Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
(5) You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your might. (6) And these words that I command you today shall
be on your heart. (7) You shall teach them diligently to your children, and
shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way,
and when you lie down, and when you rise. (8) You shall bind them as a sign
on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. (9) You shall
write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Biblical Interpretation
Note: many ideas in the genre parts of this manual closely follow Gordon
Fee and Douglas Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
(Zondervan); I am especially indebted to their work on psalms and epistles.
Most of the rest, however, began especially from inductively grappling with
the Bible itself over many years, and then with the ancient sources that
reveal the world of the Bible.
This manual may be shared freely but only on the condition that it is
always free and that these credits remain. (It is “shareware” for public
use, like a sermon, originally designed for use with students in Nigeria, not
for traditional publication or financial remuneration.) The “background”
illustrations can be found in much greater detail in Craig Keener’s (i.e.,
my) IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 1993, with about a quarter of a million in print)—Dr. Craig
Keener
Introduction
In Josiah’s day the book of the law was found in the temple, and Josiah’s humble
response to its demands changed his generation. Jesus later confronted religious
teachers of His day who, for all their attention to the law, had often buried it beneath
their religious traditions. Numerous monastic orders through the Middle Ages kept
finding the church (or earlier orders) corrupt and far from the apostolic message,
and summoned them back to it. John Wycliffe, a Bible professor at Oxford,
challenged the church hierarchy of his day. After he lost his position, he began
sending his students out with translations of Scripture to preach in the countryside.
Although England suppressed his work, it lay under the surface, ready to blossom
again in the English Reformation a century later. Luther was a Bible professor who
challenged the church hierarchy’s exploitation of the peasants, calling the church
back to the Scriptures (other Reformers had the same emphasis, some seeking to
take the matter even further than Luther). When many Lutherans became
complacent in their faith, Philipp Jakob Spener, a university professor, helped stir the
Pietist movement with his Bible teaching, summoning people back to living the
Scriptures.
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Throughout history, many of the major revival movements came as people turned
back to the Bible, allowing it to challenge them to hear God’s message afresh in
their generation. The church in much of the world today needs to return to the Bible
no less, seeking from God a fresh wind of the Spirit to challenge many of the claims
made in the name of God, His word, or His Spirit. May we pray for such an
awakening, search the Scriptures ourselves, and become God’s agents in spreading
His message.
I arrange this course from the most basic principles to the more complex. Some
students may find principles like “context” too basic and may wish to skip ahead.
Before they do so, I encourage them to sample the context examples; many will be
surprised how many songs, sermons, and popular sayings have taken texts out of
their context. In other words, it is one thing to affirm that we believe in context; it is
quite another to practice that skill consistently. I have supplied concrete examples
to help us grapple with that reality and encourage us to apply our “belief” in context
more rigorously. Context is essential because that is the way God inspired the Bible
—not with random, isolated verses but with a continuous flow of thought to which
those verses contribute.
Some issues of interpretation perhaps should go without saying, but I will treat them
briefly in the introduction, because some Christians also fail to apply these in
practice. The central goal of studying God’s Word is to know God better, and the
better we know Him, the better we will understand His Word. Because God gave us
the Bible as a written book that contains much history, He does expect us to use
literary and historical principles when we study it. But it is also a record of the
message of God’s heart to His people, so we dare not approach it as merely a matter
of intellectual interest or curiosity. Those who become “experts” from a purely
intellectual or even religious standpoint can become like the scribes who opposed
our Lord Jesus. We must remember that this book, unlike normal books, has the
right to make moral demands on our lives. We do not become “experts” who show
off our knowledge. We must humble ourselves before the God of Scripture.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge (Prov 1:7; 9:10). Our
human tendency is to read into Scripture whatever we want to find there, whether to
justify our behavior or to confirm what we have already been taught by our church,
our tradition, or by other teachers we look up to. Slaveholders tried to justify their
behavior from the Bible; many cults justify their doctrines from the Bible; but
sometimes we Christians do the same things. If we fear God, we will want to hear
only what His Word teaches us, and hear it as accurately as possible.
We must also be willing to obey God once we hear Him. James tells us that if we
want wisdom we (like Solomon) should ask for it (1:5). But we need to ask in faith,
he insists (1:6), and he later explains that real faith is faith that is ready to live
according to God’s demands (2:14-26). If we really pray for God to teach us the
Bible (and we should; see Ps 119!), we must pray with the kind of faith that is ready
to embrace what we find in the Bible. We must embrace what we find there even if
it is unpopular, even if it gets us in trouble, and even if it challenges the way we live.
That is a high price, but it comes with a benefit: the excitement of often finding
fresh, new discoveries, rather than simply hearing what we expected to hear.
Studying God’s Word with an open and yearning heart is one way that we express
our love for God. God’s chief command to Israel was His declaration that He is one
(Deut 6:4), hence there is no room for idols. Therefore, He admonished His people
to love Him alone, with an undivided heart and one’s whole being (Deut 6:5). Those
who love God in this way will talk of His Word all the time, everywhere, with
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everyone (Deut 6:6-9). If God is really first in our lives, then His Word will be central
to us, and consume us.
Sometimes people miss the heart of God’s Word. The Pharisees debated about
details but missed the bigger picture of God’s heart of justice, mercy and
faithfulness (what Jesus calls, “the weightier matters of the law,” Matt 23:23); in the
familiar English figure of speech, they missed the forest for the trees. All of
Scripture is God’s Word, but some parts teach us more directly about God’s
character than others (for example, we learn more directly from God’s revelation to
Moses in Ex 33—34 than from rituals in Leviticus). Sometimes we may even hear
God wrongly when we read the Bible, simply because our background predisposes
us to think of God as always harsh or always indulgent.
Where do we look to find the central revelation of God’s character (Jesus’ “weightier
matters”) that helps us rightly apply the rest of God’s Word? God revealed His law
to Israel, but both Old Testament prophets and the New Testament show that some
aspects of that law applied directly only to ancient Israel in a particular time (though
we can all learn from its eternal principles). The prophets offered dynamic
applications of the law based on knowing God’s heart. But God has most fully
revealed His heart and His Word by sending us Jesus; when His Word became flesh,
He revealed God’s heart (Jn 1:1-18). When Moses received the law on Mount Sinai,
he saw some of God’s glory, some of His character of grace and truth; but no one
could see God fully and live (Ex 33:18-20; 34:6). In the Word become flesh,
however, God revealed His glorious grace and truth fully (Jn 1:14, 17); now the
unseen God has been fully revealed in Jesus Christ (Jn 1:18; 14:9).
In this study, we will look further at context; whole-book context; background; and
specific principles for understanding specific kinds of writings in the Bible (such as
psalms, proverbs, laws, and prophecies. These are essential principles for learning
what God was saying to the first readers, a necessary step in hearing how to apply
God’s message today. But we still need God’s Spirit to guide us in how to apply His
message to our own lives, to the church today, and to our world. There is more than
one way to hear God’s voice (we hear Him, for example, in prayer), but it is through
study of Scripture that we learn to recognize His voice accurately when He speaks to
us in other ways. Paul warns that we both “know in part and prophesy in part” (1
Cor 13:9). That is why it is good for us to depend on both Scripture and the Spirit to
help us hear accurately. But the Spirit will not truly say something that contradicts
what He already inspired Scripture to say (the way He gave it to us, in context).
Chapter 1. Context, Context, Context!
Have you ever been quoted out of context? Sometimes people quote something you
said, but by ignoring the context of what you said they can claim that you said
something different—sometimes exactly the opposite of what you actually meant!
We often make this same mistake with the Bible. That is how cults like Jehovah’s
Witnesses or Mormons use the Bible to defend their unbiblical teachings.
