Biblical Hermeneutics

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

Table of contents
I. What Is Biblical Interpretation.......................................................................................................................1
II. A Short History of Interpretation................................................................................................................11
III. Basic Principles of Interpretation...............................................................................................................23
IV. Interpreting Narratives or Stories..............................................................................................................32

I. What Is Biblical Interpretation

The term hermeneutics can be intimidating. It sounds academic and is foreign to most of our
vocabularies. However, the act of interpretation is as common as communication itself.
Whenever someone speaks, a listener interprets what the speaker means. But what is
interpretation when we apply it to reading the Bible? How can we legitimately and effectively
interpret the Bible? This course will instruct in various parameters for biblical interpretation and
will show how specific methods are applied to Bible study.

Biblical interpretation is an important course of study, because the shift has come in Bible study.
Whereas 30 years ago, the big issue was: “What do we mean by the verbal plenary inspiration?”
Inspiration and inerrancy were all of the real dividing marks. Today the real dividing mark in
Christianity has become: “What do you mean?” “What does the Bible mean?” And “Can I get a
meaning out of the text which is my personal meaning?” Or, “Must I stay with what the Holy Spirit
said through the authors?” And, of course, if we want to have a sufficient and authoritative
interpretation, it means we need to go back to study the biblical text.
Now why is it that we would need a study in hermeneutics? After all, people pick up the newspaper
and they begin reading, and you adjust as you go from the editorial page to the funnies. There is a
different hermeneutic between the funnies (which are not funny anymore) and the editorial page.
But we know that instinctively because we are part of that culture.
The problem with the Bible is: God has given it to us in 1,500 years, from Moses—1400 BC—all the
way through John—AD 90–95—and through 40 different writers, approximately (some we don’t
know). The writer of Hebrews, for example, Origen said, “Only God knew”—that was correct.
Although that didn’t stop scholars. They have all posited various people: Priscilla and Aquila and
Barnabas and Luke as volume number 3—Luke and Acts and Hebrews as the third one. But there
will be seminars in heaven, I’m quite sure. There’s not a verse; it’s just a hunch that I have that
there will be seminars. I just assume there is more than music lessons. I don’t want to harp on that
point, but I think it is something we should think about.
But given that span of a millennium and a half, then, God gave that to people in their times in their
languages—there are three languages in the Bible. There is Hebrew, there is Aramaic, and there is
Greek. And we are speaking mainly and teaching and reading the Bible in English. So again, that’s
another reason why we need help. But nevertheless, hermeneutics is a great and important study.
The basic verse I call to your attention would be the one at the end of Luke 24 where Jesus meets
the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They’re going down the road terribly discouraged.
Cleopas, we know his name—he probably still had his name tag on—but the other guy got away. So
we don’t know what his name is, but we will find out in heaven.
But at any rate, Cleopas and his buddy are going down the road, and they are terribly discouraged
on Easter Sunday afternoon. And they’re headed to Emmaus—we still don’t know which city that is.
There are 10 or 11. They were going along and Jesus joins them and they don’t even recognize Him.
As a matter of fact, I don’t think they are looking up from “kicking stones.” It doesn’t say that in the
text. That’s marginal reading, “They were kicking stones.” But nevertheless, my margins are filled
with perspired things. The text is inspired. The margins are perspired. You can tell the difference—
no sweat!
So finally our Lord says to them, “‘Oh fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have
spoken: Did not Christ have to suffer these things and enter into His glory?’ And beginning with
Moses and all the prophets, He explained ” [Luke 24:25-27 KJV]. Now the word there for “explain”
in Greek here is (diermeneusen), our word “to interpret” or “to explain.” It begins with a prefix “di,”
but then if you put a rough breathing mark over the “e” (as in Greek; I’ve written over the top of it
there), it’s our word hermenuo, which gives us hermeneutics. Also we have the Greek god Hermes.
Most of us got that in fifth grade somewhere. Hermes was the god of arts and science and
interpretation basically. This word here, He explained. Our Lord interpreted to them what is in all of
the Scriptures concerning Himself.
I wish I could tell you we have a special here today for your coming to the seminar—and that is:
“We did find on Cleopas—he was wearing a recorder—and we do have a tape, which we’ve made
available to everyone of you, of all those passages in the Old Testament beginning with Moses and
the prophets, where Jesus said, ‘Don’t you see? It’s talking about Me! ’”Would that be a wonderful
gift! That would cut down a lot, must be about 40 books right away on Where is the Messiah in the
Old Testament? But our Lord thought these fellows could, they should, and they ought to have
known. And He did not give them a passing grade. “Oh fools, and slow of heart” [Luke 24:25] is not
top drawer. I would think that’s failing. You can judge for yourselves. But at any rate, “He explained
to them all things concerning Himself.”
So the whole system of interpretation is critical. But at this moment in history, it also happens to be
right where the main forces of postmodernity and the biblical statement of the inerrancy of
Scripture are meeting head-on. How did that happen?
Well in 1946, just to give you a little bit of a background here, two men, W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe
Beardsley, wrote an essay. They were talking about art, particularly, but it passed over into all of
interpretation. “How do you interpret a piece of art?” And they talked about the intentional fallacy.
That was the big word. That’s a big word in the literature today. What was the intentional fallacy?
They thought that the intentional fallacy was simply that we had the reader who was taking a text,
and then here was the author. Normally, up to this point, we had said that “a text meant what the
author wanted that text to mean,” which is what we assume when we talk in communication. It is
the person who is communicating who has the right to say that’s what they meant by their use of
the words. But now in what is now called postmodernity—postmodernity because the modern era
stressed objectivity—we really can know objectively. And it was giving Christianity the business
[trouble], because modern man could know for certain a whole lot of things. But postmodernity
came along and said, “No. It was the Enlightenment that really gave us the mischief.” And the
Enlightenment really praised man and his objectivity and what he could know. But now, rather than
going back to any kind of absolute or objective truth, they said, “There is no objective truth. ”There
are truths. And truth is in the eye of the beholder. It is in the eye of the reader. So the reader brings
a meaning to the text. Never mind what the author had [in mind], because this is like a painting.
Once the author has painted the painting, he needs to get out of the way. It’s what everyone else
gets out of it [the painting].
“Well it’s the same with the Bible then,” they said. “The Bible was given by the divine and human
authors, but it’s really the reader!” And the big phrase is, “the Bible means what I say it means.”
And therein you have the biggest revolution that comes in the twentieth century. This which begins
in 1946 with two men, Wimsatt and Beardsley, and that revolution has continued to the present
day. It’s not only, “The Bible means what I say it means,” [also that] “truth means what I say it
means,” “ethical means what I say it means,” “the beautiful means what I say it means.” “I define
everything!” So truth is out, which was part of modernity. Modernity was trying to get behind the
text and trying to find the historical roots and origins which produced nothing at all, because they
[modernists] were not the people, as we will see, who met the qualifications. They had blinders
over their eyes. The Bible, to be read [and to be understood], needs people who have the work of
the Holy Spirit to help them to understand. We’re going to talk about I Corinthians 2:14. But at any
rate, that’s the great revolution that came at that particular time.
The Greek word hermeneia means “to interpret.” And to interpret, as understood in those days,
was like our Lord Jesus, who began with Moses and began with the prophets, and He interpreted.
He explained all things concerning Himself. So what then is the relationship between this which is
called hermeneutics and another word I’ll introduce, which is exegesis? We’ll be finished with this
in just a little bit, but you need a couple of technical terms. Egō, in Greek, means “to go or to bring.”
And [the prefix] ex, as you might assume means “from.” So exegesis is to lead from the text the
meaning that is found in the text. Well the relationship between exegesis and hermeneutics is that
hermeneutics gives the rules, and exegesis is really the game played. Exegesis is the practice itself.
So one is the rules and the other sets up the practice of what it is. And we do have another word,
along with exegesis, which is eisegesis. This little preposition here in Greek, [eis], means “into” and
“to lead” (ego here)—to go or to bring or to lead into. So rather than trying to have the text here—
and you derive out of the text “ex,” this one says “eis”— I take it from some other place [in the
Bible] and read it into the text. This is a no-no, eisegesis, because that is imposing something on the
text, whereas exegesis is leading it from the text. So those are some basic definitions between
exegesis and interpretation.
We divide up all the study into two divisions. We have general and special interpretation or
hermeneutics. General interpretation [sets forth] the rules that apply to the whole Bible. What are
the general rules that cover everything? And special [hermeneutics] takes up special parts that we
will be looking at in these lectures. [These include]: what are the rules for interpreting parables?
What are the rules for interpreting prophecy? What are the rules for interpreting proverbs? You
can’t interpret a proverb literally, because some of the proverbs were given side by side with
opposite meanings. For example, Proverbs 27: “Answer a fool according to his folly.” Next verse,
“Answer not a fool according to his folly.”
So you say, “What’s my verse for today? Do I or don’t I? ”Well it depends on the person. Some
people, you answer them and [“smack”], “Man,” they say, “I needed that. That was just a smack
(verse). Boy that brought my attention.” But other people, you tell them [the same thing], and it
doesn’t help them at all. It just pushes them the other way. So why waste your words?
I was working my way through college and seminary outside of Philadelphia. There we were talking
with various individuals and this whole matter of listening to the texts and what they said [came
up]. We had many, many discussions at lunchtime and other times about how in the world would
you interpret various things. And one day out of the lunchroom came one of the fellows, Tony, who
is kind of the loudspeaker [bragger] for the whole group. And he saw me and knew I was studying
for the ministry, so he said, “Hey deacon,” he knew my name, but he gave me a title, “Hey, deacon”
He said. “Come here and convert me, convert me.” And so I thought, “Uh, oh! Here comes the
‘oink, oink principle,’” because you don’t throw your pearls out to the pigs (Matthew 7:6). They
trample on them. The pigs have no idea what they’re worth.
So I waited for Tony. I said, “What’s the matter, Tony?”
And he says, “I need to be saved. I need to be saved.”
And I said, “Tony, who told you you need to be saved?”
“Well,” he says, “my old lady says I need to be saved.”
I said, “Why did she say that?”
He said, “I drink beer on Sunday.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s not the only point, but I bet there are others as well.”
Then the other guys started confessing his sins for him. “If his woman [wife] knew what he did,”
and on and on they went you know.
So I said, “Tony, here I’m paying all this money to go to school to learn how to tell you, and you
know already point number one—you’re in bad shape before God.”
“Yeah, he’s in bad shape,” the guys confessed, and they began “helping” him.
And I said, “Well then, I’m supposed to tell you that someone did something about that.”
“Oh,” he said, “I know all about that.” He said, “I went to a Holy Roller church.” And He said, “There
they were, rolling in the middle of the aisle. And they were saying, ‘You’ve got to be born again;
you’ve got to be washed in the blood.’”
I said, “See that, you know all that lingo?”
He said, “Yep. Yep! I know about it. Christmas and Easter.”
I said, “Yeah, Did you know He died for you too?”
“Yeah, Tony, did you know that? ”The guys jumped on him.
I said, “Tony, I really feel embarrassed, but with all my study, there’s only one thing left.”
And he said, “What? What?” And he put his chin up just like that where you could “pile it” really
good. And he said, “What? What? What’s that?”
And I said, “I’m supposed to tell you do something about it.”
And [he said], “Oh, let me out of here, let me out of here.” And he was gone.
“Answer a fool according to his folly.” He wanted to know, “Could I be saved?” If I took him
seriously and gave him point 1, point 2, and point 3 [in their usual seriousness], he’d muck all
around like a pig going, “oink, oink.” But, on the other hand, I felt like I should give him some
background. Anyway, I had the “audience” to help me.
Later on, he found me on another part of the yard where I was working that summer. He said, “Hey,
Reverend!” I got a promotion. “Hey, Reverend! What’s the Good Book say about divorcing?”
I said, “The Good Book says a lot about divorcing, but it says a lot more about being converted.”
And he said, “Let me out of here.” And he was gone again.
Well special hermeneutics deal with proverbs like that [throwing your pearls before swine], and
they deal with the apocalypse, like the book of Revelation, or prophecy.
What are the limitations of hermeneutics? Mere knowledge of the rules doesn’t equate to good
application of them. You can have people that are very very good on knowing the rules of hockey
but are not good hockey players. There’s a difference between the game and the rules. And so
there is too here, as well. That’s a limitation.
And then [second, there’s a limitation] because we are sinners—depravity. There is this whole
matter that sin has affected every part of our being. Sin has infiltrated our thinking, our emotions,
our will that causes us to bring handicaps into the interpretation process. I need the Holy Spirit to
help me get by and point out those blockages that are there.
And then, thirdly, a good knowledge and a good understanding of the [whole] Bible is an enormous
aid in interpreting the Bible, because the Bible is a unified book. It is the one plan of God.
I just got [received from my publisher] a couple days ago kind of my “magnum opus.” I’ve been
working on for 40 years The Promise Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New
Testaments. Zondervan just released this, but what I try to do there is to talk about: what is that
mind of God that starts in Genesis and goes all the way through the 66 books to [the book of]
Revelation? There is a harmony, and the parts belong to the whole. And if you’re going to talk
about trees in the forest, you’ve got to know what the forest is about. So we’ll talk about that in the
third lecture here of context—the context of the whole Bible, as opposed to the context of a book,
[and] as opposed to the immediate context we’re teaching on. Those are all various parts of that.
What about qualifications? We’ve talked about definitions, we’ve talked about divisions, we’ve
talked about limitations, now let’s talk about qualifications. Spiritual things must be spiritually
interpreted. There is a real difference between knowing something cerebrally, or academically or
intellectually, and getting it down into our being—into our heart.
One of the great lectures I had was at a Jewish University, Brandeis University, was by a professor
whose grandfather was the leading writer on personal evangelism in the United Methodist Church
many, many years ago. He was long past that—Professor Erwin R. Goodenough. We used to say
behind his back, “Give me that old-time religion and it’s Goodenough for me.” But Dr. Goodenough,
Professor Goodenough, did not think it was good enough. And he just took every moment that he
had to give cracks against this [Bible]. Well one day (he’d never [prepare a formal] lecture). He
always said, “I’ve got a whole, full shelf of books like this [books he wrote],” and he did. “Put a
nickel in ‘er’ and ask me questions, otherwise we’ll sit for 2 hours. I get paid for sitting here, and
that is [what’s in] my contract.” And he was serious. So we used to meet ahead of class and line up
the questions so we could get a serious lecture from him.
Well one day he got mad, and he lectured. And someone said something that “ticked” him off
about, “justification means that God makes me righteous.” Ooh, he went [mad]! (I heard more
theology out of him in cursing than I did in teaching). But he got so angry! “What the blankity-blank
do you mean about that?” He said, “God declares us righteous.” And with that he went into the
book of Romans. And he said [taught] for 45 minutes: chapter 1 . . . chapter 2 . . . and chapter 3.
