the text that you can write on. You can write it out (leave lots of room), mark up your own Bible (if there’s room), or you can print it yourself.  If you print it, make sure you have plenty of room in the margins to write notes. You’ll want to use a pencil so that you can erase all the dumb things you write; I don’t think you ever get to the point where you don’t write things that you later want to erase.

What should you notice and mark?

This is a fairly important question, but the answer isn’t too specific. The things you want to mark down are the things in the text that you find important, especially if you don’t think you’ll remember them yourself. I’m going to provide you with a list of things I like to mark, but don’t feel restricted to it; also don’t feel like you have to do everything on it. This list is not absolute; it’s here to get you started.

1. Underlining (or highlighting)
   1. Words that repeat
   2. Words that are emphasized with modifiers (like: very fast)
   3. Words that stick out to you
2. Other marking
   1. Arrows from modifiers to words they modify
   2. Question marks next to words you don’t understand
   3. Use different translations, write alternate meanings
   4. Citations (when the Bible quotes itself)
   5. Clear allusions to other Biblical literature
   6. Cross references, verses you’re reminded of
   7. Count/number repeated words
   8. Try writing a summary of what came before/after your section in the margins.
   9. What names for God (or Jesus) are being used?
   10. Draw a box around what you think is the main subject
   11. Random thoughts/comments

Don’t feel like you have to answer every question you have as you go through. The marking stage is just where you note that you have questions, not necessarily where you answer them. If you’ve got questions, put them down, too. That way you’ll remember them. Your text will probably get pretty messy. Don’t feel bad, though. My work is always messy, too.

Other Things to Help Observation

There are lots of other things you can do if you get stuck. You can read your text aloud, or hear it read to you. Both are very effective. Hearing the Bible can often change the way we look at it. Another thing you might try is ignoring the chapter/verse divisions and section headings. These are tools that were added later and they’re not inspired; they can be helpful, but sometimes they can be a hindrance. You might try reading different translations: the esv, nasb, ylt, and niv are great places to start. You might also try writing out a paraphrase.

Another tool that you might find helpful is to look at a map, or perhaps even draw your own. I did this when studying Amos, and it really helped me to understand Bible geography; reproducing things like maps will really help you remember them. Your map might be awful, but  the fact that you drew it yourself will keep it in your mind better.

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. Two posts came before this one, so you might want to read them if you haven’t already.

Tools Come Later

You might think it’s a better idea to spend more time teaching people how to use tools like commentaries, dictionaries, and the like. While that is a legitimate way to teach, provided one is careful to stress the importance of actually reading the text, it is not the way we will do things. We’re going to spend as much time in the text as we can.

Why is reading so critical?

We talked about this a bit in the first post when we discussed the importance of studying the Bible in general and why exegesis is so important. We went to John 5 and saw that Jesus is the only Way by which we gain life, and that the entire Bible is about Him. We then went to 2 Timothy 3 and saw that those who would seek to hear and speak the Words of God are to go to that which has already been written in Scripture. If we want to find God we go to Jesus; if we want to find Jesus, we go to God’s Words in Scripture; they testify about Jesus.

That said, the next step is simply logical. The best place to read Scripture is not commentaries, dictionaries, books about the Bible, or study Bible notes. The best place to read Scripture is, of course, Scripture. Other resources are helpful and important because, while the Bible is completely sufficient to point us to Jesus, we are not completely sufficient for the task of understanding all of it. To understand the Bible better we can listen to other people who have devoted their l lives to understanding the Bible. Having them to help us, though, is not an excuse that gets us out of studying the words of Scripture ourselves. We must read the Bible for ourselves.

Reading with Prayer

We need to pray about reading the Bible, but what should we pray for? When praying about reading the Bible, there are (at least) two things I believe one should be asking for; I’d like to address both of them here. My thoughts on this subject are largely influenced by Jonathan Edwards in his sermon: “A Divine and Supernatural Light” and his book (much longer than the sermon): “The Religious Affections.” I strongly recommend at least reading the sermon sometime.

Two things that you should be asking for are general light and spiritual light. I sort of picked these terms arbitrarily, and you can call them whatever you’d like. I’ll explain, though, what I mean by each of them and why they’re important things to seek from God.