One of the most important resources for understanding the Bible is in the Bible itself:
context. Some readers want to skip immediately to verses elsewhere in the Bible.
(Sometimes they do this by using references in their Bible’s margins; yet these were
added by editors, and are not part of the Bible itself.) Unfortunately, we can make
the Bible say almost anything by combining different verses; even verses that sound
similar may in context address quite different topics. Using this method, one would
think that “one is justified by faith without works” (Rom 3:28) and “one is justified by
works, and not by faith alone” (James 2:24) contradict each other. By contrast, each
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passage makes sense in a special way if we read it in its context: the flow of thought
from what comes before and after the passage we are studying. In context, James
and Paul mean something quite different by “faith.” Both affirm that a person is
made right before God only by a sort of genuine faith that is expressed in a fairly
consistent life of obedience (see our discussion below).
If we ignore context, we will almost always misunderstand what we read in the Bible.
Advanced students may wish to skip to later chapters of the book, but because
many students assume that they have understand context better than they actually
do, we would urge readers to at least sample the next chapter before moving
further.
The Importance of Context
Context is the way God gave us the Bible, one book at a time. The first readers of
Mark could not flip over to Revelation to help them understand Mark; Revelation had
not been written yet. The first readers of Galatians did not have a copy of the letter
Paul wrote to Rome to help them understand it. These first readers did share some
common information with the author outside the book they received. In this manual
we call this shared information “background”: some knowledge of the culture, earlier
biblical history, and so on. But they had, most importantly, the individual book of
the Bible that was in front of them. Therefore we can be confident that the writers of
the Bible included enough within each book of the Bible to help the readers
understand that book of the Bible without referring to information they lacked. For
that reason, context is the most important academic key to Bible interpretation.
(Background, what the writer could take for granted, is also important; we will return
to that subject in a later chapter.)
Often popular ministers today quote various isolated verses they have memorized,
even though this means that they will usually leave 99% of the Bible’s verses
unpreached. One seemingly well-educated person told a Bible teacher that she
thought the purpose of having a Bible was to look up the verses the minister quoted
in church! But the Bible is not a collection of people’s favorite verses with a lot of
blank space in between. Using verses out of context one could “prove” almost
anything about God or justify almost any kind of behavior--as history testifies. But in
the Bible God revealed Himself in His acts in history, through the inspired records of
those acts and the inspired wisdom of His servants addressing specific situations.
People in my culture value everything “instant”: “instant” mashed potatoes; fast
food; and so forth. Similarly, we too often take short-cuts to understanding the Bible
by quoting random verses or assuming that others who taught us have understood
them correctly. When we do so, we fail to be diligent in seeking God’s Word (Prov
2:2-5; 4:7; 8:17; 2 Tim 2:15). One prominent minister in the U.S., Jim Bakker, was so
busy with his ministry to millions of people that he did not have time to study
Scripture carefully in context. He trusted that his friends whose teachings he helped
promote surely had done so. Later, when his ministry collapsed, he spent many
hours honestly searching the Scriptures and realized to his horror that on some
points Jesus’ teachings, understood in context, meant the exact opposite of what he
and his friends had been teaching! It is never safe to simply depend on what
someone else claims that God says (1 Kgs 13:15-26).
I discovered this for myself when, as a young Christian, I began reading 40 chapters
of the Bible a day (enough to finish the New Testament every week or the Bible
every month). I was shocked to discover how much Scripture I had essentially
ignored between the verses I had memorized, and how carefully the intervening text
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connected those verses. I had been missing so much, simply using the Bible to
defend what I already believed! After one begins reading the Bible a book at a time,
one quickly recognizes that verses isolated from their context nearly always mean
something different when read in context. We cannot, in fact, even pretend to make
sense of most verses without reading their context. Isolating verses from their
context disrespects the authority of Scripture because this method of interpretation
cannot be consistently applied to the whole of Scripture. It picks verses that seem
to make sense on their own, but most of the rest of the Bible is left over when it is
done, incapable of being used the same way. Preaching and teaching the Bible the
way it invites us to interpret it—in its original context--both explains the Bible
accurately and provides our hearers a good example how they can learn the Bible
better for themselves.
If we read any other book, we would not simply take an isolated statement in the
middle of the book and ignore the surrounding statements that help us understand
the reason for that statement. If we hand a storybook to a child already learning
how to read, the child would probably start reading at the beginning. That people so
often read the Bible out of context (I will offer examples below) is not because it
comes naturally to us, but because we have been taught the wrong way by frequent
example. Without disrespecting those who have done the best they could without
understanding the principle of context, we must now avail ourselves of the chance
to begin teaching the next generation the right way to interpret the Bible.
Many contradictions some readers claim to find in the Bible arise simply from
ignoring the context of the passages they cite, jumping from one text to another
without taking the time to first understand each text on its own terms. To develop
an example offered above, when Paul says that a person is justified by faith without
works (Rom 3:28), his context makes it clear that he defines faith as something more
than passive assent to a viewpoint; he defines it as a conviction that Christ is our
salvation, a conviction on which one actively stakes one’s life (Rom 1:5). James
declares that one cannot be justified by faith without works (James 2:14)—because
he uses the word “faith” to mean mere assent that something is true (2:19), he
demands that such assent be actively demonstrated by obedience to show that it is
genuine (2:18). In other words, James and Paul use the word “faith” differently, but
do not contradict one another on the level of meaning. If we ignore context and
merely connect different verses on the basis of similar wording, we will come up with
contradictions in the Bible that the original writers would never have imagined.
Levels of Context
Most of us agree that we should read the Bible in context, but how far should we
read in the context? Is it sufficient merely to read the verse before and the verse
after the one we are quoting? Or should we be familiar with the paragraphs before
and after? Or should we be familiar with the entire book of the Bible in which the
passage occurs? While in practice the answer to this question depends to some
extent on the part of the Bible we are studying (context is much shorter in Proverbs
than in Genesis or 2 Corinthians), as a general rule we should think of each passage
both in its immediate context and in the context of the entire book of the Bible in
which it appears.
Many Bible teachers have wisely spoken of various levels of context for any text.
First, most texts have an immediate context in the paragraph or paragraphs
surrounding them. Second, we can look at the context of the entire book of the Bible
in which they appear, the one unit of text we can be sure the first writers expected
the first readers to have in front of them. Third, we sometimes need to look at the
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whole context of that writer’s teaching. For instance, though the Corinthians could
not consult Paul’s letter to the Galatians, they were familiar with a broader backdrop
of his teaching than what we find in 1 Corinthians alone, because Paul taught them
in person for eighteen months (Acts 18:11). Whatever we can learn about Paul’s
broader teaching may help us, provided we give first priority to what he tells his
audience in the particular letter we are trying to understand.
Fourth, there is the context of shared information—the background that the original
writer shared with his readers. Some of this background may be available for us in
the Bible (for instance, Paul could expect many of his readers to know the Old
Testament), but discovering background may also require extra research (though the
first readers, who normally already knew it, could take it for granted). Finally, we
can look at the context of God’s entire revelation in the Bible. But this should be our
final step, not our first one. Too often we want to explain one verse in light of
another before we have really understood either verse in light of the immediate
context in which they occur. As in the example of Romans and James above, a
particular word or even phrase does not always carry the same meaning in every
passage.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares that “every Scripture is profitable for doctrine, reproof,
correction, and instruction in righteousness.” Every Scripture communicates a
meaning that is essential for the Church—as we have noted, there must be no
“blank spaces” between our favorite verses. To apply this principle properly,
however, we must determine what unit of the Bible Paul is talking about (what he
means by “Scripture”). Paul obviously does not mean simply the individual words in
the Bible; although individual words in the Bible are important because they
contribute to the meaning of the text, an individual word, isolated by itself, could not
communicate much meaning. (We need the word “and,” but by itself it does not
communicate any specifically and universally Christian meaning.) We must be sure
to preach from the Bible, not from a dictionary! This is the danger of focusing on
words by themselves rather than their larger function in sentences and passages.