And he came to the end of chapter 3. “So all have sinned. You, you, you, you.” Well half of [the
class] were rabbis around the table. They began smoking (those were days when you could smoke
in the classroom). And I was at the opposite end of the seminar table; I could not see him. There
was some kind of “Shekinah Glory” that was between the two of us with great clouds because there
was so much smoke.
And he said, “You, you, you, you all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And then he
went on into chapter 4: “And you see Abraham was declared righteous. David was declared
righteous! It doesn’t mean, ‘This is all liberal stuff or this Neo-orthodoxy was blankity, blank, blank.’
[You who say], ‘What it says to me is what it means to me,’ what do you mean ‘it means to me?!’”
He said, “I’m an old-time liberal. That’s what it said!”
Well one of the fellows (spoke) up, and he had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth (he hadn’t
quite mastered that yet), but he was talking with it in the side of his mouth, and he said, “Do I get
from this that the professor of this class believes this stuff?”
Even I could tell what the answer would be when he asked the question like that. I remember he
said, “Brahhh.” I tried writing it down. I didn’t know how to write that phonetically, so I’ve left a
blank in my notes, and I remember that by oral tradition. But he said, “Brahhh, who said anything
about believing this? But,” he said, “you better put down that’s what Paul said. That’s what Paul
said, and that’s what Paul meant! And I don’t care what you think it means, because I don’t know
you, and I don’t even regard you. But,” he said, “I regard Paul and that’s what he said. ”“But,” he
said, “as for me, what it means to me and what I do with that,” he said, “that’s altogether
separate!”
Then I understood what it means in that great passage, I Corinthians 2 [verse 14], where he makes
the point. Here Paul concludes, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come
from the Spirit of God for they’re foolishness to Him. Neither can He understand them because
they’re spiritually discerned.”Then I understood [this verse].
This word here, “he does not accept,” in Greek, apotekamai, “he doesn’t welcome,” (Hello, Hello!)
and take that in. No, No! He doesn’t welcome that at all. Why? Because the man without the Holy
Spirit can’t. Because he doesn’t have the aid of the Holy Spirit. We need to respond. So the
interpreter here must be born again. The interpreter must have a passion for God’s Word. Where
did we lose the passion for God’s Word? The greatest neglected thing (everything except your
churches, but I’m thinking about the others), the greatest neglected thing is the Word of God. You
can’t talk about the Word of God or just refer to it. That Word itself has power. And when it’s cut
loose, it cuts through all kinds of cultural stuff, every kind of attempt to be “relevant” and to be “up
to date. ”That Word of God can do that, because the Spirit of God is talking to us in this day and
age.
I was down in Houston with a group of pastors, and was one of the speakers along with Sunday
Adelaja. Sunday Adelaja is a Kenyan African-American who never knew his father. He was chased
out of the 19-hut village he grew up in. His mother died when he was 3, and his grandmother, who
raised him, died when he was 15. He continued through [school] going out in the forest cutting
firewood and selling it so he could finish high school. When he finished high school, someone told
him to apply to the Soviet Union; they have free scholarships. He [won a scholarship and] went to
the Soviet Union, learned Russian, and in 6 years got his advanced degree in journalism. But he felt
that God wanted him to preach. But the people there had not seen African-American [preachers],
they made all kinds of fun of him [and] all kinds of references to chocolate. He said, “They called me
a chocolate rabbit. They asked me what I did to my monkey tail. Did I cut it off when I put my
clothes on?” [Such terrible ignorance and racism]. He said, “All that went on, but nevertheless, God
called me. And,” he said, “I began to preach the Word of God.” Largest church now in all of Europe,
50,000 [people]. He has seen 2 million, (did you hear me? 2 million people) in Kiev, Ukraine, come
to the altar to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior [to know Him]. Two million in that church. [All
of this happened] in a communist country! He began under communist regime. Why? He said, “That
Word of God has power, has power!”
He’s written an interesting book, well one of the numerous books, but the latest one is Church Shift.
And what’s the shift? The shift is the church. It’s not the building, but it goes out from there. And
everyone is employed and does some aspect [of the work]. You’re in the drug culture, good! Go
back to that drug culture and win them to the Lord. You’re part of the homeless, good! Go back
there and win them to the Lord. And you don’t do it with church funds. You’ve got great gifts. One
fellow he brought with him [from the States] said, “I was in the drug culture. I am 22 years of age
now, and received Christ 4 years ago. I have a ministry. I have expertise in investments. I make a
million and a half US [dollars] per year; I invest [most of ] that in winning people to the Lord from
the drug culture.” He said, “That’s what the gospel means to me.”
[So one] must be born again, must spiritually understand, must have a passion for God’s Word and
must have an awesome reverence for God. I did a book recently [for] Baker Publishing called The
Majesty of God—10 passages in the Old Testament that speak of the greatness of God’s majesty. It
has just helped me over and over again. When my view of God and my view of the Word of God
shrinks, it’s because I don’t understand the truth, the awesomeness, the sheer magisterial aspect of
His personhood. That in itself sort of gripped me constantly as I [was writing].
And then, we must depend (I Corinthians 2:14) on the work of the Holy Spirit. Why? These things
are spiritually discerned.
Now what equipment do we need in order to really interpret the Bible? Well one of the first things
is that we’ve got to see the forest. What is our overall view? Can we tell the story of the Bible as it
begins in Genesis and ends here in the book of Revelation? It starts in Babylon, it ends in Babylon,
interestingly enough, [at] the Tower of Babel. And where’s the great commercial center [in
Revelation]? The Board of Trade? It’s not in New York City. The board of trade apparently is in
Babylon. Well Babylon, some interpret, say [it] may mean Rome, may mean something else. Okay,
but still, Babylon to Babylon. Moreover, God starts with His people in the Garden of Eden, and we
end with the new heavens and the new earth in the garden of God once again. This is what we call a
bracketing or a figure of speech called an inclusion, an inclusio, where the beginning and the end
are very similar. And out of this, the whole story centers around seed—the seed of this woman who
has descendants, and so does the serpent, (always with the article, the serpent). He has
descendants too. But there is one male descendant. All of a sudden it switches to not it—as in the
King James—not she—as in the [Roman Catholic of 1609] Douay version—but he (as in Hebrew). He
has his heel nicked by the serpent, but He in turn tramps on the head of hannachash, the serpent.
Now this was called the first denouncement of the gospel all through the history of the church, and
they [the church fathers] said, “Do you see what’s happening here?” In this takedown, there is this
promise of the one who is going to be sort of the head of the many. This is one of the principles in
biblical interpretation that again, in the culture of that day, it’s a little different than our culture. But
what we have here is this whole contrast between the one versus the many, or the one in which it
includes the many. The technical name for this is corporate (there you get the many) solidarity (and
here you get uniting in the one.)
This Seed always, I think, should be spelled with a capital where it refers to the Messiah that is to
come. This Seed was given a promise of a total victory over that old dragon—the serpent, the devil.
That’s how it’s described in the book of Revelation. And so the serpent here is crushed. Later on,
Romans (we’ll pick this up), Romans 16: “Now may the God of peace crush Satan under the feet of
all of us shortly.” So how is this corporate solidarity?
This occurs so frequently [corporate solidarity]. For example, in the Joshua story about Achan, we
have trouble understanding how it could be that one man sinned and yet all sinned. And therefore
the battle [at Ai, Joshua 8] was lost in the book of Joshua. Remember when they went up against Ai.
They went against this city of Ai, [and] Achan was “achin’” to take some of the stuff (that’s how you
remember it), so he hid it in his tent. And because of that, judgment came on the whole group.
They lost 30 some men in that first occasion here.
I know of only one place in 2008 where I can describe this for you [corporate solidarity]. Let’s
suppose I buy a new car. Let’s say General Motors or GMC, and I go in and buy the car. (Normally I
buy Japanese cars—not because I don’t like America’s but I just heard that one of them was the
kind the apostles drove. That is in the book of Acts. They were all in ‘one accord.’ So I assumed that
that was a biblical car.)
Let’s suppose I buy a GMC [car]. And I take it out and find it has a problem. I bring it back. They say,
“Mr. Kaiser, we’ll fix this for you.” So I trust them, I come back, pick up the car, it still has the
problem. Actually, I bring it back the biblical number of times—70 times seven. On the 491st time, I
lose it (you’re not supposed to but I do). I say, “This is a hunk of junk. What are you guys pawning
off on me?”
They say, “Mr. Kaiser, we’ve done everything we can.”
I say, “You’re not going to be able to fix it?”
They said, “No.”
I said, “Why?”
They said, “This car was made on Friday afternoon, and therefore it is just going to have that
problem. You bought what is called a ‘lemon.’ ”
So I say to them, “Are you guys born again? Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and
Savior?”
They said, “Huh? No.”
I say, “Okay, I sue you” (See, you check first, right? And so they’re not born again, so I tell them, “I
sue you”).
When we go to court, guess what the legal brief says? It says, “Kaiser versus GMC. ”This is a “legal
fiction” they tell me in law. This here [GMC] functions as one person, and I’m one person; that’s
corporate solidarity there. But you know and I know that GMC is a huge thing [company]. There is
one man up here, the CEO. Then there are all these boards of directors, and then there all these
employees, and then there are all these stockholders. I mean, it’s enormous. This is called
corporate solidarity. Through the one, you have the many. That’s how it operates there with regard
to the Seed too.
All of us are Abraham’s seed (Galatians 3:28). But the Seed is one (Galatians 3:16), which is Christ.
Excuse me: “Paul, don’t you know new math? Even on new math you have that sort of bad there
[mixed up].”
“No, no,” he said, “This is corporate solidarity. ”Therefore, in a good survey of the Bible, I become
used to these kinds of concepts where I see this problem of the Seed. You say, “Yeah, but did Eve
understand this?” I think so. In Genesis 4:1, it said, “Adam knew his wife Eve (carnal knowledge, she
became pregnant) and she bore a son.” And she called his name, “Got”—Cain—because “I’ve
gotten a man from Lord.”There’s a little pun there. He called him Cain (Cainod, got) because Cain
means to get. So then she says, “I’ve gotten a man. . . .” Now [I know] our English texts say, “with
the help of the Lord.” And I know the King James Bible put “with the help of” in italics. But that’s
not where you hit the pulpit and say, “With the help of,” But actually it means it’s not in the original
then. Well if it’s not in the original, “buh¬bye.”What did she say? Luther translated it in the German
Bible just right. He said, “I’ve gotten a man, even the Lord.” I think her instincts were right; her
timing was way off. She thought that there was going to be the Seed who was none less than the
Lord Himself. And she thought that was Cain, but missed it by a country mile. If you look it up, the
Hebrew text just says, “I’ve gotten a man,” (well put the comma in because that is English), then it
has the direct object’s sign, et, and then it has Yahweh. So it says, “I’ve gotten a man, the Lord.”
That’s all it says. “I’ve gotten the man, the Lord” So a good survey of the whole Bible should help us
enormously here.
We also should have a good concordance. I grew up in a country home—a farm, up against the city
limits of Philadelphia. And my folks had several of these things here, because mom and dad taught
Sunday school classes. And they had a Strong’s Concordance. Strong’s, they say, for the strong;
Young’s for the young; and Cruden’s for the crude. Cruden’s only has a part of them [verses] there.
Young is a little easier to use. Strong is exhaustive and exhausting. It has every a in the Bible, every
the in the Bible—I don’t know why you would want to look that up, but I suppose there are some.
But it has everything. A concordance is helpful because you say, “Where was that? What was that?”
I remember one Sunday after I finished teaching in Wheaton Bible Church in Illinois, and a man
called me and he said, “I need your help. My son was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and they
had a breakdown and they couldn’t get off the road. And one of the college students with them was
sleeping in the back of the car and an 18-wheeler came and killed the girl.” He said, “I need a verse.
It’s in my mind, but I can’t think where it is. ‘Will not the Judge of the whole earth do what’s right?’”
At that point I had a memory of that but couldn’t put my finger on it. I quickly pulled the
concordance out. I said, “Genesis 18 [verse 25], ‘Will not the Judge of the whole earth do what’s
right?’”
A good Bible dictionary or encyclopedia is also important. Why? Because there are a lot of names,
there are a lot of places, there are a lot of things. For example, in I Samuel they [the Israelites] said
that they would go to the Philistines, and the Israelites had to have their plowshares and their
spears sharpened and they would charge them a pim. Well I needed a dictionary. We don’t have
pims. And so I looked that up and sure enough, we have an archaeological find, which was a unit of
money that was used at that particular time. So that would give us the background and the
backdrop to that.
[We need] a history of the Bible, just to know who are all of these people? Okay, the Assyrians, the
Babylonians, the Persians. But the Meunites? Who in the world are they? Now this is where a
history of the Bible and an archaeological book can be very, very helpful.
A Bible atlas too [is helpful. We recently published an Archaeological Study Bible, published by
Zondervan, which is quite helpful in this area.] Some of the Bibles have very good maps in the back
of them. My former colleague, Barry Beitzel [Trinity Evangelical Divinity School] has helped with
most of the Bibles now where have satellite views of almost all of the Ancient Near East. That’s
helpful.
And a commentary—commentaries are amazing in what they really don’t tell us sometimes, or
what they try to tell us. If the commentary goes on for 10 pages on a point, they probably don’t
know, and they are just going on and on. But it would be helpful to have it there.
And then another, a book of Bible difficulties—I participated in one called Hard Sayings of the Bible
(InterVarsity Press produced that). There are certain of the sayings in the Bible that are difficult, and
sometimes it’s helpful to have a reference you can pull down and check against that as to what was
said (or how to evaluate the difficulty).
Well, just before I give you some time for discussion questions, let’s just kind of review our first
introductory lesson. We have said, then, that this whole business of interpretation is a science (I
don’t think I mentioned this to you) and an art too as well. The science comes from the rules; the
art comes from the skill given by the Holy Spirit to apply those rules. Just like there’s a difference
between the rules, hermeneutics, and exegesis, which is the game of actually going to the text,
[determining what it says,] and trying to lead the meaning out of that text.
And we talk about general and special hermeneutics [and the difference between].General
[hermeneutics] for the whole Bible—there are principles, such as we’re going to talk about, of what
must I go back to find out what that person, that author, that human author that stood in the
counsel of God meant when he wrote those words. Or can I bring new meanings to the text? Or can
I find out that there are hidden meanings in the text? There are so many these days who are saying,
“The Bible must be interpreted spiritually and allegorically, and there are deep, deep meanings.”
I remember I was in a panel one time, and I said, “Now we have got to be
careful about that.”
They said, “Like what? What would be an example of a message that is kind of underneath the text?
It’s not really there, but it’s in a mystery form, it’s hidden in an allegory or spiritualized?”
Well I said, “For example, in the Gospels, Jesus and the Disciples are out on the Sea of Galilee. And
you know, we’re all out there in the boat, the boat is the church. And there are all these waves that
are coming in. And down on the boat is coming all of this stuff that’s hitting the church. There is big
spending and big government and big taxes and all this stuff is coming down on us. And the great
question is: Have you put in your oar? Are you trying to help the church get to the other side?”
“Now,” I said, “I don’t think that the Holy Spirit or the apostle meant that at all.”
But one man said to me, “Well what’s wrong with that? I preached that last week!”
I said, “It’s a good sermon, but it’s a bum text. That text doesn’t say that. You don’t have the
authority and the sufficiency of the Word of God that stands behind that [meaning]. You’re the
authority for that until you find another text that really says that!”