General Light

Firstly, when I say “light” I am referring to revelation, knowledge, or understanding. I am not referring to literal light. Literal light is used in the Bible to explain to us what God’s light is like. When it is present, you can see; when it is not present, you cannot see.

When I say “general light,” then, I mean a light that allows us to understand basic concepts in Scripture; I mean the ability to understand words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, and the relationships between all those things. This is the same sort of “light” that you need in order to understand any other kind of book; it is not spiritual light. You do not need to be saved in order to understand the Bible in this way, but this light is important in that it helps you to draw helpful things out of the Bible.

This general light is still a light given from God, even though it is something even non-Christians have. When Paul is declaring to the Athenians that there is only one God, Yahweh, and that we are dependent on Him for everything, he says:

Acts 17:24–25 (esv):

²⁴ The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, ²⁵ nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

There’s a lot in that section, but what we want to note is that Paul is stating, in no uncertain terms, that everything we have is from God. Our ability to understand God’s Word on a purely intellectual level is just as dependent on God’s assistance as our ability to understand God’s Word on a spiritual level (which we’ll discuss soon) is. Paul goes on in Acts 17 to tell the Athenians that mankind was created “that they should seek God.” Asking God, in prayer, for general light (the ability to understand Scripture on an intellectual level) is a way of seeking Him. We must acknowledge our inadequacies and ask Him for help. We have to admit that our brains, like our hearts, were made and given to us by God.

Spiritual Light

God gives general light even to those who are not His children; even those who are not saved can understand the Bible on some level. Some unbelievers can even know the Bible far better than most Christians. There is, however, a work in hearts that God only does for those who are in Christ. Paul addresses this issue in some detail in 2 Corinthians 4.

Let’s set the context. 2 Corinthians is a pretty broad book; the underlying theme is suffering: how suffering glorifies God and how to act under it. Paul’s other main goal is the defense of his apostleship; there were those who were saying that, because he suffered so greatly (among other reasons), he was not an apostle. They didn’t think that apostles were servants; they thought apostles should be served.

One of Paul’s arguments for his apostleship is that he was a servant because apostles needed God’s gracious saving acts just as much as anyone. Apostles aren’t super-Christians.

2 Corinthians 4:3–6 (esv)

³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. ⁴ In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵ For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The gospel (and the Law of Moses, see 2 Cor 3:15) was veiled from unbelievers by Satan. Apostles and regular Christians had both been blinded by Satan at some point. What they needed was a form of Spiritual vision that only God could give. God, who created light to begin with, had to shine in their hearts in order to give them “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

This light, this glory is how we are transformed “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). The unveiling of our face, enlightening of our hearts, and transformation our very selves is from God who is the Spirit (that is, through the work of the Holy Spirit). There is a certain kind of seeing and a certain kind of light that we do not have apart from a miraculous and unique work of God.  We need to do more than understand that God is good; we need more than the knowledge that He is good. We need to taste it and see it (Psa 34:8). We need to know it in a way only God can show us.

Paul’s argument was that this levels the playing field. Everyone is a servant because everyone is indebted to God. What we’re noting, though, is another (less stressed but still very important) concept: if there is special light that only God can give us, we need to pray. We need to seek it and ask God for it. We need to ask God to show us His glory in the face of Jesus Christ (to Whom, as you’ll recall, the whole Bible points). The Jews had the Law, and many read it with a veil even now. We need to pray that God will remove that veil for us. We need him to open our eyes, so we can see wondrous things in His law (Psa 119:18). We also need to not look down on others who don’t see the Bible like we do; because what we have we received by God’s grace. Jesus had to die for you to know God.

Other Kinds of Prayer

I hope I made it clear in the beginning that these are not the only things to pray about when reading the Bible. The Bible makes it clear that God is our Father and we are His children. This is perhaps clearest in Romans 8:14 where Paul says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (esv).

Prayer is how we talk to our Father. We don’t come to Him with a list of things we want Him to do like we would a vending machine. Talk to Him like He’s your Father, because He is your Father and that’s how Jesus said to pray to Him (see Matt 6:9).