Obvious as this principle is (that individual words are not the primary unit of
meaning), readers of the Bible sometimes ignore it. I once read a devotion on
Ezekiel 28 that focused on the word, “wisdom,” and explained how wonderful
wisdom was (based on its meaning in a Hebrew dictionary). The writer explained in
detail the need for wisdom and never bothered to point out that Ezekiel 28 refers to
the evil prince of Tyre, whose boasts of wisdom represent mere worldly wisdom. In
other words, this expositor was not really preaching from Ezekiel 28, but from a
Hebrew dictionary! Those who trace a meaning of a word through Scripture and
then spend a whole sermon on their results may do better (provided they recognize
the different ways the word may be used in different passages); sometimes we do
need to study the meaning of words in this way. But those who preach from a list of
verses where the word occurs still run the risk of preaching from a concordance
rather than from the Bible itself. God did not inspire the Bible in concordance
sequence; He inspired it book by book.
Even focusing on a verse read in its immediate context may be problematic
(although less problematic), because that verse may not represent a full unit of
thought. The verse references were not added to the Bible when it was being
written, but only after it was finished; the unit of thought is often much larger than a
verse, and it cannot make proper sense apart from its context. For example, that
Jesus wept might be useful instruction for some people who think tears a sign of
weakness. But remembering the context gives us a more generally useful principle.
“Jesus wept” because He wept with friends who were suffering grief: this example
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teaches us that it is important to weep with those who weep, and that Jesus Himself
cares for us enough to share our grief with us.
We may usually take a paragraph as a whole unit of thought, but even paragraphs
often do not represent the complete unit of thought in the text. Paragraphs vary in
length but we identify them as distinct paragraphs precisely because they are whole
thoughts by themselves. Yet these thought-units often connect with other thought-
units in such a way that it is difficult to separate them from surrounding thoughts.
While most paragraphs will contain at least one nugget or principle, that nugget is
sometimes too short to be used as the basis for a whole sermon by itself. As much
as I prefer expository preaching (preaching from a paragraph or passage), some
texts do not lend themselves easily to this approach.
For instance, when Paul bids farewell to his friends in Acts 20:36-38, their obvious
love for one another (evidenced in their sad parting) yields a crucial nugget: We
ought to have that kind of love for and commitment to one another in the body of
Christ today. But we can articulate that principle more fully if we read these verses
in light of Paul’s preceding farewell speech (Acts 20:18-35). And we could find
enough material on that passage for a lengthy sermon or Bible study—if we wish to
stick to what the first readers of Acts had available—only if we traced that passage’s
theme of Christians’ love for one another throughout the whole book in which it
appears (e.g., 2:44-45; 4:32-35; 14:28; 28:14-15). Most congregations would like
more than a single point to learn from, or at least more than a single illustration of
the point! Commenting on unity in John 17:23 may be difficult to flesh out unless we
see how John emphasizes unity in terms of loving one another (13:34-35) and the
kinds of barriers unity must surmount (Jesus crosses a major ethnic barrier when he
ministers to a Samaritan woman in John 4). Reading this verse about unity in the
context of John’s entire Gospel summons us to cross cultural and tribal barriers to
love our fellow Christians.
One preaching professor in the U.S. told me that he was skeptical that all the Bible
was God’s Word; he doubted that one could preach from a passage like the one
where David’s servants brought him a concubine to keep him warm (1 Kgs 1:2-4).
So I pointed out that these verses were part of a much larger context. After David
sinned, God announced that judgment would come on his house even from those
close to him (2 Sam 12:11). This was fulfilled in the revolt of Absalom, possibly
David’s eldest son after Amnon’s death. But now another son of David, the next
eldest after Absalom, is seeking to seize the throne (1 Kgs 1:5). The verses about
David not being able to keep warm reveal how weak and susceptible he was to this
new revolt; the mention of the concubine helps explain why Adonijah later merits
death by asking to marry her (1 Kgs 2:21). To marry a concubine of the former king
was to position oneself to become king (1 Kgs 2:22; cf. 2 Sam 16:21-22)--Adonijah
still wants to overthrow Solomon’s kingdom! Without having read the entire story,
one may miss the purpose for the individual verses. But there is certainly a purpose
for them, and the rest of the story would not make sense without them.
Ultimately, context extends beyond words, verses, and paragraphs to the entire
structure of each book of the Bible. This is probably what Paul means when he says,
“Every Scripture is inspired.” The Greek word for “Scripture” here is graphë, which
means “a writing.” In most cases, each book of the Bible would be written on an
individual scroll as an individual text; different books of the Bible were usually
written as whole books to address different situations in ancient Israel or the church.
Although these books often consisted of earlier materials (e.g., accounts about Jesus
that circulated before writers of the Gospels wrote them down), we have them as
whole units in our Bibles, and should read them as whole units. For instance, God
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gave us four Gospels instead of one because He wanted us to look at Jesus from
more than one perspective. (Jesus was too great for merely one Gospel, with its
distinctive emphasis, to teach us enough about Him.) If we simply mix pieces from
different Gospels without recognizing what is characteristic of each Gospel, we can
miss the perspectives God wanted us to get from each one. While we could preach
from an individual narrative in the Gospels and explain the text faithfully, we would
do even better if we understood how that particular Bible story fit into the themes of
that whole Gospel in which it appears.
In other cases, the book context is absolutely necessary, not just a nice addition.
Paul’s letter to the Romans, for instance, is a tight-knit argument; reading any
passage in Romans without understanding the flow of logic in the whole book leaves
us with only a piece of an argument. Admittedly many people read Romans this
way, but because Romans is so tightly connected, Romans makes a far less
immediately edifying Bible study passage-by-passage than Mark does. We need to
know that all people have sinned (Rom 1—3), but one could easily spend many
weeks analyzing that part of Romans before getting to justification by faith or power
to live a righteous life. In Mark, by contrast, one comes up with new issues for study
in nearly every paragraph, and a Bible study group could easily take a passage or
chapter every week without feeling like they would not understand the writer’s point
for a few more weeks. Paul wrote Romans as a letter to be read as a tight-knit
argument, all at once! Even Mark’s first audience probably read his Gospel the
entire way through in one sitting; it functions as a united account, foreshadowing
Jesus’ impending death and resurrection the entire way through. Until we
understand the function of a passage in light of the general argument of the book it
occurs, we are not fully respecting the way God inspired it.
If God inspired each Scripture—meaning at least each “writing” or book of the Bible
—to be profitable, we must grapple with each book of the Bible as a whole to fully
understand it. (In some cases, where independent units of thought have simply
been placed together in a book randomly--for instance, psalms in the Book of
Psalms, most proverbs in the Book of Proverbs, and many laws in the legal sections
of Exodus and Deuteronomy--this principle is less important. But it is very important
as a principle for reading most of Scripture, and especially for tight-knit arguments
like Romans or books of interdependent symbols like Revelation.)
This principle has serious implications for our Bible study. Instead of reading verses
in the Bible first of all with a concordance or chain-references in our Bible, we need
to learn to read books of the Bible straight through. Preferably we should read the
smaller books like Mark in one setting; at least we should focus on a particular book
for a particular period of time. Merely skipping from book to book without returning
to a particular book is unhelpful.
Objections to Context
I should deal here with one objection to context that arises in some circles. Some
people quote Scripture out of context and then claim they are right because they
have special authority or a special revelation from God. But they should be honest
in claiming that this is a special revelation rather than the Scripture. All revelations
must be judged (1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:20-21), and God gave us a Bible in part so
we could test other revelations. No one has the right to short-circuit hearers’ rights
to evaluate their claims from Scripture by claiming a revelation about Scripture’s
meaning which the hearers cannot evaluate by studying it for themselves.