Then on limitations: The interpreter must be born again. The interpreter must have a passion for
God’s Word and reverence for God and treasure the ministry of the Holy Spirit in his heart. And
then the equipment, as we say, are some of these tools that make the job easier. You can do it on
your own, but you’ll have to have loads of time if you’re going to go thumbing through the whole
Bible to find out where all the references are without a concordance. A concordance is a way of
cutting it down. Or in these days, just Google it, which becomes the new word for “anything you
don’t know.” And it’s surprising; some of it’s good. So much for our start.

II. A Short History of Interpretation

Well good, welcome back to session number two! We want to take up a little bit about the history
of interpretation. I think that Milton S. Terry’s [book] was probably one of the best books, long
since out of print—1890’s [is when] it first came out. But he argued on page 31 of his book called
Biblical Hermeneutics that:

A knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation is of an inestimable value to the student of the
Holy Scriptures. It serves to guard against errors and exhibits the activity and efforts of the human
mind in search after truth and in relation to the noblest themes. It shows what influences have led
to the misunderstanding of God’s Word and how acute minds, carried away by misconception of
the nature of the Bible, have sought mystic and manifold meanings of its contents.

So we want to prevent three things: 1) provincialism—getting just locked-in to our own little
bailiwick; 2) subjectivism, which again says, “I’m the master of my fate, I’ll say what the texts
means”; and then 3) party spirit too, which is another form of provincialism.
As we begin the background here of interpretation, I guess I will begin with the Jewish schools. But
even before that, I think I should have put here the way in which the New Testament uses the Old
Testament. For there are almost 300 direct citations of the Old Testament text in the New, with
about anywhere from 1,600 to 6,000 allusions to the Old Testament. No wonder it is so important
to have a view of the whole Bible. If you’re going to be reading only the New Testament, then if you
miss the allusion, then it’s going to really [can potentially] hurt very, very badly.

Paul is one of the great users of the Old Testament. And in I Corinthians 10:6, he talks about types
or examples. “All these things are types,” he says, “so that we should not be desirous of evil.” And
he expresses that by going on in I Corinthians 9:9, which is a wonderful case. He picks
up Deuteronomy 25:4 (NIV), “Do not muzzle an ox that’s treading out the grain.” [To trample the
grain] you say, “Hey, look I’m not a farmer. Anyway we don’t use that on the farm today. We don’t
have oxen, or if you do they’re only a showcase, and we have threshing machines, combines.
[Today], you don’t need to have some “hoof” going round and round hooked up to a bar so it goes
in circles.” But Paul picked it up in I Corinthians 9, and he said, “I want to use this passage,” and he
used the passage to create a spirit of generosity in God’s men and women. Farmers should really be
kind to animals. Now this is not the new “animal rights’ things,” (which is the rage right now causing
factory farms and industrial agriculturalists loads of problems; this is something different). But he
[Paul] is saying, “Do you know what? As that ox goes round and sees all those ‘Wheaties,’ it just
goes crazy. Take the muzzle off his thing [mouth] and let him take a swipe as he goes around,
because Wheaties are the ‘breakfast of champion oxen,’ and so give them a swipe.” Now Paul says
in I Corinthians 9:9, “Did God write this only for oxen? No!” (I think he has some fun there. Oxen
can’t read as you know.) Well then why did he do it? He did it for farmers. Something happens to
the farmer that’s [who is] generous, even to his cattle. So Paul’s point is: those that serve you, be
sure that you’re generous to them. In other words, “pay your pastor.” That was the point. A lot of
my students say, “Will you come and give this message at my church when I graduate?” Sure,
because he takes a principle from a passage.

Sure God was concerned about oxen (Deuteronomy 25:4), but He was more concerned about
people who are made in His image who owned oxen. And therefore something happens to
generous people, the people who have open hands—“Yeah, go ahead, ox, take a swipe as you go
around.” And therefore Paul said, “Now I have ministered, though I really take care of myself, and
I’m not asking for anything. But do I have a right to it? Yes! And why so? So that I might be taken
cared of? No! Actually, I don’t want to deprive you all of the grace [of giving and being generous]
that should come to you.” There’s a grace in giving [and being generous]. Many people don’t
understand that in the pew. Something happens to the giver when they tight-fistedly drop a buck in
the plate as it goes by. First of all, we shouldn’t put anything in the plate. We should jump in
ourselves before we put anything in (now I mean this figuratively. Otherwise, you might put undue
pressure on the ushers). You must give yourself before you give anything there. Well that’s the
history of interpretation as it starts out.
Then the question is, “Yes, but isn’t Paul using Jewish Rabbinic types of interpretations?” This takes
us into the Rabbinic schools, and we have various things [items to account for]: The targums are a
collection of interpretations, but the biblical text always was on a different par. Commentaries we
may have . . . [have interpretations, but the Bible alone is authoritative].

Have you heard about the lady who came to her pastor and said, “I need to teach on this
[paggage]`. Can you give me two or three commentaries?” And he did. Three weeks later, she came
back and he said, “Well how did that work out? Did they help you at all?” And she said, “Well
pastor, it’s amazing how much light the Bible shed on these commentaries.” So sometimes it goes
the other way around. The commentary doesn’t always give you everything that you think you are
getting there.

So we have what’s called the peshat—the clear, plain, or simple meaning of a text. Then we have
what’s called a midrash, which is illustrative—it’s practical (I used to say in classes, “Rub my belly
and say that’s a midrash. But no, this is something different. It’s not that kind of rash). But this is an
illustrative, homiletical kind of use of the Bible.

Rabbis had the Mishnah and they had the Gemara and the Talmud. All these were a part of the
background of that particular day, and they were all used to try to help us get the meaning of the
text. There are seven rules—the Rabbis called them Midoth, in which they interpreted the biblical
text. Hillel, the first rabbi, came up with seven rules early in the Christian times. Then Ishmael had
13 rules— he added to the seven—and Eliezer had 32. But out of them, I’d like to give you six or
seven that really show you the principles that were operating, very similar to what we would say.

The first principle is that a word must be understood in terms of the sentence and its context.
That’s clear. Words are known, just like people, by the associations they keep. You know people by
the associations they keep; you know words by the associations they keep. That’s called context.

Secondly, Scriptures dealing with similar topics, they should be compared. When you have a topic
and that topic is dealt with later on, then it’s fair to compare the teaching of that topic. And
oftentimes this will relieve contradictions that are thought to exist between two passages. So words
are known by their associations.

Secondly, topics are known by their constant appearances in the Bible.

Third, a clear passage should be given preference to an obscure one. D. L. Moody was asked one
time [had this story]: A woman came up to him one time and said, “Mr. Moody, I can’t read the
Bible. There are too many hard things in the Bible.” And, typical of D. L. Moody, he said, “My good
lady, do you eat chicken?” She said, “Yes!” “But answer my question first.” He said, “I am answering
your question. Do you eat chicken?” She said, “Yes.” He said, “What do you do with the bones?”
She said, “I put them on the side of my plate.” He said, “Well when you read the Bible and you
come across something that’s hard, put it on the side of your plate. There’s still plenty of good
eating that is there, plenty of good meat.” Now that wouldn’t pass today, but it is pretty good
wisdom of another day, and it kind of gets at the heart of the problem.

The fourth principle is pay very close attention to the grammar and the syntax and figures of
speech. The Bible has figures of speech, and if you are not part of that culture, then you miss that
sometimes. We live in a Dutch community—used to be called Amsterdam; now called Cedar Grove
—in Wisconsin. They love to use the word “once.” Many sentences: “do this once.” The real best
one I saw was in the Piggly Wiggly Food Store. And it said, I think it was, “Pork chops! Eat them
once.” Well I would think so! But at any rate, you have to understand culture in order to get that.
That’s used a certain way in that culture. It doesn’t mean one time. It’s used in another way.

So there are figures of speech. We [say], “Yeah, when I told him, he hit the ceiling.” Most people
don’t look for him up there [on the ceiling]. They don’t even bother looking up. They understand
that, but that’s because we’re part of the culture. What do you do when you go 1,500 years, 2,000
years earlier? You got to make that shift. And so we need to go to that. One of the great books on
figures of speech was by E. W. Bullinger, done back in the 1870’s. It’s still in print and it’s a
wonderful guide to have on your desk. But Figures of Speech by E. W. Bullinger—he has 220 figures
of speech defined [and] illustrated in classical Greek and Roman sources, and then 8,000 passages
in the Bible indexed in the back from Genesis 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, and goes right on down through the
whole Bible—a wonderful guide. Not the last word, but it sure is a great help to us.

Fifthly, use logic when we determine the application of Scripture if Scripture has not been
specifically treated there. For example, Philippians 4:2 it says, “I beseech Euodia and Syntyche to be
of the same mind.” You say, “Skip that verse because I’m not Euodia, I’m not Syntyche, and they’re
not one of my relatives.”

But what we generally do is we go to Ephesians 4:32, “Be tender hearted, forgiving one another as
Christ has forgiven us.” “So, ladies, whatever your spat is, get over it and be reconciled and be
forgiven [and forgive each other]!”That’s what we teach. Euodia and Syntyche are not meant to
make the Bible hard, but it was an application in that day. So we then, by logic, go and say, “Well
we got two people sparring in the church. You could have Gabriel come and preach and it won’t
make any difference because there’s “static” out there.” And what do you need to do? Be forgiven.
Be forgiven [to forgive as well].

Another one, just let me give you one more, and that is we need to adapt the Revelation to the
recipients of that, which means a matter of finding an analogy from that day to our day. For
example, [in] Numbers 20. Moses is told, when the people are saying “Hey, Moses. Why don’t you
get out of leadership? I think when you’re 120 you ought to retire” (something like that. These are
marginal readings). He was 120, and they’re all saying, “We want a drink. The sheep and goats are
even saying ‘baahh, baahh.’” God had sent manna that day, but no water. And it’s out on the desert
and it’s hot. The children are saying, “Mommy I want a drink, I want a drink.” So Moses and Aaron
go before God and fall down and the Lord says, “Take the rod and go up on the mountain and speak
to the rock.”

“That’s just what is not needed,” they all say. “The old grey Moses ain’t what he used to be. And
there he is up there [calling out], ‘Oh, Rock!’” They said, “The boy’s done it. He’s gone over. He’s
flipped, because you don’t talk to the rocks. In fact, we don’t have courses in seminary—Rock
Talking 101. It’s not one of our subjects at all. What’s he doing there?”

And God wanted the people to see the only connection between their need and His greatness was
His Word. Speak the Word. But no, Moses goes up there, and he’s “had it up to about here” [had
too much stress]. And he took his staff along with him that day, but he takes it up there and he said,
“You rebels (boom, boom),” and he socked the rock twice.” Now everyone says, “He broke the
type.” I had a Bible that said that too in the footnotes, but not in the text. When you read it from
the top down, it doesn’t say that [top page of Bible down to footnote]. And if you get a comparative
passage, Psalm 106:32 (KJV) says, “He spoke inadvisedly with his lips.” What did he do? He said,
“What’s a guy got to do around here? “Must we (little Hebrew [first person plural] pronoun
anachnu) bring forth water for you out of this rock? What’s a guy got to do?” And he slugged it. Let
me give you another ending to the story: and a voice came from heaven, “Hit it harder buddy. What
do you think is this, in the New Testament?”

No, no, it wasn’t that. “The water came forth abundantly.” So people were out there giving, this is
called, a “high hand”—bent elbow, clenched fist—and it’s called “B’yad Ramah,” [challenging God],
with a high hand. It says in Numbers 20—actually the best translation is—“They blasphemed God.”
And they got the high hand. Suddenly, out comes the water. And some were going like this and
some like that.

But at any rate, here comes this mighty stream. One fellow said to me, “How many people are
there?” I said, “Two million.” He said, “How many sheep and goats?” I said, “It doesn’t say.” He said,
“Give me an estimate.” I said, “One for every two people, a million sheep and goats.” He said, “How
much water does a person need in a day?” I said, “For cooking, washing, cleaning, drinking, a gallon
and a half. That would be very, very normal, and at least a minimum.” He said, “How much for
sheep and goats?” I said, “What about two gallons.” He said, “Wait a minute,” and he got out his
calculator. What they did, they ripped God off; they stole glory. But yet God still gave them the
water they didn’t deserve.

Now in the analogy, we don’t talk about how we need to really improve the water resources in
town. This text is saying, “What we need to improve is the people seeing the power of the Word of
God.” That’s the only thing between where we are right now—out of H2O—and God and speak His
Word. What brought the water out? His Word! But what did these rascals do? Slug, slug, slug the
thing (Numbers 20)!