Quick Summary

Hopefully this has shown you that we need God’s help in studying Scripture. We need Him to help us understand it, and we need Him to help us know Him and love Him through it. Prayer in Bible study humbles us, which is especially important because “knowledge puffs up” (1 Cor 8:1 esv). We don’t just want to know the Bible; we want to love God. Therefore we pray that God will help us understand His Word and help us to love Him more through the understanding that He gives us.

I’ve decided to take my notes from a class I taught on Understanding Scripture last year and upload them as posts to this Blog. Originally, this material was taught in five sections. Here, it has been split into more manageable chucks. You might want to read the first post if you haven’t already.

Why It’s Important

Reading the Bible as the original readers or hearers would have understood it might be the most important thing you can learn about hermeneutics. Biblical authors are much like any other form of communicator. They are perfectly aware that association takes place in the mind of the reader. What I mean by that is they know that they need to use words in such a way as to give the readers the desired impression.

Here’s an example: Imagine I’m trying to communicate something about chocolate to a group of people. Imagine, though, that for whatever reason this group of people associates the word chocolate with the concept of orange juice. I can talk about chocolate until I’m blue in the face, but I’m not going to actually communicate anything about chocolate to my audience. In their minds, everything I say is about orange juice. What ‘chocolate’ means to you and me is irrelevant here; the audience is always right (even if they’re wrong).

What does that mean? Why did I give that example? Well, admittedly it was a horrible example. Typically, false-associations take place on our end instead of on the end of the original audience (because the author was not originally writing to us). So suppose we live in a world where, a long time ago, the word chocolate used to mean orange juice. Now you and I need to adjust how we read things that were written from a long time ago, don’t we? If we read a cook-book from the 1100’s, in Old English, and took chocolate to mean chocolate and not orange juice… I’m sure you can imagine the havoc such confusion might inflict on one’s taste-buds.

Reading the Bible without trying to read it like the original audience can be equally as dangerous. Modern translations do their best to remove the barrier of word-meaning, but we still have to wrestle with understanding concepts, stories, traditions, history, literary structure, and other things.

Actually Doing It

Understanding that the difficulty is there and actually dealing with it are two different things. The list in the “tentative course schedule” (page 2) is a great place to start. You need to know a few things about whatever it is you’re studying; some are good to know even before you start reading.

First you should try to understand the when. You need to know when the book was written. For some books this is the date of composition. The Torah (first five books of the Bible), for example, was composed primarily by Moses, but another author at a later date (some think Joshua, but no one is sure) added chapter 34. That puts the final composition of the book sometime after Moses’ death, although it’s likely true that the Israelites had bits and pieces of the book earlier than that. Knowing when the book was written is critical because it allows you to know what the audience had been through, what they were looking forward to, and what they knew/didn’t know.

Next you should find out a bit more about those to whom it was written. Important information here includes where the original audience was (Israel? Babylon? Galatia?), what sort of people they were (Jewish? Gentile? Oppressed? Prosperous?), and what they’d been up to recently (Wandering? Building? Fishing? Sinning?). It’s also important to understand some of the same things about the original author. This can also help you understand the relationship between the author and the readers.

Another thing to consider is the literary genre of your text. You obviously need to read poetry differently than epistles. You also need to read narratives differently from parables, despite their similar appearance. Don’t look for meaning where it isn’t. God comparing His people to cows in Amos 4:1 (prophetic poetry) doesn’t mean that you should read every mention of cows in Genesis (narrative literature) as referring to God’s people.

Finding the Information

Actually finding this information shouldn’t be too difficult. For some books, though, it’s simply not available, and sometimes the information is debated over. However in most cases, while you might not answer every question, you should find a lot of helpful information. Places to check include your study Bible notes, Bible survey books, and the introduction section of commentaries. I’ve also provided some online resources.

Read the Text

A lot of this information, though, will become clear to you if you just allow yourself to soak in the text. You need to read the text often throughout the studying process. Our misunderstandings of concepts will often become clear as we seek to make sense out of the book or section as a whole. The best place to find information on Scripture is Scripture.