Otherwise anyone could claim that Scripture means anything! Any view can be
supported based on proof-texts out of context; any theology can make its reasoning
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sound consistent; Jehovah’s Witnesses do this all the time. We dare not base our
faith on other people’s study of the Bible rather than on the Bible itself.
We should be very careful what we claim the Bible teaches. Claiming that “The
Bible says” is equivalent to claiming, “This is what the Lord says.” In Jeremiah’s day,
some false prophets falsely claimed to be speaking what God was saying, but they
were in fact speaking from their own imaginations (Jer 23:16) and stealing their
messages from each other (Jer 23:30) rather than listening to God’s voice for
themselves (Jer 23:22). God can sovereignly speak to people through Scripture out
of context if he wishes, just as he can speak through a bird or a poem or a donkey; if
God is all-powerful (Rev 1:8), He can speak however He pleases. But we do not
routinely appeal to donkeys to teach us truth, and how he speaks to one person
through a verse out of context does not determine its meaning for all hearers for all
time. The universal meaning of the text is the meaning to which all readers have
access, namely, what it means in context.
When I was a young Christian recently converted, I was taking a class in Latin and
supposed to be translating Caesar for my homework. Wanting to read only my Bible
and not do my homework, I flipped open the Bible and stuck my finger down, hoping
to find a text that said, “Forsake all and follow me.” Instead, I found, “Render
therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are
God’s” (Lk 20:25). God chose to answer my foolish approach to Scripture on the
level it deserved, but this hardly means that this text now summons all Christians to
translate Caesar’s Gallic War!
All claims to hear God’s voice must be evaluated (1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:20-21), and
listening to someone else’s claim can get us in trouble if we do not test it carefully (1
Kgs 13:18-22). Paul warns us: “If anyone thinks himself a prophet or spiritual, let
him acknowledge that what I write is the Lord’s command. If one ignores this, he
himself will be ignored” (1 Cor. 14:37-38). The one revelation to which all Christians
can look with assurance is the Bible; what we can be sure it means is what God
meant when he inspired the original authors to communicate their original message.
This is the one revelation all Christians agree on as the “canon,” or measuring-stick,
for all other claims to revelation. Thus we need to do our best to properly
understand it, preach it and teach it the way God gave it to us, in context.
Some claim that the apostles took Scripture out of context in the New Testament,
which authorizes us to do the same; some nonbelieving Jewish critics use the same
argument to claim that the New Testament writers were not truly inspired by the
Holy Spirit. We could respond that, no matter how led by the Spirit we may be, we
are not writing Scripture. But the fact is that claims about New Testament writers
taking the Old Testament out of context are mostly overrated. The examples critics
give usually fall into one of three categories, none of which authorize us to discover
a text’s meaning by ignoring its context. First, when responding to opponents who
used proof-texts, the biblical writers sometimes responded accordingly (“answering
a fool according to his folly,” as Proverbs says). Second, and much more often, they
simply drew analogies from the Old Testament, using them to illustrate a principle
found in those texts or the lives they present.
Third, and perhaps most often, the texts we think are out-of-context reflect our own
failure to recognize the complex way the writer has used the context. Some non-
Christian scholars have accused Matthew of quoting Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt have
I called my son”) out of context; they often present this as the one of the most
blatant cases of the New Testament writers misunderstanding context. They make
this claim because Hosea is talking about God delivering Israel from Egypt, whereas
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Matthew applies the text to Jesus. But Matthew knows the verse quite well: instead
of depending on the standard Greek translation of Hosea here, he even makes his
own more correct translation from the Hebrew. If we read Matthew’s context, we see
that this is not the only place where he compares Jesus with Israel: as Israel was
tested in the wilderness for forty years, Jesus was tested there forty days (Matt 4:1-
2). Matthew also knows Hosea’s context: as God once called Israel from Egypt
(Hosea 11:1), he would bring about a new exodus and salvation for his people
(Hosea 11:10-11). Jesus is the harbinger, the pioneer, of this new era of salvation
for his people.
In the same context, Matthew applies Jeremiah 31:15 (where Rachel weeps over
Israel’s exile) to the slaughter of infants in Bethlehem (Matt 2:17-18), near which
Rachel was buried (Gen 35:19). But Matthew knows Jeremiah’s context: after
announcing Israel’s tragedy, God promises restoration (Jer 31:16-17) and a new
covenant (Jer 31:31-34). Matthew compares this tragedy in Jesus’ childhood to one
in Israel’s history because he expects his first, biblically knowledgeable readers to
recognize that such tragedy formed the prelude to messianic salvation. Matthew
also knows very well the context of Isaiah 7:14, which he quotes in Matthew 1:23
(see discussion in chapter 2, below); the context remains fresh in Matthew’s mind
when he quotes Isaiah 9:1-2 in Matthew 4:15-16. Matthew is not ignoring context:
he is comparing Jesus’ ministry with Israel’s history and the promises those very
contexts evoke. He read the context better than his critics have!
Standing before God
In different parts of the body of Christ we teach many different things; our only basis
for dialogue is our common foundation in Scripture. But if we can make Scripture
say whatever we want by taking it out of context, we will not be able to truly call
each other back to a common foundation.
Often interpretation makes a life-and-death difference: for example, in the past
some people justified indulgences (paying money to the church to achieve
forgiveness) or slavery. This study is about interpretation methods, not doctrines,
but let us take for example some views commonly believed today. I am not asking
whether we are right or wrong in such teachings, but what the consequences could
be if we are wrong. If my teaching (and not just the hearers’ misinterpretation)
leads people to believe that once they have prayed a prayer they will be saved no
matter how they live or what religion they later convert to, I had better be right, or I
will have much to answer for before God if I am wrong. Conversely, if my teaching
(and not just the hearers’ misinterpretation) leads people to be so insecure about
their relationship with God that some of them give up in despair, I will have much to
answer for before God if I am wrong. If I teach about healing in such a way that
people are afraid to trust God, and people suffer or die who could have been
restored, I must stand before God. If I teach that everyone with faith will be healed,
and if some who are not healed then lose faith, I must stand before God.
The question is not whether we will stand before God, since we will stand before Him
no matter what, but whether He will find us faithful or unfaithful to what He has
taught us. What we teach can have life-and-death consequences in people’s lives.
If what we teach is what the Bible really says, the responsibility lies with the Bible
and the God who gave it; if what we teach is our misinterpretation of the Bible, we
bear the responsibility before God. I can imagine that on the day of judgment many
people will protest, “But I was just preaching what so-and-so was preaching.” But
many “mega-preachers” have spent more time marketing themselves and getting
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“big” than they have spent researching the Bible. (If you immerse yourself in the
Bible, you will be able to tell which is which.) When we stand before God, we cannot
blame the mega-preachers for what we have taught. God gave us a Bible not so we
could memorize other preachers’ proof-texts, but so we could find out what God
really teaches us.
In the following chapter, we will survey examples of verses in context—partly to
illustrate how desperately we need to study context more carefully, despite the fact
that all of us profess to believe in it. I deliberately picked texts that are often taken
out of context in the kinds of church circles I know best. I teach students from many
denominations (and non-denominations), and find that most of these texts are
familiar to the majority of students in their out-of-context form. After examining the
texts together in context, however (or allowing the students to study them in context
on their own), we usually come to near-unanimous (usually unanimous) consensus
on what they mean.