Rules for interpretation: the Dead Sea Scrolls [at] Qumran, also kept a library there down by the
Dead Sea. Some of you may have visited that [site], where, out of some 16 caves we’ve gotten 800
partial copies of every book of the Old Testament except Esther. No Esther. I have no idea. At any
rate, we have not found it. With some (Isaiah) we have two complete scrolls of the book of Isaiah,
and that takes us back in text tradition. The oldest complete text [of the Old Testament] we had up
to the point of 1946, when we began finding Dead Sea Scrolls, was the Nash Papyrus of AD 1000.
This took us all the way back to first–second century BC. That’s [at least] 1,100 years of text
tradition that we didn’t have to fill in. But on the book of Isaiah [the Dead Sea Scroll version], when
I was in the graduate school Brandeis University, we were doing it with [Dr. Harry Orlinsky], the only
Jewish man in the Revised Standard Version committee. And Dr. Orlinsky said, “I was reading the
proofs of the RSV coming over [the Atlantic Ocean] on the QE2,” and he said, “as I was reading the
Dead Sea Scrolls for the first time, I read it through,” And he said, “There were 13 word changes in
100 pages of texts.” And he said, “Since then we revised it. Ten of those we were precipitous on,
there are only three word changes [in the whole book of Isaiah]. And the changes are like the
difference between the English and American spelling on honor (h-o-n-o-r or h-o-n-o-u-r)—very,
very small difference.” That is preservation, enormous preservation of text. Not all are that good,
but I can show you Isaiah was enormously so.

They had a “teacher of righteousness,” they claim that he was their teacher of righteousness. That
comes from Joel 2 where there is a reference to the Messiah, who is called a “teacher of
righteousness,” moreh, not mareh, “the reign of righteousness.” Now changed, originally the NIV
had it right, “teacher of righteousness” The later editions—they have changed that.

By the way, I was on the team for the NIV, and when you have a team translation, you get two,
three things [your way] and [then] it goes for [against] you, three to four and you’re on the fore
sight, but then they keep saying, “No I’m taking my [own] translation.” Next time, it goes against
you. There’s the problem with the beauty of a whole group working together against one person.

And they [the Dead Sea Committee] came out with what’s called the pesher interpretation. A
pesher interpretation is one in which they said, “Look here in the book of Habakkuk, which talks
about the Babylonians.” They said, “You know who the Babylonians are? They are the Romans. And
you know who the Israelites are? That’s us, the Dead Sea community. And we’re out here in the
desert, and they’re coming after us just like the Babylonians came after them.” Well that is not a
true interpretation. They’re so contemporizing the text that they’ve lost the historical background.

Pesher is to say this, which is happening to us, is that, which is in the text. This is that. That’s a
Pesher interpretation, this which is happening to us [spoken of in the text].

But the big thing in the history of interpretation are the allegorists. Already in the pre-Christian
times there was a tremendous sort of preference for allegorical interpretation. You have in the
Greek community, they had a tradition of the philosophers coming out, and then you had Homer’s
Iliad and the Odyssey and Hesiod [interpreting allegorically]. So how are we going to put these two
things together? The religious tradition, which seemed to be absurd with gods and goddesses acting
in grotesque fanciful and immoral ways as you have in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the
philosophical historical tradition in which they were trying to find “what’s the unity of the whole
universe?” And they said, “Well there were four things: earth, fire, air, and water. But they said,
“Yes, but what pulls them all together? Give me the forest! What is the fifth thing that unifies
everything in the universe?” And the fifth, which is quin—this is where we get our word
quintessence. What’s the quintessence of everything? So they were seeking, “How do you put it all
together?”This is what universities are supposed to do. “University, which should be renamed
“pluralversities” (there are no more universities; there are pluralversities because they know the
mostest about the leastest, and all of it is chopped up. None of it is unified because we lost God,
who made everything. You can’t put it all together. It’s like stale chewing gum. It falls apart in your
mouth. But you just can’t put it all together, so you don’t have the quintessence). So what did the
Greek philosophers say? “Let’s allegorize Homer.”

And so each of the gods became some kind of virtue, or some kind of principle, but [their stories]
wasn’t tied to history anymore. It was no more about Odysseus [Ulysses] trying to get back home
with Penelope at her spinning wheel, waiting and waiting and waiting. But rather it was a religious
tradition in which the tension between the search for the five principles was pulled together by
saying, “there is something that is underneath the text.” And this was called the hyponoia, which is
the mystery or “that which is under the letters.” So there was no attempt to go back and to find,
historically, what the text meant, but rather there was an attempt to give a separate and a new
meaning here.

The place where this really took place and got the Jews involved was down in Alexandria, because
Alexandria was taken over by the Greeks. And so we have a Jewish scholar there, Philo Judaeus,
from 20 BC up through the time of our Lord, [even to] AD 50. He found the philosophical and other
meanings hidden underneath the literal statements in Scripture. And this began the search for the
so called “deeper meaning.” So the quest was on for this: who can say what is the deeper meaning
of the text? And if you have a lot of creativity, this is an easy way to teach the Bible, which becomes
very creative and inventive when you make everything in the text mean something deeper.

Now I need to go back and do a little lesson on the difference between a simile, which is a word
[figure of speech] that uses as or like. You can say, “He is as beautiful as a painted ship on an
ocean,” or something like that. That’s a simile. It’s an expressed comparison, because you used “as”
or “like” depending on whether it’s a noun or a verb. But a metaphor is [an] unexpressed
[comparison], so there is no as, there is no like. “Go tell that fox” He [Jesus] says about Herod (Luke
13:32). Now that’s interesting because it puts a picture in your mind of Herod with a red body and a
bushy tail. So for the moment it kind of strikes up a nice picture in your mind, but not everything on
the fox is to be compared. Don’t try to talk about the tail—Herod doesn’t have a tail—or the four
feet, or the color, or anything like that. The fox is slick, it’s sly. Go tell that “slick character.” That’s
the way to do that, “that fox.” So fox and Herod share one thing in common. So it’s a metaphor, but
it only speaks to one as or like [comparison]. Not everything is there [not everything in a fox is
compared].
I keep telling my students, “When you preach on Mother’s day on Proverbs 31, [be] careful, careful.
‘She is like a merchant ship,’ [be] careful, careful. Do not refer to the bulk of the ship! You’re going
to have a short ministry. ‘She goes afar and gets gifts and brings them home.’ That’s all! End the
exegesis! Don’t talk about the anchor, about anything else there, it’s [just] one thing.”

Now if you take a simile and turn it into a story, it becomes a parable. “The kingdom of heaven is
like a sower that went out into the field and sowed seed” (Matthew 13). See, it’s like or as, still
expressed, but it builds a story. And a metaphor, if you extend it, becomes an allegory. Are there
allegories in the Bible? Yes! Turn with me to Proverbs 5 [verses 15-23]. But in Proverbs 5, there is
this warning against adultery in verses 1-14, and he addresses “my son.” But then, in verse 15, you
have an allegory (there are very few allegories in the Bible, but this is one) where he talks about
marital fidelity and he talks about the intimate side. But it is so beautiful he doesn’t want to crush
this [topic]. So what does he do? He uses an unexpressed comparison.

“Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.”

“Well,” you say, “that’s good. If you’re not hooked up with the city water,

that’s a good verse.”

“Should your streams overflow in the street? Your streams of water in public squares.”

“This is “green” theology, save water! That’s good!”

“May your fountain be blessed. . . . ”

“Why thank you very much.”

“And may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

“Beg you pardon? I wasn’t prepared for that.

What is he trying to say here? What he is trying to say is He uses five un-expressed comparisons
here. He doesn’t want you to think anatomically, but he wants you to think here of the joy and the
satisfaction that come from the marriage act as being a gift from God. And he says, “A loving doe, a
graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love”
(Proverbs 5:19 NIV). The word captivated here is [also means] “drunk.” “Why be drunk my son by
an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife? For man’s ways are in full view of
the Lord” (Proverbs 5:20-21). There’s not a motel or a hotel where God can’t see through. He got
the full picture. And anyway, man’s ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths.
“And the evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast” (Proverbs
5:22). Round and round and round they go— he’ll die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own
great folly. That is a powerful teaching on marriage and the marriage act. Stay out of someone
else’s bed! That’s what he’s saying plainly there.
Therefore, there are allegories in the Bible, but very few. Probably you can count them on both
hands.

Well then we come to Origen (not origin, that’s different) about AD 185 to 253 in the Christian Era
—the greatest theologian of his day. [He has] given to us a lot of technical things on text of the
Bible, but he claimed every passage had three meanings: (1) there was literal meaning and then (2)
there is typical meaning and then (3) there is allegorical meaning. And he taught this regularly. In
the school at Antioch, they argued that there was what they called a theoria. They countered what
was going on at Alexandria. Alexandria was under Greek influence. So you have the school of
Alexandria (Egypt) down in the port there [an allegorical school]. And over against that we had this
[a call for theoria] up in Syria, which I think is a place [where] the apostle Paul also got his
education, Antioch, Syria (present-day Turkey). Now when they argued [for] this word theoria,
which means in Greek “to see,” their whole idea (I’m going to illustrate it, this is my own illustration
not theirs) it’s like having the barrel of a shotgun here with the sight here [close] and sight here
[barrel end]. So you have the now and the not yet, the distant future. And they claimed that, as the
eye of the prophet [sight], God gave through the prophet—He looks through this sight and He can
line up the distance and He sees maybe A, B, and maybe even C with a gap here all the way up to Z.
And they argued that you could see the near, like in I John [3:2], “Beloved now are we the sons of
God, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” So you have what later on was called
inaugurated eschatology. This just means the future has begun. Jesus said, “If I cast out demons,
then is the kingdom of God come upon you now,” but not yet! [Luke 11:20 NASB]. So they ask John
the Baptist, “John, are you Elijah, the prophet that is to come before the great the day of the Lord?”

“No” he said.

They asked Jesus. [He answered], “Yes! If you are able to receive it, yes he has come in the spirit
and in the power of Elijah [Luke 1:17], but I tell you, Elijah will come [Matthew 17:13].”

“Would you repeat that, Jesus? Is that a yes or a no?”

“Yes, it was both now and not yet.” So they could see what was given to them was a sight [view] of
the now. So rather than allegorizing and trying to get a picture of the deeper meaning of the future,
or the not yet, they were given a vision of the future.

Now too bad they [Antiochians] didn’t win out in history because they had one doctrinal problem,
and that was the Nestorian heresy which therefore knocked them out [as serious contributors to
this issue]. But in interpretation I think they were on the right trail. The best known was Theodore
of Mopsuestia and John Chrysostom. You can see their dates here in the 300s, 400s AD, so it’s
about fourth, fifth century of the Christian era. That’s the school of Antioch which was over against
[the school of] Alexandria.

So Alexandria was saying, “We’ve got to look underneath the text.” Antioch said, “No! Look at the
text, look at it literally. Take the simple, straightforward, direct, historical meaning.” And
Alexandria’s saying, “No!” Now that debate continues to this day. That debate is the big one that is
still in surprising circles here. The emerging church has [continued] part of it; part of it is New
Testament use of the Old Testament; part of it is Beyond the Bible Movement and how that is being
described too as well. We’ll get in to some of those [matters] later.

The western school was more eclectic, and they picked up elements of both Antioch, and of
Alexandria, and Hillary, Ambrose, Jerome (who gave us the Vulgate— the translation of the Bible in
Latin), St. Augustine of Hippo (gave us the Rule of Faith in which we measure Scripture against
other Scripture), but actually he was back and forth. For all the greatest theologians the church has
ever had. Augustine, who began as a rascal, who was a womanizer of the worst sort. His mother
Monica prayed for him constantly. He went off to Rome, came back to Northern Africa where he
then led the church and wrote volumes after volumes, hundreds of volumes. But, on the other
hand, in his method he was part allegory and he was part straightforward [literal].
Skipping over to the Middle Ages, the four-fold sense of every passage continued. So if we had [the
word] “Jerusalem”, it meant (1) the real city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem also was allegorical Jerusalem
—[it] (2) stood for something else. And there was also an (3) ethical meaning of Jerusalem and (4) a
practical meaning. So whenever you saw “Jerusalem,” the guys would just go bananas and tell you
everything. A lot of it is taught somewhere in the Bible. It’s like many messages I’ve heard in which I
say, “That was a wonderful message, but it’s a bum text. The text doesn’t say that.” Fortunately it
says it somewhere in the Bible. Because most of us know enough of the Bible, we import it. But we
can’t put it “where it stands written.” The old Scandinavians (who came over from Norway,
Sweden, and Denmark about 125 years ago out of the mission revivals that were there, revolted
against the Lutheranism of that day)—and they themselves had a movement which always asked,
“Where stands it written?” Always they’d ask of their teacher, their pastor, “Where stands it
written?” It’s a great phrase and it’s a great background here.

There was one particular abbey, St. Victor in Paris from AD 600 to 1500 , which were called the
Victorines. Hugo of St. Victor emphasized the literal meaning. Stephen Langton (AD 1150–1228)
stressed the literal meaning too. Very influential, Langdon was one who helped us get the
versification of the Bible. That’s where we first had verses. Nicolas de Lyra (a very important one—
AD 1270–1340), who was a Jewish convert, who complained of all the mystical saints. And he says,
“They allow the mystical saints, the allegorical saints, to choke the literal.” There was a little ditty,
“If Nicolas De Lyra had not played, Luther could not have harped,” or something like that. Luther
went back to Nicolas de Lyra when he said, “The just shall live by faith,” because it says that in the
text. He was going back to Nicolas de Lyra.

Well then we come to the reformers. Johannes Reuchlin (AD 1455–1522) was an uncle to Philipp
Melanchthon (AD 1497–1560). Melanchthon is the real theologian of Lutheranism. He is the one
that Luther went to and he [Luther] said, “Eat the soup!” and he said, “No, I’m going to die.” He
said, “Eat this soup or I will excommunicate you from the church!” So he ate the soup, got well (and
he actually outlasted Luther by 14 years), and he [Luther] said, “The church needs you,” and it did.
Lutheranism really wouldn’t have had their theology and a lot of their creeds had it not been for
Melanchthon.

Johannas Reuchlin was an uncle to Phillip Melanchthon. What did He do? He published a Hebrew
grammar and a Hebrew Lexicon and an interpretation of the seven penitential Psalms which were
so instrumental in Luther’s [thought]. [Among these were]: Psalm 32, Psalm 132, Psalm 51—David’s
great Psalms of repentance.

Desiderius Erasmus (AD 1466/69-1536) published the first critical edition of the New Testament.
You can go to Cambridge, and they’ll point to a little room up there where, on the top floor, he did
his translation. Martin Luther (AD 1483-1546) denounced all allegory. He said, “It was just so much
dirt, so much ‘monkey drivel,’” and he had all sorts of bad things to say for allegory. John Calvin (AD
1509-1564) thought allegory was a contrivance of Satan and it tries to introduce numerous
meanings to the text.

That’s where we are today. Today the question is the number of meanings that a text can have. And
usually, in the classical form, unless there is a clue in the text, there is a single meaning to each text
which is the basis for a principle that comes from that text. And then we principalize that as we try
to make application. But single [meaning] over against plural—that’s the big debate that’s going on
right now, [even] in Evangelicalism. This is not a word from another day but it’s a word from not
only that past day, but it still continues.

Other Reformers: [Philipp] Melanchthon, [Ulrich] Zwingli (AD 1484-1531), [Martin] Bucer (AD 1491-
1551), [Théodore] Beza (1519-1605), William Tyndale (AD 1494-1536). Tyndale, [he] did the first
English translation [of the Bible]. Well part of it was Coverdale’s, so a lot of Tyndale is really
Coverdale. But nevertheless they burnt Tyndale at the stake. Tyndale says “Scripture has but one
sense which is the literal sense. If you leave out the literal sense, you cannot but go out of the way.”

In the post reformation we have philosophical rationalism coming: [René] Descartes (AD 1596-
1650), [Thomas] Hobbes (AD 1588-1679), [Baruch] Spinoza (AD 1632-1677), [John] Locke (AD 1632-
1704), [Gotthold Ephraim] Lessing (AD 1729-1781) with his “Ditch.” But then the pietism of John
(AD 1703-1791) and Charles Wesley (AD 1707-1788), and [August Hermann] Francke (AD 1663-
1727). Then we come to the existentialism of Friedrich Schleiermacher (AD 1768-1834), [where] he
said, “Religion is the feeling of the heart.”

My teacher (I was talking about Irwin R. Goodenough at Brandeis University) was still leftover from
that Schleiermacher liberalism. He was saying day in class, “Religion is the feeling of any feeling that
you have.”

Well the lecture wasn’t going well, and I had been teaching at Wheaton for 3 years. My students
raised the hand, so I raised my hand, and [he said], “Yes?”

I said, “Professor, I have a stomach ache. Would that be religion?”

Oooh—he swore at me, and gave a number of theological terms, and apparently he didn’t like the
question. So my buddy, who is a Japanese-American, spoke up and he said, “Well you mentioned
this,” and he gave another definition. Well he really was mad then. He said, “I’ll put you through the
key hole in that door.” Well, I’d never seen Ed Yamauchi [my friend] go through a key hole so I was
interested in seeing this happen too as well.

[The professor] He got so mad, he came back and said, “Your name, who are you?” I said “Kaiser.”
He said, “I’ll see you after class!” and I said, “Well sir, I have an appointment,” which I did, in the
providence of God. He said, “Well come to my office on Wednesday.” So I came to his office on
Wednesday. He said, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “Well you are saying that religion is whatever we
paint in the sky and it’s our feeling, any feeling we have.” But he was just trying to say religion is
“feeling.” That’s where they were during the days of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Then Higher Criticism came, about 1753. A French doctor (in those days doctors had to know, to be
really educated. They had to know Greek and Hebrew). And he was reading his Hebrew bible and
he said (This was Dr. Astruc), “Astruc’s Clue” in 1753 (AD, of course). He said, “Here’s my clue that
Moses wrote Genesis 1–11, but he wasn’t there,” of course [he did not live in this period of time].
“Well then how did he get that?” He said “There were two names for God: Elohim and Yahweh. So
he must have used two documents: a J document and an E document.” Well this starts the very
famous liberal critical view that the first five books were composed of documents: J which is
Jehovah, E which is Elohim, D which is Deuteronomical, and P which is Priestly. This one (J) came in
850–750 BC. [This was from] old stories that were originally told around campfires and finally was
put down in which it has bad ethical views of God. And Elohim was about 750 BC and it’s a little
better; but this one (J) was Judean; this one (E) is Ephraimite (northern). D is Deuteronomy, most of
the book of Deuteronomy. That’s what they found in the temple, but it was a pious fraud. Someone
penned it and put it there when they had a church cleanup day and they found it in the temple in
621 BC. And then [the] Priestly [came in] 450 BC; and finally you have redactors working on all this
like you have copy editors, and they pulled it all together. And everyone thinks today that it was
done by Moses. This is called Higher Criticism of the liberal sort, [and] it does away with inspiration.

Well what put the “kabash” to all of this was World War I. Man was getting better and better, and
“gooder and gooder” (if I can break my grammar here). We have, with World War I—[they] said
Karl Barth was getting up to preach in Switzerland and he said, “It felt as if the law of God was
slipping out of my hands.” He said, “I have nothing to preach.” So he decided to read Luther’s
commentary on Romans and he said “Guess what? Man is not getting better, man is a sinner” and
he said, “God has sent a Savior.” And he said, “This is all new to me.”

And they [evangelicals] said, “How do you know that? Because it’s true, it’s in the Bible?”

“No, no,” he said, “The Bible is only a witness. It’s not the inerrant inspired Word of God, but it’s
only a pointer, it’s a witness.” But he said, “This is part of it.”
Well then Søren Kierkegaard (AD 1813-1855) (the morbid Dane) said, “Yeah, look, all of this
[Christianity] is true. All of the creeds are true. But, you know, everyone in Denmark is a Christian.
This is a state church and everyone belongs to the State. Therefore, everyone belongs to the church
and therefore everyone is saved.” He said, “No! It has to be [true] for me, for me, promethesis.”This
begins the personal application. He meant it. I assume all this is true, but what about its
application? It’s not true unless it’s true for me. But everyone forgot that he took the creeds as the
[assumed] basis and said, “It’s all about me,” which is the first line in a very famous book, which
sold 30 million copies now [The Purpose Driven Life]. The best part of that book is the first line, “It’s
not all about me” [written by Rick Warren]. People can preach that for years, but it was the right
moment he said that—Rick Warren. By then, of course, “the whole cat is out of the bag.”

So then this continues until we come to post-modernism which probably picks up 1960s. Joe
Fletcher writes the book “Situational Ethics,” and he says, “It’s the situation that defines [us]. If
you’re two consenting adults and you love each other, do it, do it.”

And so we went all the way up until the current generation. So we have the boomers and the
busters and then their children. And their children said, “It doesn’t work.” And they want a whole
new response to that. And so out of it has come in the post-modern thing [movement]. The only
thing that they agree on, the boomers and the busters, is “it is all about me. I set the meaning for
myself.” So [William Ernest] Henley’s Invictus poem [published in 1888 says], “I am the master of
my faith, I am the captain of my soul.” I determine meaning; I determine beauty; I determine truth;
I determine what is right; I determine what is just; I determine what’s wrong. Read me!

Except now we have, in the millennial generation, they’re saying, “There is no worship here [in this
contemporary evangelical church]. This doesn’t make sense at all. We’re going to go back to
Canterbury Trail, which may lead all the way to Rome, but bells and smells and whistles and some
sense of the majesty of God. I just have had it with [modern worship]! We don’t want bee-bop
anymore. We want what the Lord has to say.”

III. Basic Principles of Interpretation

Well welcome, thank you for coming back. We are on lecture number three. This is the whole issue
of basic principles. Now we really get into the good stuff. Now we are really trying to talk about
how we get into the whole process of interpretation.

One of the greatest obstacles to understanding the Bible is ignorance of the principles and rules of
the Bible. As with every culture, every time you go into a new culture there are just different
nuances and different ways of handling things. Since language is the medium of communication,
the thoughts and desires of the mind of God, in this sense here, are actually being communicated to
us by virtue of what we call revelation. We were just looking at that in lectures 1 and 2.
So God communicates revelation, which we are not afraid to say, not only involves emotional
aspects and volitional aspects, but it also has a propositional aspect to it as well. Sometimes
Evangelicals only see the propositional, which is to miss it [the whole meaning]. But certainly in the
Postmodern Age, the propositional is always the part that is under great question [suspicion]. And
many wonder if that really is part of what God wanted to communicate to us. No less than the mind
of God, then, comes to us through this process of His communicating with His men who give that
Word of God.

But are the principles of interpretation that we are dealing with here to be applied to Scripture in a
similar way that we apply principles of interpretation to all [other] literary works? Well for a good
part of that question, [the answer is] yes, because all communication is a gift from God. We want to
talk about the whole business of what’s involved in this special work [in us] which we call the image
of God. This is what makes people distinctive from all other parts of creation. Animals are made by
God, flowers are made by God, people are made by God. But actually man and woman are made in
the Imago Dei, [the “image of God”] to use the Latin term here. And as part of the image bearers,
right away they are dominion-havers. God set the men and the women over all of creation. That
does not mean they could run roughshod over it and they are not to be environmentally conscious,
they are. But as a matter of fact, who was the creation made for? The difference was it was not
made for the animals; it was made for men and women made in the image of God.

Also, the ability to communicate. Communication takes place on a certain lower level with animals,
but it’s only human beings that can really communicate [by speech], this is another reflection of the
image

of God. Also, knowledge is part of it. If we go to Colossians [3:10], we’re created in the image of
God after the knowledge of God. Or in Ephesians 4:24 speaks of righteousness and holiness after
the image

of God. So there are some distinctive things in this Imago Dei which make human beings altogether
different. One more here that I [might] add is that human beings are able in the image of God to
love, which also can be found in the Genesis passage and in the later passages.

The very principles of interpretation come with part of our creation. They are part and parcel of our
nature. They’re not invented by man; they’re not produced by our skill. They’re discovered by our
trying to imitate what we see that [which] God has endowed [us, as His] people, with. We’ve been
given the power of speech and that comes from God. Therefore, the person spoken of is always
[another] person. If you address them they become automatically an interpreter. Interpretation is
not an option; we all are interpreters. Immediately upon being addressed, there is interpretation
that goes on. Now as we begin to look at the whole matter of interpretation, the first thing is
context. And I said the reason

why we really need to talk about rules, which would be hermeneutics (the science of
interpretation), is because of the fact that the Bible was written over [a period of] 1,500 years with
40 different authors— nine in the New Testament (approximately) and 31 in the Old Testament.
1,600 to1,500 years is quite a spread— from 1400 BC to AD 100—so we’ve got a lot of years
[covered by the canon of Scripture].

What is to be done first when I begin interpreting? Well the whole thing, when we come to talk to
someone and they begin [to speak] all excitedly, we say, “Wait a minute. What are you talking
about? What’s the referent? What’s the subject to the whole thing? [discussion]” So what is to be
done first? The first business of an interpreter is this matter of context. Here we want to know,
“How is the thought woven together?” This involves knowing, first of all, what the whole forest is all
about, what is the total context of the Scripture. Can I begin to really talk about what it is from
beginning to end? We say, “Yes. It is: Scripture is God’s plan for human redemption.” Okay, that’s a
start. What puts it all together? What’s that plan called? The Knowledge of God? The Kingdom of
God? People of God? Wisdom of God? Well the New Testament, (I have argued) uses, 70-some
times, the word promise, “The promise of God,” in referring back to the Old Testament. Every one
of the 27 books in the New Testament, except five, refer to the Old Testament as the promise that
God made to, not only Eve and to Noah but to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David
and David’s sons and the new covenant and moving all the way into the New Testament. So I’ve
tried to trace that in what I call the “Promise- Plan of God.” There are other ways of tracing it. The
key people are: God chooses a man from Ur of the Chaldees, Abram, and names him Abraham, and
gives him a promise that has nothing to do with him, [for it] doesn’t depend upon Abraham’s
faithfulness—it is a gift from God.

Now that is debated hotly. But actually, if you look at Genesis 15, which is the key passage where
this comes up, Abraham is going to adopt as his legal son Elimilech [Eliezer], a nice Arab boy from
Damascus. He said, “Lord you gave me a [promise] when I left Ur of the Chaldees. You gave me that.
I was 75 years old. I’m now 100, and it’s getting time for me to start making some plans. So my
verse for today is, ‘God helps them that help themselves.’ Hesitations 1:2.” So he is going to adopt.
Now this is the “Emily Post” of that day, or we used to say “Martha Stewart.” But you could adopt
[a person as a legal heir], and that person cried at your funeral, but they got everything later on
[when you die]. So he said, “See Lord? You promised me a son. There he is!” And the Lord said, “No
deal!” Deal or no deal? No deal! So he slammed the thing, [the “No Deal Sign”], down and he
actually said, “You’re going to have a son yourself.” Well, when Sarah heard that, she was 90. She
thought God needed a lesson in biology. There are problems. And the Lord says in Genesis chapter
18 verse 14, “Honey, is anything too hard for me? Anything too wonderful for me?” He uses the
Hebrew word Pele ( ‫אלפ‬ ). “Is anything out of the possibility for me?” So sure enough they had a
child, and that was Isaac.

But now God had told him, at this place here in Genesis 15, “Get three animals and cut them in half,
one half on either side. And then two birds; they’re too small, don’t cut them up.” Then he caused a
deep sleep to come over Abram, now Abraham. He is “zonked,” but he sees the Lord as a firebrand
as a flame of fire goes between the pieces. Now the word for make a covenant is the word literally
to cut a covenant. It comes from the Hebrew term karath [“to cut”].
He cuts a covenant. Why? The person that passes between these pieces says, in effect, “May it
happen to me what happened to these animals if I don’t keep what I promised.” Now everyone
thinks Abraham went through too, as well [but he most certainly did not]. So this was a contract.
This was no contract! It’s not a social contract so if one side “welshes,” therefore the other side is
out [voided], no, no, no. This was God alone, so take this out [He went through the pieces]. These
don’t belong here. Therefore this is what we call a unilateral—one-sided—not a bilateral covenant.
If it had been bilateral, then you could say, “Well Israel certainly hasn’t kept their side in the
bargain.” That’s true. And they went into captivity, and we haven’t heard basically from them as far
as a nation’s concerned since that time. But it wasn’t bilateral. It was one-sided. Uni, “one,” [lateral]
—means “side”—one side. [The covenant depended only on God].