After examining “immediate context” in the next chapter, we will move to other
themes in the following chapters. First, we will turn to whole-book context includes
learning to recognize the structure of argument (in books with tight-knit arguments
like Romans) and developing themes (in books more like Mark). Then we will turn to
issues like the situational or historical context—”background”—making sure that we
address the same kinds of issues the biblical authors were addressing. We will also
turn to the different kinds of writing in the Bible (styles, genres, and forms like
parables).
Chapter 2. Learning Context
Although everyone recognizes the importance of context in theory, most Bible
readers selectively ignore it in practice. You may be an exception, but do not be too
disturbed if you are one of those readers unfamiliar with the actual context of many
of the passages we treat in this chapter. I have offered these passages as samples
purposely because I have often heard them taken out of context, and my students
are frequently surprised when they actually read them in context. Although we may
think we read the Bible in context, too often we read the Bible in light of how we
have heard others use those same Scripture texts. Whether those interpretations
are new or old, they cannot take priority over what the text itself says in context.
You need not agree with our interpretation of every example cited below, but it is
important to think through them and to make sure that your view of the text is based
on its context rather than how you have heard it used. These examples should
illustrate how context makes a difference in our understanding. In no instance are
we challenging specific doctrines people have sometimes based on these verses; we
are challenging methods of interpretation. (If some texts in context do not support a
doctrine, the doctrine might still be defended if other texts support it.) You will learn
context principles best if you actually work through the passages yourself before
reading our interpretation of them; this way you will recognize what students in my
classrooms usually recognize: when most the students come to the same
conclusions independently, they recognize for themselves how clear the point of the
text is.
We begin with some brief examples of context within verses, but the emphasis of
this chapter will be on broader levels of context.
Context within Verses
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Sometimes readers ignore context even within a single verse. Traditional English
poetry balances sounds with rhymes, but ancient Hebrew poetry balanced ideas
instead. Most translations place the poetry of Psalms and most of the biblical
Prophets in verse form. (The King James Version did not do so, but only because
translators in 1611 had not yet rediscovered the idea-balancing pattern.) There are
different kinds of idea-balancing, or parallelism, in texts; we mention here only two
of the most common. In one kind of parallelism, the second line repeats the basic
idea of the first (sometimes adding or replacing some details)--for instance, “Happy
is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path
traversed by sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers” (Ps 1:1). (One would not want to
preach three points in a sermon based on these three lines; rather, they are three
illustrations of a single point.) In another kind of parallelism, the second line is an
explicit contrast with the first; for instance, “Ill-gotten gains do not profit, But
righteousness delivers from death” (Prov 10:2, NASB).
In the U.S., many Christians use the line, “Where there is no vision, the people
perish” (Prov 29:18), to talk about making a plan. But what does Proverbs mean by
“vision”? Does it just mean having a good plan for the future? Does it mean that a
driver who needs glasses might run over someone if she drives without her glasses?
Because most of the Book of Proverbs is a collection of general principles rather than
a sustained argument, the verses around Proverbs 29:18 do not help us interpret the
verse very well. The other half of the verse, however, does provide some context.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish; but happy is the person who obeys
God’s law” (Prov. 29:18). The second half of the verse parallels the basic idea of the
first half: visions and the law are both sources of God’s revelation, sources of
hearing from God. In other words, “vision” does not refer to mere natural sight; nor
does it merely refer to having a plan for the future; it refers to hearing from God.
The Hebrew term translated “vision” here in fact relates to dreams, revelations, or
oracles, which confirms the point: God’s people needed the Bible and genuine
prophets who had heard from God to guide them in the right way.
Proverbs 11:1 warns that God hates a “false balance.” Unfortunately, some people
today quote this verse to imply that God wants us to be “balanced” people, not too
committed to a particular agenda. The real point of the proverb, however, is to
avoid cheating our neighbor: the rest of the verse reads, “but God delights in a
correct weight.” In the markets of ancient Israel, people would weigh out grain or
other items in return for a particular weight of money, but some people cheated
their customers by changing the scales. The point is: God hates injustice; he hates
people cheating their neighbors. This kind of parallelism is frequent in Israelite
poetry (for instance, Mary means basically the same thing when she says that her
soul “exalts” the Lord as when she declares that her spirit rejoices in God--Lk 1:46-
47.)
Another example of within-verse context may be Hosea 4:6: “My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Often we get the meaning of this verse correct
even without knowing the context, but this may be more because we value the Bible
like Hosea did than because the line we quote is explicit by itself. After all, we could
be destroyed for lack of knowledge about driving, test-taking, foreign policy, crime
prevention, disease, and so forth. The “knowledge” in this particular verse,
however, does not mean all kinds of knowledge. The verse specifically refers to
Israel’s rejection of God’s Law: “...Since you forgot my law” (Hosea 4:6). In other
words, God’s people are destroyed because they have not paid attention to His
Word; they do not know Him because they do not know it.
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Helpful as it is to examine the context within a particular verse, in most cases we
need a broader circle of context than simply within a verse.
Paragraph Context: Train Yourself
Paragraph context is usually what people mean when they talk about “reading in
context.” We cannot stop with paragraph context--a work may make a point in a
sentence that functions as part of a larger argument within a paragraph, which in
turn functions as part of a larger argument within an entire book of the Bible.
Nevertheless, context on the level of paragraphs--the immediately related material
around a particular verse--is essential to putting verses in context. If you sit in a
church service where someone rattles off verse after verse, you need to be able to
check each of those verses in context. In time you may learn the Bible well enough
that you immediately know the context as soon as anyone quotes a verse; until
then, you need to look the verses up and find the context. For your own Bible study,
however, do not even begin with isolated verses; read paragraphs (and preferably
books) as a whole. Then you will learn these texts right to begin with, namely, in
their context.
Instead of simply reading through the rest of this chapter at this point, I highly
recommend that you look up the following verses in context and decide for yourself
what they mean. Ask yourself the questions we have attached to each of these
texts. After you have finished, you may check your own conclusions with our
observations on these and other texts below. If our observations bring issues to
your attention that you had not considered, you may want to consider them and
reread the text (although in the end you are not obligated to accept all our
conclusions). If our observations merely confirm your own reading, you can surmise
that your context-reading skills are fairly well-developed. The goal is not simply to
hold particular views on the sample texts listed below, but to learn the skill of
reading all Scripture in context. (As a young Christian I used most of the following
verses out of context until I began systematically studying the Bible book by book,
at which time their context gradually became obvious to me.)
Some of the more difficult passages (toward the end of our list) are more debatable
in sense than some of the more obvious ones (toward the beginning). Also, in some
cases the passages may include a principle that applies to the point for which
people often quote them. But the exercise here is to determine what the text
specifically means, so that we can apply the principle in all the appropriate ways
and not just in the ways we have often heard.
1. John 10:10: Who is the thief? (Start back at least at 10:1 or 10:5)
2. When Jesus says, “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32),
what does He mean by being “lifted up”?
3. Which day is the “day that the Lord has made” (Ps. 118:24)? Does the text refer
to every day (the way most people apply it) or to a specific day? (See Ps.
118:22-23; more generally 118:15-29)
4. Is God’s announcement that He owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10)
an assurance that He can supply all our needs? Or does it mean something
else in context? (Keep in mind that other passages do teach that God
supplies our needs; the question here is not whether God will provide, but
whether that is what this passage means.)
5. What does the “baptism of fire” refer to in Matt. 3:11? Is it just a purification or
empowerment for believers or something else? (Keep in mind that “fire”
symbolizes different things in different passages. The question is, what does
“fire” mean in this immediate context?)
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6. By calling us to “imitate” God (Eph 5:1; King James’ “followers” here is literally
“imitators”), does Paul want us to speak planets into existence? To be
everywhere at once? Check the context (4:32-5:2).
7. What does it mean to resist the devil in James 4:7? In 1 Peter 5:8? In Ephesians
4:27? Some people use these verses to support rebuking the devil whenever
something goes wrong. Is that the point?