So in the total context of the Bible, it is God’s plan all the way. If He doesn’t keep it, then, He says,
“May I, God, die if I don’t keep what I said I was going to do.” Now that’s with regard to three key
situations: (1) the Seed, that is the promised line of Messiah; (2) the Land, that’s debatable even to
the present moment; and (3), the Gospel. For He says, “in your Seed all nations in the Earth [will] be
blessed.” In Galatians 3:8, he said, “Did you see that Abraham was pre-evangelized?” He uses the
word pre- and eneulogethesontai. So he got the good news, the gospel, ahead of time saying, “In
your Seed shall all the nations of the earth, be blessed.” That gives you the full quote here of what
was the gospel. And it was that last phrase, “in your seed shall all the nations of the earth . . .” not
bless themselves, not that the nations or government themselves will say, “Not a bad idea, I think
we’ll do that too.” No no! God would, through this man and his descendants (and especially that
descendant in the corporate solidarity—the one in the many; Christ represents the many), He
would bless all of them. That was the big plan. Yes, you’ve got all sorts of things connected with it.
You have the inclusion of the Gentiles; you have the work of the Holy Spirit; you have the kingdom
of God, just thousands of other specifications that are coming into that one context. So do we know
the context of the whole Bible?

I think we have to get back into stressing the unity of the Bible, and the continuity [message that] is
desperately lacking this day and age. We hear good sermons, but we can’t connect them. Where do
they belong in the [whole] forest? We examine a tree every Sunday, but where does that tree stand
with regard to the forest? That’s the only way we’re going to get a reference point here. You may
get a Google map of the streets where you’re going, where it zeroes in, but tell me where that is in
reference to Michigan or in reference to United States, especially if you’re coming from overseas.
You need to know the whole before you can get to the parts. That’s the first context here [to study
for interpretation]

The second context is the individual scope and plans of the Bible. Two of my colleagues, wrote a
book, How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth, [by] Douglas Stuart and Gordon Fee. They wrote
another one, How to Read the Bible [Book by Book] and that one deals with, can we, in a snapshot
way, say, “What is the purpose of each book?” Yes, like John’s Gospel tells us right at the
conclusion John 20:31 “These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that
believing you might have life through His name.” Why did he [John] pull 10 signs, 10 miracles out?
Believe, Believe. Every one of them kept saying Believe, Believe, Believe! It’s the only conclusion
you could come to. Water [turned] into wine, the first sign Jesus did at the marriage feast at Cana.
How did He do that? Well look, rather than talking how did He do it, why? Why did He do it? He did
it so that you might believe.

Or the book of Matthew. Here you have seven sections—a prologue [in front] and [then] an
epilogue that comes at the end and then five teaching blocks—almost like the five books of the
Pentateuch. It’s almost like a new Torah (the Pentateuch). How does he [Matthew] mark that off?
At the end of each section he puts, “When Jesus had finished, when Jesus had finished, when Jesus
had finished.” At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the first one, you come to the end of
chapter 7 [Matthew 7:28], “When Jesus had finished.” You go to 8, 9, 10, 11, which are the miracles
of Jesus, “When Jesus had finished.” [Matthew 11:1] And again all the way through. That marker
helps us to understand part of the whole principle and what God was trying to get at.

Ecclesiastes, now there’s a book! Most people think that was written on Monday. “Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity,” sounds like he had a bad day. Well, no. As a matter of fact, I don’t think Havel
[or Habel], which is the rendering there, which we bring over in English as Abel the second child
born in the Bible—his name really means zilch, zero, vapor, vanity, what you see on a cold morning.
Why they named him Abel, I don’t know, but it must have been a bad time. But I still think we have
not gotten that in Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, what I think he means is, “change, change, change.”
Havel [Habel] means transitoriness, of transitoriness. All is transitory, which is a very modern book.
What we see is change, change, change, change and [we] just can’t keep up with it. So I ask “dear
writer (which I think was Solomon, lots of people don’t think so. But he said that he was a son of a
king and other kind of hints in the book). We come to Ecclesiastes 12, the last two verses, 13 and
14, “Here is the conclusion to the whole matter (I say, “Yes! I want to here it. What are you trying to
do?).” He said, “Here is the conclusion to the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments,
because this is what a man and a woman is all about.” That’s it? Yes! “If you want to know the
“man-ness” of a man and the “female-ness” of a woman, then you’ve got to come to know who I
am and what My Word is. That’s what I was trying to show you here. Everything else is zip, zip, zip,
[a fog, a breath, a vapor] transitoriness, transitoriness, change, change, change. But not Me [says
the Lord]. I don’t change, My Word doesn’t change. Get an anchor buddy, get an anchor, and it’s
found in Me.” I think that’s how we interpret that book.

So if I’m going to do any work in Ecclesiastes or any work in John or any work in Matthew or any of
these other kinds of books, I need to ask, “What’s the purpose, what really is the organizing theme
not only for the whole Bible, but now I need to know for that individual book and how that
particular book comes across.” Some books don’t state their purpose directly, but what we need to
do is examine the didactic or teaching parts or, like in the book of Hebrews, the hortatory parts—let
us, let us do this, let us do that. So you can begin to get the purpose by looking at the “let us”
passages and how they work out together.
The general scope and plan of individual books—some writers put their plan right at the beginning,
some at the very end, and some let us pick it up from reading what the book itself says. The book of
Genesis, here it puts ten times, “These are the generations of . . .” These are the generations of
heaven and earth, these are the generations of Adam, these are the generations of Noah, these are
the generations of Abraham, and so on it goes. Each one of them begins the word generations—
tôledâh ( ,(‫הדלוּת‬ [which] comes from the verb yâlad ( ‫דלי‬ )—“to bear, to beget.” So these are the
histories of—history of this, history of that history of that. And when you come to Matthew, how
does he pick it up? “These are the generations of Jesus Christ the son of Abraham, the son of
David.”

By the way, if you turn that around [the Genesis genealogy], you have what you have in the
genealogies [Matthew 1:1]. Let me show you. Abraham was 100 years old and he begot David. On
his 100th birthday, he had a son through whom David [later] came. How much time there it doesn’t
tell us, but what does 100 signal there? The time that that line came into being. And David, I don’t
know when he had Solomon, but let’s say he was 40 years old and Solomon was 40 years old and he
begot Jesus Christ. That’s how the numbers function there in that particular passage. I can show
you the working of that from other passages in the Old Testament.

One more book, Romans. A lot of people preach Romans. Romans 1:16, where it talks about “I am
not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek, to the Gentiles.” So he’s going to talk about the good news; now the whole book is about
the good news.

So again, three ways to get the context not out of the whole Bible, which would be at the heart of
the thing [whole Bible message]. What’s the unity of the Bible? And I think in our day, though we
stress diversity and discontinuity more (and there is. I mean, you can’t have discontinuity until you
have unity), but even with unity, many people don’t stress that. They stress the discontinuity.

But then the next thing, the next context I need to get is the book context. So if I have the whole
Bible, then I need to get the book itself. And I can find that by going to the beginning of the passage
where it’s explained by the author himself, or at the end, or I can get it through looking at the
didactic passages, as I said, or through the teaching passages—“let us do this, let us do that”—or
the didactic phrases there. We have a number of ways of getting at that context.

Thirdly, there is the immediate context. So now we’re going to teach on a particular paragraph or
set of paragraphs in the Bible. This becomes, then, the immediate context. (Now this radiating out
here from both of these [contexts], are elements which are going to make a contribution to that
immediate context as well). In that immediate context, I think I need to mark off the teaching block.
We call the teaching block a pericope. This will be the teaching block. Now these teaching blocks
can really be quite large. For example, if you’re going to do a narrative passage (we’re going to look
at narrative here, a little later on), but in narratives, the teaching blocks are not going to come in
paragraphs, but in narrative they’re going to come in scenes, wherever we have a change in the
time or place. Sometimes [as] a speaker, we need to have a change and this would be equal to a
paragraph in prose. So a paragraph is a complete unit of meaning—so is a scene. And therefore
narratives are going to need that [to watch for scene changes].

In poetry, say I’m preaching from Psalms, then in poetry I need to mark out the blocks [of text]
similar to poetic paragraphs, [which] would be strophes. Each strophe would be similar to a
paragraph there. And we could continue on with the other types of genre, but narrative covers over
60 percent or more of the Bible. Genesis is [mostly] narrative, most of Exodus, part of Numbers,
Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, a good
part of the prophets, Jonah (the whole prophet is narrative), Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts are all
narrative [genre]. So you got a lot of narrative in the Bible, which tells a story. As a matter of fact,
the storyline in the Bible is the exceedingly important thing. That’s what carries the freight [of
meaning] all the way across [the Bible], and you need to know where you are on that storyline.

At any rate, we can come back to that. So much for that whole section. In the immediate context,
then, I need to find out “What’s my teaching block?” If I am in scenes, how many scenes belong to
my teaching block? Or, if I am in poetry, how many strophes go together to make the complete
teaching? So I need to analyze the book and set forth the major parts in each one.

Let me show you how this works. Narrative is a good example. Look at your Bibles if you have them
there. Let’s go to I Kings 17. It’s the beginning of the Elijah story. I’ve used this one repeatedly
because it’s a good one to show this, and then I will go to I Samuel 3. The book begins, I Kings, with
the story of the Kings [of Israel], and we come up to Ahab [King]. Ahab is a real rascal, and God
sends Elijah. How are we introduced to Elijah? Not too formally. He just says, “Now Elijah the
Tishbite . . .” that’s all. What’s a Tishbite? We don’t know (It sounds like a cracker, but bite-sized).
[This is the area where he is from.]

At any rate, he’s one of the “ites” of the Bible. It’s a Gentilic ending (I love all these Gentilic endings.
There are the Amorites and the Girgashites and the Hivites and Hittites. I generally do all of these
and add at the end, “Termite,” just to see if anyone is listening, and usually there are several people
still awake and they smile. But my granddaughter, who was with me some years ago, she’s now 14.
But Sarah, when she was about 3 or maybe older, she said, “Granddad, You remember all those
‘ites’ you had?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “You forgot one.” I said, “What is that?” She said, “The
ninety-nights.” So I’ve added them too, as well—the ninety-nights with the Girgashites, the Hivites,
the Amorites and all the rest of the “ites”).

Verse 1 is scene one, it said that he (Elijah) goes to Ahab and said “As the LORD, the God of Israel
lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except by my word.”
“Ten-four over out” you know. It’s almost like, “Who was that masked man?” like an episode out of
The Lone Ranger, and he’s gone. He [Elijah] just delivers this [message] to the king. And where is he
from? He is up from Gilead. Gilead is up in the Golan Heights on the other side of the Sea of Galilee
[Northeastern], a stony rocky area. Maybe that was his name: Rocky. So he comes in and says,
“That’s it!” and he’s out of there. So that is scene one.

Next scene is at the brook Kerith (we’ve named our little hobby farm Kerith Farm. I am waiting for
the ravens, for that’s where the ravens fed Elijah. I don’t know if he was retired or not, but he was
fed by them). They came, and that goes down to verse 7. Then, the Word of the Lord came to him
and said; “Go to Zarephath of Sidon.” That’s up north in Phoenicia. Who is Sidon? Well that’s where
Jezebel came from. “I feel like I know her, it’s Jezebel, and her daddy is king in Sidon.” So God has a
sense of humor; he’s going to send him back to this place, right where all of this mischief came
from.

And so from v. 8 all the way down to v. 16, he meets this woman at the gate. She looks at him, he
looks at her. They knew each other in the Near East. “You’re Jewish.”

[Elijah notices], “You’re a Goyim, and you’re a woman”

And then it turns out she’s a widow and he says, “Give me a drink, please” (he adds a little grace to
it in Hebrew—please, na). And she turns to get that, and he says, “And would you add a cookie, a
piece of bread?” Well that tips the scales!

She said, “Buddy, someone’s turned the water off around here.” She doesn’t know that she’s
talking to the one of the principals. “We don’t have anything here and I’m down to just a little bit of
oil and a little bit of flour and I’m out here gathering a few sticks and we’re going to have our last
supper and your

asking for . . .”

“Yes, go do as the Lord God of Israel.”

“Oooo, don’t mention that “I” word. You’re in Lebanon. That’s a good way to become air
conditioned here.”

He mentions the “I” word because that woman has learned what the Samaritan woman learned
in John 4: that salvation is of the Jews. So he mentions that. She turns and brings him his bread and
his water.

Verse 17, (last scene). So: first scene [is in the] palace, second scene [is at] the brook Kerith, third
scene at the city gate of Sidon, fourth scene (see, change of place and time) is the son of the
woman grew very ill and stopped breathing, which is serious when you stop breathing— normally
you’ve got to breathe.

She then takes it out on Elijah. She said, “What do you have against [Verse 18] me, oh man of God?
Did you come to remind me of my sin, and kill my son?”
And he doesn’t give her lip back and say, “Shut up woman, I’m pent up in this house. I’m a great
speaker. I’m normally out, but for these 3 years, nothing but this kid running through the house all
the time.” He said, “Give me your son” (I love Mendelssohn’s Elijah Oratorio (and I think I like the
baritone solo, “Give me your son!”). You could almost hear the mother. “No! I lost my husband, I
lost the farm, I lost everything, and now my son. You want that too? No!” But she hands over the
corpse [to Elijah].

He goes outside, goes up the steps to the Prophet’s chamber on those flat roofs (remember). And
he puts the boy down, leans over him and says “O Lord my God why did you bring forth this tragedy
upon this widow I’m staying with, by causing her son to die?’ And you want to say to Elijah, “Hey
Elijah, easy, take it easy. You’re talking to God! You can think that but don’t say it out loud.” But
God knows what he thinks anyway. So he stretched himself out over the boy three times and cried,
“O Lord my God let this boy’s life return to him!” and the Lord heard Elijah’s cry. Then the boy lived.
That’s verse 17 down to the end [of this chapter].

Now I look at that passage and I say, “That’s one pericope”—teaching block—but it has four
scenes.” Scene one, [the] palace; scene two, [the] brook Kerith; scene three, [the] city gate of
Zarephath, which is a suburb of Sidon; scene four, the room with the dead son. And I keep saying,
“Okay, what’s the point of this pericope? I found the unity of the Bible. What is the purpose there?”
I look at the book of Kings. I didn’t give this to you, but remember Elijah and Elisha. Elijah is very
upset about what is going to happen, and God gives him a fellow compatriot, Elisha. He was out
plowing a very prosperous farm. He had one of the 12 John Deere’s—well, yoke of oxen. He takes
his oxen and cuts it up, his tractor (wonder what his father thought), and made a feast out there.
He’s going to the Lord’s service. Not, “Boohoo, I’m going into the Lord’s service to serve Him.” It’s
feast day! “Hey God called me for this wonderful time!” And here we have this wonderful
conclusion here that’s coming in this passage.

So I say, “All right, where is the focal point?” Finally, after reading the passage eight times, I got it:
last verse—“Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know . . .” (I think that’s where he slapped her
forehead). “Now I know you’re a man of God and the Word of the Lord from your mouth is the
truth” (I kings 17:24). I said “That’s it!” This pericope has a focal point, a big idea.

My colleague, Haddon Robinson, always says, “What’s the big idea of the passage?” [I said] “This is
the big idea.” And what’s the big idea here? It is that “How do you realize that a person is a man of
God?” or could be also “Finding that the Word of the Lord is the truth.” Now I need each one of
these blocks [of scenes]. What are they? Now I need a homiletical keyword that’s a noun and that is
plural (because it can be more than one) and it is abstract- it cannot be a concrete noun.

So I think it is situations: there are four situations, when (there’s my interrogative) we can learn
that the Word of God is truly dependable. The first one is: when we ourselves go away from God [I
Kings 17:1]. Where did it say “neither dew nor rain?” That’s an allusion to Deuteronomy
28, Leviticus 26. “You go away from Me and I’ll send neither dew nor rain.” So wake up, wake up
and smell the coffee! This is when we go away from Him. The second one is: when we don’t deserve
God’s ministers [I Kings 17:2- 7]. What does He do? He takes them to the brook Kerith and hides
them. Why? To protect them? No! To make the Word of God scarce. [That is why] the Word of God
was scarce in those days. And, third one there, when we come to the end of our resources [I Kings
17:8-16]. What does she have? Little oil, little flour. That Word of God is still dependable. Go! And
the text says that “the jug of oil and the bottle of flour did not run dry in keeping with the Word of
the Lord.” And then, finally, when we’ve given up all hope [I Kings 17:17]. The boy’s dead! The boy’s
dead! We’ve given up all hope, “And the Lord heard Elijah’s cry. And the boy’s life returned to him”
(I Kings 17:22). So I think that shows how this works in terms of an immediate context here.

[There] are other types of parallel passages you can read there [in the notes], the verbal parallel
and the real parallel. We’ll talk little bit later on about how we come to see the grammatical
historical meaning of a text. The term [was] invented by Karl A. G. Keil, is different than the Keil [of
Keil] and Delitzsch commentary series, which comes later. But the GH (grammatical historical)
interpretation is the one that follows the laws of grammar and the facts of history. It’s the spoken
sense. It’s the usus loquendi, and that’s the one that we’ve been trying to pursue [here].

IV. Interpreting Narratives or Stories

Let’s have a word of prayer as we begin. And then we will go into the narrative genre of lecture
number four. Thank You Lord Jesus for another day and for the delight and the joy and surprise day
after day. And we give this day to You, give ourselves to You especially, and ask that as the King of
Glory You may have all the honor and praise. We pray for the great success of Your Word this day
around the globe. And that the powers of evil and darkness may take a hard hit, be beat back
tremendously as Your Word goes forth in all of its majesty representing Your Person. And for that
we pray for ourselves too. Help us to see the delight of Your Person and the joy of working in Your
Word. For it is in Your name we pray. Amen.

Welcome indeed to our work here together. We want to look here at several genres. This is a fun
part today, and it will have more stuff, I think, than we can even begin to imagine of what we could
really take [from here together. So I’m going to get right at it.

Narrative is the fun part. It’s the most common literary type in the Bible. We call these literary types
genres, and what really distinguishes it is that it is written in various scenes. These scenes represent
changes in place, changes in time, setting, or even speaker. Although, if you go with speakers,
sometimes it changes—there are too many [times] back and forth [to be helpful for sermon
outlines].

However, most biblical narrative is between God and another person. God is either directly there,
or is implicitly there. You look at the beginning in Genesis [1–12], it’s God and Adam or God and
Adam and Eve or God and Cain or God and Noah or God and Abraham. So that continues to build.
He’s always one of the strong persons there. Often, that change in speaker marks a new scene, but
don’t use this too frequently. The NIV, for example, makes a new paragraph out of every time
there’s a change of speaker when it may still be on the same subject.

How do we begin to really teach a narrative? An awful lot of us have, in the past, tried to do
moralizing on texts. We read a story and then try to think, “Now what virtue or what sort of moral
does this bring up?” And usually we foist the moral on top of the Bible and therefore lose the
impact of the unity of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation [and its authority]. Because this
narrative plays a part—it’s one of the trees in God’s forest—of His everlasting plan. So there is a
plan and a purpose that’s coming from Genesis all the way through [to Revelation]. We have 1,500
years, a millennium and a half, from Genesis to Revelation. We go from 1400 BC , from Moses, all
the way up to John, who writes in AD 90–95, and 40 different speakers, writers—9 approximately in
the New Testament and about 31 in the Old Testament. And we go through three continents, we go
through three languages. We’ve got an enormous spread there. That’s why we need help in
interpreting. Because if they were of our times and our cultures and our language, there’d be no
problem— it would be like reading a newspaper. And when you read the newspapers, there are
different genres. You don’t read the funnies like you read the editorial page, although lots of times
there are similarities. But at any rate, you really use a different interpretive skill when you go from
the news story pages over to the sports page. These are different things, and we automatically
switch. But on the other hand, that’s our culture; these are our times. But what are we going to do
with a millennium and a half? That’s going to be different.

The most important feature of narrative is dialogue. The Bible loves dialogue more than anything
else. The Old Testament is very sparse on adjectives and adverbs. Almost all the action is in the verb
and in the noun. So, as a matter of fact, Hebrew has very few adverbs. They just don’t even list
them. They don’t need them. But a Greek [writer] would be really handicapped with that. Greek
needs that kind of thing. So dialogue is very important [for both Hebrew and Greek].

And [there is] the place where dialogue is introduced. Why did the author start with dialogue at
that point? That is a question well worthwhile asking. And then ask why the narrator steps out [of
the dialogue] and describes for a while, he narrates, and then steps back in and has dialogue again.
Dialogue slows down the action, whereas narrative speeds it up. But if you’re going to have
dialogue, “And so he said, and she said, and he said, and she said,”—well that’s taking a lot of time
rather than [simply] say, “they both disagree.” You can sort of speed that action up an awful lot.

But there are all sorts of rhetorical devices too that they read. In the book that we’re doing here,
chapter 8, “I will remember the deeds of the Lord,” the meaning of narratives. I’ve discussed this in
a lot more detail and with footnoting on page 125 down at the bottom of that page. There are at
least some of the half dozen or so articles that I have, over the years, done on the use of narrative
in teaching or preaching from a text.
What are some of the rhetorical devices? One of them is repetition. The Bible loves repetition.
Why? Because it wants to help us get the point. When you repeat something, you get the point. I
give some examples here. First Kings 19 is a great text, where verse 9, we have Elijah, who has just
had a great day on Mount Carmel. He [had just] called down fire from heaven. That would be rather
impressive. I mean, if you’re having a little difficulty with your congregation, say, “Alright, everyone
outside. I’m going to call down fire from heaven.” That would certainly help your credibility a little
bit in your class or with your congregation. We generally don’t teach “fire-calling” in seminary. Fire
Calling 101 is not one of our topics [subjects in Seminary].

But this man was confident that God could send down fire from heaven. I would have thought (see,
I’m just thinking of myself [speculating]) the Lord says, “I want you to call down fire from heaven.”

“Right! Well Lord, if I’m going to do this, let’s go around the back of Mount Carmel. I tell you what—
I’ve got a piece of paper here. I’ll start praying and you make the thing smoke, because I’ve never
done this before and I need a little trial experiment here.”

He didn’t do that all. He’s got 2 million people [out on Mount Carmel], and in 61 words or less he
prays. He doesn’t even stonewall [his prayer] with one eye open and start smelling to see if
anything is happening here. He just prays straightaway, and God sent down fire from heaven and
the people all go flat down. They all say, “The Lord, He is God, the Lord.” I guess I would too, fearing
we’d be next. But at any rate, that was the great day.

But then Jezebel (thorn in his side) hears that he’s taken care of all her people [850 Baal and
Asherah prophets] that are on “Baal scholarship.” He’s “bailed them out” so that they no longer
have full-time scholarships—and they had had their time from 6 a.m. until noon and then until 3
p.m., and Elijah’s relaxed the whole time. (I would’ve thought he would’ve been uptight. “Oh, boy!
My turn is coming. They’re not able call down fire. Wonder if I can”).

No, no. He is chewing on . . . I was going to say [on some] grass, but there is none. He is chewing on
a straw and saying, “Hey boys, I don’t smell anything yet, do you need help? Call louder,” “Oh
thanks. Baal!” They were very “baleful” in the way in which they cried out here. But [they got] no
response. He [mockingly] said, “Perhaps he’s on a trip, shout louder!” They take that tip too.

And one, no one has translated this [third tip], except Ken Taylor in his paraphrase Bible [The Living
Bible]. This time he didn’t paraphrase; he said what the Hebrew said. No one can say it out loud in
nice company. But I think he said, “Perhaps he’s busy right now and ‘can’t come to the phone,’” and
that was the third reason he gave here [to the idolatrous prophets]. Well at any rate, nothing has
taken place and it is really just a very, very difficult moment. But then he takes all the prophets of
Baal, because they’re phonies, and the prophets of Ashera and they’re all murdered down at the
brook. [I Kings 18:40]

Well Ahab goes home and says, “Honey, guess what, they killed all your prophets.” You’re now a
full non-prophet organization. And lo and behold, she gets mad. She gets mad and sends a
messenger and says [in I Kings] 19:2, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this
time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” Which was “I’m giving you a 24
hours.” Why?

I mean, with a man who is in this mood, you would think he (Elijah) would have said, “Honey, be
careful! I’ve just got into the hang of calling down fire. Would you like to become a grease spot?”
But lo and behold, no! That’s not at all what is taking place here, he runs. And the repetition that
we find here in 19:9, the Lord asked him several times here in this passage, “What are you doing
here?” as he fled from Him. It’s in chapter 19, and he’s out in the desert and he is saying, “I’ve had
enough, take my life, I’m no better than my ancestors.” He’s fooling, of course, you know. If he
wanted someone to take his life, he should have stayed home. Jezebel would have done it free of
charge. But he is out there and says, “Take my life. I’m no better than the rest of them.” And the
Lord knows what he needs. The guy needs rest, he needs some food.

So the Lord prepares out there in the desert for him a little hibachi, and he’s got hot coals and a
cake cooked over it and some [fresh] water. He lay down, went to sleep. And He woke him up
again, touched him and tapped him on the shoulder and [said], “Get up again. You need some more
food.” So the Lord says at the end of [19:9], “What are you doing here, Elijah?” [And] in verse 13,
“What are you doing here Elijah?”

And both times he’s got a canned speech. He comes back and says, “You know, they’re after all your
prophets. They put them to death. I, only I, am left.” To which the Lord doesn’t say, “Booh! I’ve got
7,000.” As a matter of fact, he was going tell him that later. But the guy’s not ready for evidence. He
needs TLC and a little bit of help here. Well my point is repetition [is part of narrative].

While we’re on it, 19:9. Do you see that “there he went into . . .”? The English text says, “a cave.”
The Hebrew says, “the cave,” but the English text can’t say the cave when no cave has been
mentioned [so far in the text]. Usually when you say “the cave” in the context there’s got to be
some cave. The context here is all the way back to Exodus 34, when Moses was up on the mount
and there he says, “Lord, Israel sinned grievously against You with this golden calf.” He had been 40
days, almost 6 weeks [on the mountain], and they [Israel] had apparently no expository preaching. I
don’t know if they had films or musical groups or what. But at any rate, there was no expository
preaching for those 6 weeks. The people say, “as for this man Moses, we don’t know what’s
happened to him. Make us some gods.” And so Aaron said, “Snatch off your gold earrings.” Moses
comes down and sees this golden calf and the people are now naked, running around in a dervish
kind of worship in front of it, and he comes up to Aaron. And he says, “Bro, what is this? What have
you done?” And Aaron tells the biggest whopper ever told. He says there, “Well I threw in this gold
and,” remember what he said, “out came this calf!” It doesn’t tell us what Moses said. I think we
need a picture Bible at that point, with the picture of Moses’ [face]. You know, just so
dumbfounded you don’t say anything. “Out came this calf!” That’s a big one. “He took a tool,” the
Bible said, “and around this wooden thing, he took the gold and smeared it on with the tool.” And
Aaron made that! And he said, “Out came this calf.”
Well the Lord told him. He [Elijah] says, “Lord, I can’t go on without you. I need a whole new vision
of You.” So the Lord said, “Come out of the cleft to the rock. Come out of the cave for I am about to
pass by.”

Remember that? I think that’s the only cave that he has reference here to.

Same situation. He [Elijah] was down in Sinai, so was Moses in Sinai. The Lord says here, “Come out
of the cave,” and then later on he is going to use the same verb—the only other place where it’s
used— where he’s going to say, “because I am about to pass by.” [Chapter 34:11], and the Lord
said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass
by.” The informing theology on this passage, then, is Exodus 34, where God said, “Moses, what you
need,” and he says, “Elijah, what you need,” is the same thing that teachers and ministers need—a
whole new vision of the grandeur of God—the majesty of His person. [They need] that as a
rhetorical device. So repetition is one of them.