8. Some people quote Joel 2:9 to say that we are God’s mighty army (in a spiritual
sense). Other texts may say that, but is that the point of this text?
9. Some people quote Joel 3:10 to say that we should claim God’s strength when we
are weak. While that is a biblical principle (2 Cor 12:10), is it the point here?
10. More controversially, read Isaiah 14:12-14 in view of the whole of Isaiah 14. To
whom does this text refer? (Keep in mind that “Lucifer,” found only in the
King James Version, is simply a Latin title for the “morning star,” not actually
found in the Hebrew. Because some interpreters believed this text referred to
Satan, they applied the title to Satan, but the Bible does not use the term
anywhere else, so whether or not it is actually Satan’s title depends on the
meaning of this passage.)
11. Many people apply Ezek 28:12-14 to the devil, just as they apply Is 14 to him. In
context, is that really the point of this passage? (Again, we are not
questioning whether the devil exists or whether the devil fell. The question is
whether this passage discusses it.)
12. When Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil.
4:13), does he have anything in particular in mind? (I.e., does “all things”
mean that he can currently fly, walk through walls, spit fire, and so forth, or
does it mean something more specific?)
13. What is the “word of God” (or, “word of Christ” in most translations) in Romans
10:17? Does it specifically refer to the Bible in this case or to something
else?
14. 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. Some people quote this passage to claim that spiritual
gifts have passed away. But according to the context, when will the gifts of
the Spirit pass away? For that matter, what is the function of this chapter in
the context of the whole letter to the Corinthians (cf. 12:31; 14:1). What is
the function of 13:4-6 in the context of the whole letter to the Corinthians?
(You may save this question until our study on book-context if you wish.)
15. Some people emphasize “now-faith” in Hebrews 11:1, as if faith must be
directed toward what we receive in the present. In context, is the sort of faith
that Hebrews 11:1 talks about oriented toward receiving something in the
present or toward receiving it in the future? (Start back around 10:25 and
read through 12:4.)
16. Revelation 3:20. When Jesus knocks at the door, is he trying to get someone
converted? (To whom is the verse addressed?)
17. One could say that when God “gave” his Son (Jn 3:16), this refers to giving Jesus
at his birth in Bethlehem or giving him to the world when God raised him
from the dead. What does “giving” him mean in context?
18. When one seeks first the kingdom, what things are added to one (Matt 6:33)?
19. Who are Christ’s ambassadors in 2 Corinthians 5:20? Whom are they entreating
to be reconciled to God?
20. Some people say that the “witnesses” in Hebrews 12:1 are the dead watching us
from heaven. But in the context of Hebrews chapter 11, does “witnesses”
refer to those who watch us or to those who testified to the truth of God’s
claims? (This one may be harder to see depending on your translation, since
some translations do not show the connection of related words in this
context.)
21. Some people claim the promise that no weapon formed against them would
prosper (Isaiah 54:17). Is this a guarantee for every individual Christian in
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every circumstance or for God’s people as a whole protected by His plan for
them?
22. Does Proverbs 23:7 mean that whatever we think about ourselves will come
true? (“As a person thinks in their heart, so they are.”) Or does it mean
something else? (Read 23:6-8.)
23. Does Psalm 18:7-15 refer to Jesus’ second coming? Read 18:4-6, 16-19.
24. Who is the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, in Song of Solomon 2:1-2?
25. In Matthew 18:18, what does Jesus mean by “binding and loosing”? Does He
refer to how to treat demons here, or does He refer to something else? (Read
especially 18:15-20.)
26. What is the “coming” to which Jesus refers in John 14:1-3? Does He refer here to
His second coming or to something else? (Read 14:4-23, and perhaps 13:36-
38.)
27. This final question may be the most difficult one. Read Isaiah 7:14 in context
(especially 7:10-16; 8:1-4). In the immediate context, to whom does this
newborn son refer? (If your conclusions may disturb you, don’t worry; we will
clarify them below. But it is important for you to grapple with the text
intelligently in its context first, and not simply to interpret the passage
according to how you’ve seen it used elsewhere.)
Paragraph Context: Checking yourself
1. The Thief in John 10:10
Many people assume that the thief in John 10:10 is the devil, but they assume this
because they have heard this view many times, not because they examined the text
carefully in context. Of course, the devil does come to steal, to kill, and to destroy;
but we often quote the verse this way and miss the text’s direct applications
because we have not stopped to read the verse in context.
When Jesus speaks of “the thief,” he speaks from a larger context of thieves,
robbers, wolves, and strangers who come to harm the sheep (10:1, 5, 8, 10, 12). In
this context, those who came before Jesus, claiming his authority, were thieves and
robbers (10:8); these tried to approach the sheep without going through the
shepherd (10:1). This was because they wanted to exploit the sheep, whereas Jesus
was prepared to die defending his sheep from these thieves, robbers, and wolves.
The point becomes even clearer if we start further back in the context. In chapter 9,
Jesus heals a blind man and the religious officials kick the blind man out of the
religious community for following Jesus. Jesus stands up for the formerly blind man
and calls the religious leaders spiritually blind (9:35-41). Because there were no
chapter breaks in the original Bible, Jesus’ words that continue into chapter 10 are
still addressed to the religious leaders. He declares that He is the true Shepherd and
the true sheep follow His voice, not the voice of strangers (10:1-5). Those who came
before Him were thieves and robbers, but Jesus was the sheep’s true salvation (10:8-
9). The thief comes only to destroy, but Jesus came to give life (10:10).
In other words, the thief represents the false religious leaders, like the Pharisees who
kicked the healed man out of their synagogue. The background of the text clarifies
this point further. In Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34, God was the shepherd of His
scattered people, His sheep; these Old Testament passages also speak of false
religious leaders who abused their authority over the sheep like many of the
religious leaders of Jesus’ day and not a few religious leaders in our own day.
2. Jesus’ Crucifixion in John 12:32
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In my country, Christians often sing, “Lift Jesus higher...He said, ‘If I be lifted up from
the earth, I will draw all men unto Me,’” based on John 12:32. The Bible does talk
about “exalting” God and “lifting him up” in praise, but that is not the point of this
text. If one reads the next verse (which explicitly says that Jesus was referring to his
death), it is clear that “lifting him up” refers to his death on the cross. (The play on
words with “lifting up” was already used in both Greek and Hebrew for forms of
hanging, such as crucifixion.) Thus, if the song means by lifting Him up what the
biblical verse means, we would be singing, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Of course
God knows our hearts, but one wonders why a song writer would base a song, which
millions of people might sing, on a verse yet not take the time to look up the verse
on which it is based!
John three times refers to Jesus being “lifted up”: in one case, he compares this
event to the serpent being lifted up in the wilderness (Jn 3:14), to make eternal life
available to everyone (3:15). In the second, Jesus declares that His adversaries will
lift Him up (8:28). In other words, John means by “lifting up” what Isaiah meant by
it: Jesus would be crucified (Isa. 52:13 with Isa. 52:14-53:12). John includes plays on
words in his gospel, and may also indicate that we “exalt” Jesus by preaching the
Cross; but leaves no doubt as to the primary sense of the term in this context:
crucifixion. To read it any other way is to ignore his explicit, inspired explanation of
the “lifting up.”
3. The Day of Christ’s Exaltation in Psalm 118:24
Many churches sing or open services by quoting, “This is the day that the Lord has
made.” When we sing this, most of us mean that God has made every day and what
comes with it, and that we should therefore rejoice in what happens on that day.
This is a true principle, but we would do better to quote a different text to prove it
(maybe Eph. 5:20). The text we are quoting or singing (and there is nothing wrong
with quoting or singing it) actually offers us a different, dramatic cause for
celebration.
In context, Psalm 118:24 refers not to every day, but to a particular, momentous
day: the day when the Lord made the rejected stone the cornerstone (118:22-23),
probably of the Temple (118:19-20, 27). It speaks of a special day of triumph for the
Davidic king, applicable in principle to many of God’s great triumphs but usually
applied in the New Testament in a special way. If Psalm 118:22-23 was fulfilled in
Jesus’ ministry as He claimed (Mark 12:10-11), so also was Psalm 118:24: the great
and momentous day the Lord had made, the day the Psalmist calls his hearers to
celebrate, is the prophetic day when God exalted Jesus, rejected by the chief priests,
as the cornerstone of His new temple (cf. Eph. 2:20). The verse points to a truth far
more significant than merely the common biblical truth that God is with us daily; it
points to the greatest act of God on our behalf, when Jesus our Lord died and rose
again for us.
4. Cattle in Psalm 50:10
Some people insist that God can supply all our needs because, after all, He “owns
the cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10); some go beyond God supplying all our
needs to suggest that He will supply anything we want. It is in fact true that God
can supply all our needs, but there are other texts that explicitly make that point.
Psalm 50:10, by contrast, does not address the issue of God supplying our needs
(and certainly not all our wants); rather, it declares that God does not need our
sacrifices.
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The figurative setting of Psalm 50 is a courtroom, where God has summoned His
people to respond to His charges. He summons heaven and earth as His witnesses
(50:1-6)--as witnesses of the covenant (see Deut. 32:1; cf. Ps. 50:5), they would be
witnesses concerning Israel’s violation of that covenant. Israel has some reason to
be nervous; God is not only the offended party in the case, but the Judge (Ps. 50:4,
6), not to mention the accusing witness! Testifying against them, God declares, “I
am your God” (50:7)--reminding them of the covenant He had made with them.
They had not broken faith against Him by failing to offer sacrifices (50:8)—in fact,
God has little concern about these sacrifices. “I don’t need your animal sacrifices,”
he declares, “for all the animals belong to Me, including the cattle on a thousand
hills. I don’t eat animal flesh, but if I did, would I tell you if I were hungry? Since I
own these creatures, wouldn’t I just take them if I wanted them?” (50:9-13). The
sacrifice which He really requires is thanksgiving and obedience (50:14-15; cf.
50:23). But He would prosecute (50:21) the wicked who broke His covenant (50:16-
20).
Most ancient near Eastern peoples believed that their gods depended on them for
sacrifices, and if their gods were overpowered, their nation would be overpowered as
well. The God of Israel reminds them that He is not like the pagan gods around
them. Unlike Baal of the Canaanites (whose temples included a bed), Zeus of the
Greeks (whom Hera put to sleep so her Greeks could win a battle), and other deities,
the God of Israel neither slumbered nor slept (Ps. 121:3-4). God does not mention
the cattle on a thousand hills to promise us anything we want (as a song pointed out
some years ago, many of us don’t need any cows at the moment anyway); He
mentions the cattle to remind us that He is not dependent on us, and we are not
doing Him a favor by serving Him.
5. Baptized with Fire in Matthew 3:11
One modern denomination in the U.S. is the “Fire-Baptized Holiness Church”; many
other Christians also happily claim to be “baptized in the Holy Ghost and fire.” We
know and appreciate, of course, what they mean; they mean holiness, and holiness
is essential. But is that what John the Baptist means by “fire baptism” in this
passage? Fire is sometimes used as a symbol of God’s consuming holiness or of
purifying trials in the Bible; but when fire is conjoined with the image of baptism in
the New Testament, it has to do not with mere purification of the individual, but with
purifying the whole world by judgment. (Judgment is the most common symbolic
application fire in the Bible.) Rather than cross-referencing to other passages that
use the image of fire in different ways, we ought to examine what the “baptized in
fire” text means in its own context. We ought to use the passage itself before
jumping to a concordance.
The context is a call to repentance, and much of the audience promised this fire
baptism was unwilling to repent. John the Baptist was immersing people in water as
a sign of their repentance and preparation for the coming Kingdom of God (Matt.
3:2, 6). (Jewish people used baptism when non-Jews would convert to Judaism, but
John demanded that even religious Jewish people come to God on the same terms
on which Gentiles should; cf. 3:9.) John warned the Pharisees about God’s coming
wrath (3:7), and that unless they bore fruit (3:8) God’s ax of judgment would cast
them into the fire (3:10; cf. 12:33). Fruitless trees were worthless except for fuel.
But chaff was barely even useful as fuel (it burned quickly), yet the chaff of which
John spoke would be burned with “unquenchable”—eternal—”fire” (3:12).
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In the verses just before and just after our verse, “fire” is hellfire (3:10, 12). When
John the Baptist speaks of a baptism in fire, he uses an image of judgment that
follows through the whole paragraph. Remember that John’s hearers here are not
repentant people (3:7). The Messiah is coming to give his audience a twofold
baptism, and different members of his audience would experience different parts of
it. Some may repent, be gathered into the barn and receive the Spirit. The
unrepentant, however, would be chaff, trees cut down, and would receive the fire!
6. Imitating God in Ephesians 5:1
This passage summons us to imitate God the way children imitate a father. The text
is also specific, however, in the ways that we should imitate God: we should forgive
as God in Christ forgave us (4:32) and love one another, just as Christ sacrificially
loved us (5:2). Happily, the text does not require us to imitate God by being all-
powerful or everywhere at once!
7. Resisting the Devil in James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8-9; Ephesians 4:27
James contrasts the peaceful wisdom which is from God (3:13, 17-18; “from above”
was a typical Jewish way of saying, “from God”) with the contentious wisdom which
is from the devil (3:14-15). Then he warns his audience not to try to hold both
perspectives as if they were compatible. Those who try to follow both God’s and the
world’s wisdom at the same time are spiritual adulteresses (4:4).
Submitting to God and resisting the devil (4:7), then, is rejecting the world’s evil way
of treating one another and preferring the gentle approach that comes from God. To
adopt this new way of treating others requires repentance (4:8-10).
1 Peter refers to a situation in which Christians are being persecuted (1 Pet 4:12-16);
in 1 Peter 5:8-9, the devil apparently seeks to crush believers by seeking to turn
them from the faith. Resisting him therefore means withstanding the persecution.
In the context of Ephesians 4:27, one resists the devil by refusing to deceive or stay
angry with one’s fellow-believers (4:25-26); in the whole context of Ephesians, this is
part of “spiritual warfare” (6:11-14, 18).
8. God’s Locust Army in Joel 2:9
Although the third chapter of Joel seems to describe a future war, chapters one and
two depict as an invading army a devastating locust plague (Joel 1:4; 2:25). This
text does not depict the church as a spiritual army of evangelists (a truth offered by
plenty of other biblical passages); it depicts locusts as an agricultural judgment
against the sins of God’s people.
9. The Strength of the Weak in Joel 3:10
This passage is not an invitation to the weary righteous to strengthen themselves;
nor is it talking about God’s power perfected in our weakness (central as that biblical
message is). God is speaking in judgment to the nations gathered against his
people for the final war (Joel 3:9). God mockingly invites the enemies of his people
to gather against him, make their weapons and make themselves strong, when in
fact they are hopelessly weak before them. Then he promises to destroy them! He
is actually mocking the enemies of his people as he invites them to judgment (3:12-
14).
10. Babylon’s Ruler in Isaiah 14
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The full context of this passage would let us know that Isaiah is denouncing a ruler,
even if he did not tell us so explicitly. Like many other ancient Israelite prophets,
Isaiah includes oracles against various nations: Babylon (Isa. 13-14), Moab (Isa. 15-
16), Damascus (Isa. 17), the Nubian and Egyptian empires (Isa. 18-20), Babylon
again (21:1-10), Edom (21:11-12), Arabia (21:13-17), Jerusalem (22), and Tyre (23).