Inclusion is another, where you have a kind of “bracketing.” The beginning of a section and the end
of a section are set off by the same words. I’ll come and give you some of illustrations of that later,
but let me get to the other devices. Chiasm is from the letter chi in Greek, which is our letter X; it’s
an inversion, or a crossing over, of the elements that are there. Some of these I have given
illustrations from the biblical text (this is not the Biblical text, this is perspired), page 130, which
comes from Isaiah 11:13.

Ephraim (A) will not be jealous (B, the verb) of Judah (C) and Judah (C’) will not harass (B’) Ephraim
(A’).

So (A) and (C) reverse in the second line. That would be an “x-ing.” So you start out with Ephraim
and you end with Judah; the next line you start with Judah and end with Ephraim. That’s an “x-ing.”
It’s just a chiasm. Or another one I have on that page is Daniel. The first seven chapters of Daniel
are good illustration or so. Daniel 2, [A] which says there are four world empires, [and] Daniel
7 again, has the four world empires [A’]. So you deal with the two of these. Then we come to Daniel
3 [B], and that is very much like Daniel 6 [B’], where in Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
(otherwise known as “your shack, my shack, and a bungalow), the three of them are told “renounce
God or we’re going to throw you in the furnace.” They say, “Look, O king, our God is going to deliver
us from that hot thing. But even if he doesn’t, we’re not bowing down to your stupid 90 foot gold
thing here.” And the other one here [chapter 6] is the lions’ den. This one is the lion, and this one is
the furnace. But I think both of these are the Gentile persecution of Israel. This is the Gentiles (and I
am just going to put) versus Israel, and they kind of go together.

But then, at the heart of it [this inclusion] is Daniel 4 [C] and Daniel 5 [C’]. As you put these
together, you have the divine providence that governs the Gentiles in both cases. Again, these are
the wonderful stories that are told of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel [4] of the tree.
Nebuchadnezzar is that great tree. God is going to cut that tree down, and for 7 years He’s going to
put Nebuchadnezzar out to pasture on grass. So nevertheless, it shows divine providence. Who is in
charge? God is in charge!

In Daniel 5, there is, again, the same thing. This is the writing on the wall, the very place in old
Babylon which was being restored by Saddam Hussein. He had 60 percent restored of old Babylon
[up until the war]. He was going to make it into [a kind of] Disney World. The hall, the very hall in
which there was an inset where the speakers table probably was and where on the back wall the
plaster fell down on which the hand wrote mene mene tekel upharsin—“you are weighed in the
balances and found wanting.” That very place was reconstructed, and before the whole of the Gulf
War, they had a dedication there. Some of the faculty, at least one of the men from Dallas
Theological Seminary, was there, present in that very place in which this took place—reconstructed.
And, of course, it still stands to this day, but the project is without a leader at the present moment.
It too is divine providence. So what we have here is a kind of inclusion, inclusio, in which A and A’
go together, B and B,’ and then C and C.’

So the book itself, in the first seven chapters (at least chapters 2–7), is laid out in a way that
illustrates that here you have four Gentile world empires, concludes with four world Gentile
empires: the Gentiles persecution (B) of Israel; Gentiles persecution again of Daniel (but as you
remember those lions were somewhat down in the mouth that night, and didn’t really want to eat
anything until next morning when they found their appetite again, as it goes.) But Chapters 4 and 5,
Nebuchadnezzar is “up a tree” and then finally restored back. And he said, “Let me tell you, I’ve
been there and I want all the peoples on earth to know there’s no one like this God. I’ve seen Him.
I’ve seen His providence.” Chapter 4, [an] amazing chapter, [shouts out], “only God is great,” and, in
chapter 5, the writing on the wall. These are great, great sections. I did with you I Kings 17, which is
on our narratives thing here, illustrating four scenes. Let me go to a different one, and that is to
take you to I Samuel 3. The Lord calls Samuel. A well known text, so it should be easy for us to
quickly use as an illustration. It’s a narrative again, so I need [to identify the] scenes. Scene one is
former days—“in those days the Word of the Lord was rare.” There were not many visions. So
scene one: previous days. Scene two is one night. Verses 2 all the way down through verse 14: one
night. And then, verses 15–18 is next morning. And then verses 19 through chapter 4:1a is all of
subsequent days. So previous days, one night, next morning, and the rest. That kind of gives it [the
main points of the sermon], so I’m going to have four points; each of these are like paragraphs [in
prose genres]. What’s a paragraph in prose? It has one complete idea. Well what is it in a narrative?
Again, they have complete ideas here [in each scene], and we’re going to try to bring those out.

So what’s the next thing I do? After I get the scenes, then I need to get the focal point (so I have my
four scenes and these are former days, one night, and then next morning, and then the rest or
subsequent days. This is 3:1, this is verses 3:2-14, this is verses 3:15-18 and then verses 3:19
through 4:1a.***24:24

Now I need a focal point. If I’m going to get ready to teach, I need to ask, “What’s the pivot point?
What is the center of this whole passage? What is it that my colleague, Haddon Robinson, calls “the
big idea” of the passage? Well I think that comes in [3:]9. I’ve looked at this over and over, and it
seems to me that usually you put it in the mouth of the speaker, one of the [key] speakers in
narrative, as you had in I Kings.

First Kings 17, the widow woman finally says, in the last verse, I Kings 17 [verse 24], “Now I know
that the Word of the Lord in your mouth is the truth.” So the “big idea” of that passage is learning
that the Word of God is dependable. Now you can teach a lot of things and do a lot of kind of
[projected] moralisms [on the text], but that’s not what God’s Word was after. Your moralism is
found somewhere in the Bible, but not in that passage.

But what is it in this passage here? “God let none of his words fall to the ground.” So I’m going to
talk about magnifying the power of the word of God. If God didn’t let his words fall to the ground (I
take it that they were Gods words), then how is it that this passage sort of does it? Well I go back to
the former days. How powerful is that Word of God? 1) God can make that Word scarce for us (I
always want to put in the outline first-person plural [us]. You could make second person [you], but I
don’t think that the lectern or the pulpit ought to be a rock pile. God can make this Word rare. The
word of God in those days was rare. Why? People didn’t want it, they didn’t listen. Sometimes God
gives us what we want and sends leanness to us. You ask me to describe the American church and I
would say 90 percent of it has to be that. The people are getting what they want. “Tell us a story,
make us happy. I’m okay, you’re okay. I really can win. I can really be successful. I can be rich,” and
[for that] you can draw 37,000 people.

Then, the second one here, one night, and this is God can make his words startling. He calls this
boy, Samuel. His mother, Hannah, had just brought him there [to the tabernacle], and the Lord calls
him (3:5), “Samuel, Samuel, Samuel.” He runs over to Eli, “Hinnani, here am I.” Eli said, “Kid, go
back to sleep.” I think you have to have some kind of intonation here. Then, verse 6, the Lord called
him again, “Samuel” and he ran, “Here am I.” Eli, maybe a little older, little testy, “Kid, sleep! Read
my lips!” (Some of it is marginal [to the text of Scripture]).

In 3:7, “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The Word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to
him.” That’s interesting too (what did they have? Junior church with just cookies, Kool Aid, cut outs,
and crafts, just messing around and he did not yet know the Word of the Lord. That’s amazing, but
that’s true in lot of the churches too. Our 3 year old grandson who lives with us can work the
computer very well, but they give him cookies for Sunday school. Fiddles! Rascals! And the biblical
text says, “No! Feed them, feed them!” [the Word of God]).

The third time, 3:8, the Lord called him, “Samuel.” And the third time he went to Eli said, “Here am
I.” Hebrew is hinnêh. So he finally gets it. He said, “Listen, go lie down, and if He says it again, say,
‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down, and the Lord came and
stood there calling him as at other times. Look at the patience of God! The Lord could get kind of
upset here too. “Hey, kid, you’re not too swift!” But the Lord came and stood there by his bed
calling him as at other times. “Samuel, Samuel.” And he says, “Speak for your servant is listening.”
And the Lord said to Samuel, “Look, I’m about to do something in Israel that’ll make the ears of
everyone who hears it tingle.” What is this? And He said, “I’m going to carry out against Eli
everything I’ve spoken against his family from beginning to end for I told him I would judge his
family forever because of the sin he knew about: that his sons made themselves contemptible.”
Actually the sons blasphemed (see here footnote there for a better translation), and he failed to
restrain them.

Hophni and Phinehas were having sexual relations right in the tabernacle, and were autocratically
saying, “I don’t want that old boiled soggy meat.” And they’d send the servant saying, “Give me
sirloin. I want the raw, stuff and cook it for myself.” And the Lord said, “Eli, talk to your boys.” Eli
didn’t talk to them. So at any rate, he failed to restrain them. That was startling. God can make his
word startling.

The power of God’s word. He can make it scarce. He can make it startling. Next morning: Samuel lay
down until morning, then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and he was afraid. Who
isn’t? When you get that kind word you can feel cinders in your stomach. And so Eli said, “Don’t
hide it from me son. May God deal with you ever so severely.” I don’t know if we get this, but
sometimes ministers don’t understand that if they don’t deliver the cookies [Word] as God has
given it in His Word, guess who’s responsible? It comes out of the teachers’ hide for pulling their
punches. That’s what I understand that text to mean. So he said, “This is what the Lord said about
your house.” And he said, “He is the Lord. Let him do what is good.” God’s Word is sovereign over
us. Not only can He make it scarce, not only can He make it startling, but He’s sovereign. He is the
Lord.

And then, the last paragraph here, using the focal point, they let none of his words fall to the
ground, and “He [Samuel] was attested as a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord continued to appear
at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word. And Samuel’s word came to
all Israel.” God can make His words secure. Startling? Yeah. Make it scarce? Yeah. Show that Word
[is] sovereign? Yeah! But He also can make that Word secure too.

We move from focal point after we got our scenes, and then for each one of the scenes, we try just
to put us, we, or our into each one of the principles here so that we weren’t talking abstractly
[about what happened in Samuel’s day]. We’re doing the application right in the teaching thing or
preaching aspect here. But I think it’s got to revolve around this first-person plural in that outline.
God can make His Word scarce to us. God can make that Word startling to us, not just to Eli. God’s
Word is sovereign over us and God can make that word for us secure. See how He personalizes it?
And then all you need are your conclusions here [to the message or lesson].

Notice, too, the importance of history here for the teaching of the Word of God. That is, many have
tried to sidestep in our day the whole issue of [the] historicity [of Scripture]. The 20th century was
not kind to biblical studies. We had a huge amount of scholarly activity that really tried to do away
[with the history of the Bible], in the midst of our great archaeological finds, too. Here we are,
finding all sorts of things! The scholars would say, “There is no Sargon the Great. We have the
whole list of the Assyrian Kings called the Khorsabad. [But] Khorsabad king list [had] no Sargon! We
don’t even have a palace from him. We’ve dug up Nineveh, and [there is] no Sargon.” So they went
across the Tigris River, and found the 20-acre p[a]lace, and [there] on the front it said, “Sargon, King
of Assyria,” and they had a big bull [actually two] shaped thing [creatures], which is about 50 tons
each, on either side of the gateway. One of them they took back to Chicago, and [is now] at the
Chicago Oriental Institute. They knocked down the wall in the back of the thing [the museum] to
bring this big old bull into the hall in order to get it there.

They also said there are missing peoples. They were no Hittites up to 1900–1910. They said, “No
Hittites,” and someone went up into Turkey on the Halys River and, lo and behold, we found not
only the whole Hittite Empire but we found a literature which one of my classmates, [Dr.] Harry
Hoffner, has now developed for the University of Chicago [some] 20 volumes of Hittite dictionary.
No Hittites? Here is a 20-volume thing.

So this continued with individuals, and they said there was no King David either. In 1995, we found
an inscription which talks about the house of David, the dynasty of David. And we can go on and on
with men, with nations, with cities. That doesn’t mean we found everything. Don’t forget,
archaeology has excavated less than 1 percent of all the possible sites in the world, especially in the
Ancient Near East. Less than 1 percent! So what we have found thus far is accidental, and there
probably is much more to come.

But, in our teaching, even though when we are in Joshua and we want to make sure, we want to
say, “Yes, the Walls of Jericho did fall down.” Scholars didn’t say so [agree]. At first, it [Jericho] was
excavated [around] 1930 by Garstang. And Garstang said, “Look the walls fell out.” Kathleen
Kenyon came along in the 1950s, and she said, “No, no, there was no collapse of the walls of
Jericho.” They went back, reinvestigated, redid her work, and she said, “There is nothing from this
period of time from the 1400s, the Late Bronze.” They have now shown that, indeed, those
[another set of] walls did fall outward, and they can be dated to this particular period.

But when we go to teach that, we are so tied to the historical situation that we forget the point of
the narrative. Therefore, don’t preach against the Liberals. They are not there anyway. Still, go to
the narrative and show what the text is [saying]. Incidentally say, “We have found that much of the
history here can be documented and is now reliable.” But don’t make the whole sermon on
evidences for the truthfulness of Christianity, because the narratives do intend to tell us what
happened. And that’s the big difference of [between] narratives in the Bible and [narratives found]
in other places [kinds of books].

The story line of the whole Bible is to anchor it in space and time. It really did take place in space
and time. But what took place in space and time is not [only] the fact that it took place, but that it
was God that was working, His plan. And therefore we try to teach based on the focal point of each
one of the narratives. We’re trying to say: “What was this [text] put here for?” “Why did God put
this story and why did He introduce dialogue at this point, drop it at this point, reintroduce it at this
point?” and, “Are there techniques like repetition and other types of things [rhetorical devices] that
really appear here that show how God is using this?” I think that narrative is one of the most
enjoyable sections. Again, over 50-60 percent of the Bible is [in the] narrative [genre]. Most of the
Genesis, half of Exodus, a good part of Numbers, Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings, I and
II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, a good part of the prophets have narrative, and Jonah (the
whole of his prophecy was that). Matthew and Mark and Luke and Acts are [mostly] narrative.

So the storyline of Bible is kind of like the wash line on which all of the truths of God are hanging.
But don’t take the wash line for the truth that’s found in each one of the focal points here. This
section in the book (this chapter is the one that I wrote) has more concepts than I have introduced
thus far. Pages 123-138 should give you many more examples of what we have been discussing
here. [We have come to the end of the time for me, and I am open to questions].