Isaiah 14:3-4 explicitly tell us that the following oracle is directed against the ruler of
Babylon--an oppressor (14:4), a ruler (14:5), who conquered other nations (14:6). As
he is defeated, the nations rejoice (14:7); figuratively speaking, even the trees of
Lebanon rejoice, for he will no longer be cutting them down for his building projects
(14:8). How has the Lord brought this king low, breaking his rod and scepter (14:5)?
The text clearly indicates that he is dead: he goes to Sheol, the realm of the dead
(14:9), and other rulers there rejoice that the ruler who defeated them has died just
like them (14:9-10). His pomp and dignity ruined, his court harpists silenced, he
now rots with maggots and worms consuming his flesh (14:11)--i.e., he is a corpse.
This description does not fit the devil very well, but it does fit a human ruler who
exalted himself hence was brought low for his arrogance.
Like Israel whose glory was cast from heaven to earth (Lam. 2:1), this ruler has been
cast from heaven to earth. At this point some readers think that the subject must
change to a literal fall from heaven, in which case, they say, it must be applied to a
fallen angel like the devil. But the jubilant outcries of Lebanon’s cedars in 14:8 was
hardly literal; neither was the image of dead rulers rising from their thrones in the
realm of the dead in 14:9 (would they still be enthroned)? Hebrew poetry painted
pictures with words, just as poetry normally does today; in contrast to non-poetic
parts of Isaiah, the poetic portions are consistently full of figurative speech. Other
texts also speak of figurative falls from heaven, most of them without applying them
to the devil (Amos 9:2; Matt 11:23; Lk 10:15).
Kings of Babylon, like some other ancient near Eastern kings, actually claimed to be
gods (compare, for example, Dan 3:5; 6:7). Claiming to be a deity like the morning
star or offspring of the sun god or deity of dawn would not be unnatural for an
ancient near Eastern ruler, but Isaiah grants the title only in contemptuous mockery:
“Poor king of Babylon! You reached for heaven, but have been cast down to earth!
You tried to raise yourself above God, but now you have died like a man!” (compare
the similar taunt in Ps. 82:6-8). Verses 12-14 refer to the king of Babylon just like
the preceding verses do: he once conquered nations (14:12), wanted to be
enthroned on the sacred mountain (perhaps referring to Babylon’s future conquest
of Mount Zion in Jerusalem) (14:13), and he was brought down to Sheol, the realm of
the dead (14:15).
The following context drives home the point still more thoroughly: this is “the man”
who struck fear into the hearts of nations (14:16), “the man” whose conquests made
lands deserted, destroying cities, carrying peoples off into captivity (14:17). Unlike
the other nations’ kings who at least were buried in dignity in royal tombs (a final
honor very important to ancient people’s sense of honor), this king’s corpse was
thrown out in the open to rot, trampled underfoot in punishment for the violent
destruction he had brought upon his own people (14:18-20). His descendants and
those of his people, Babylon, would be cut off (14:21-22). The text could not be any
plainer in context: this explicit oracle against the king of Babylon (14:3-23) would be
fulfilled in its time, and God’s oppressed people vindicated.
Despite the clarity of this text, some readers remain so committed to their earlier
understanding of the text that they are determined to get around the context. “Well,
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maybe it does refer to the king of Babylon, but it must refer to the devil, too,” they
protest. But why must it refer to the devil? Is there anything here that cannot refer
to an earthly ruler exalting himself? Do any of the oracles against other nations
(chs. 13-23) contain hidden prophecies against the devil? Was the devil a mere
earthly conqueror, brought to the realm of the dead after he was thrust from heaven
(14:12, 15)? “But we all know that Lucifer refers to the devil, and that the devil said
he would ascend to heaven,” one student protested to me. “How do we know it?” I
replied. The view that “Lucifer” refers to the devil and that the devil promised to
ascend to heaven is based on an interpretation of the King James translation of this
text. If “Lucifer” appeared here, it would be the only place in the Bible it occurred,
but it does not in fact occur here, either. The Hebrew does not speak of “Lucifer”
here; that is a Latin title for the “morning star” which the King James Version used in
its translation here. Even if we granted that this text “also” refers to the devil,
however, why is it that many readers quote it as applying to the devil but not to
what it straightforwardly says, namely, a sinning human? Perhaps if we applied the
text more as a warning against human pride, many would not want to preach from it
any more than they preach from the surrounding chapters (which is little indeed!)
Unable to make their case in Isaiah 14, some students declare that Isaiah 14 must
refer to the devil because Ezekiel 28 does. There are two fallacies in this argument.
First of all, Ezekiel 28 and other passages could refer to the fall of the devil without
Isaiah 14 having to do with that subject; no one is denying that some texts in the
Bible refer to fallen angels, only that this is the point of Isaiah 14. The second
fallacy of the argument is that Ezekiel 28 is not one of the texts referring to fallen
angels, either.
11. Tyre’s Ruler in Ezekiel 28
Like Isaiah, Ezekiel also has oracles against the nations: Ammon (25:1-7), Moab
(25:8-11), Edom (25:12-14), Philistia (25:15-17), Tyre (26:1-28:19), Sidon (28:20-26),
and Egypt (29:1-32:32). The passage sometimes applied to the devil, 28:12b-19, is
in the heart of an oracle against the ruler of Tyre; in fact, verse 12 begins, “Son of
man, take up this lament against the ruler of Tyre.” No one disputes that the context
refers to the ruler of Tyre, but those who apply the text to the devil declare that it
also applies to him, because (they claim) some features of the text cannot apply to
anyone but the devil.
This argument, as we shall see, is not actually accurate. The lament calls this ruler
arrogant about his wisdom and perfection of beauty (28:12, 17)--just as Tyre claimed
to be perfect in beauty (27:3-4, 11) and full of wisdom that brought wealth (28:3-4),
self-proclaimed wisdom that made the ruler think he was a god (28:6) though he was
but a human being (28:8-10). This ruler was in Eden, the garden of God (28:13),
which advocates of the devil-interpretation think must be taken literally: only the
devil was in Eden, they say. But this claim is not true; Adam and Eve, who did seek
equality with God (Gen. 3:5), also lived in Eden, and Ezekiel could compare the
Tyrian ruler’s hubris with that of the first people.
Yet another explanation is better than either the devil-interpretation or the Adam-
interpretation: Ezekiel explicitly compares the ruler of Babylon to a cherub (28:14-
15). Genesis calls neither Adam nor the serpent a cherub, but does refer explicitly
to cherubim in the garden: God’s angels stationed there to keep Adam and Eve out
after their fall (Gen. 3:24; cf. Ezek. 28:14-15 NIV: “guardian cherub”). In other words,
this is an image representing great prestige in God’s garden. (The “holy mountain
of God”--28:14--might allude to Mount Zion, as often in Scripture, in which case the
image of cherubim probably also recalls the cherubim on which God was enthroned
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on the ark in the Temple. The blamelessness until found wicked--28:15--may also be
part of the cherub image.)
Some have objected that the king cannot simply be compared to a glorious cherub
in Eden; the text calls him a cherub, and must be interpreted literally. Those who
insist that all details of such prophecies should be taken literally, however, are not
consistent in how they interpret other references to Eden in surrounding chapters.
Ezekiel himself is full of graphic, poetic images and metaphors (comparisons in
which one thing is simply called another without “like” or “as”), one of which is a
statement that Pharaoh was a tree in Eden, God’s garden (Ezek. 31:1-18; he is also a
sea monster, 29:3-5). Drawing on various images from the account of Adam and
Eve’s fall, Ezekiel’s prophecies speak both of the stately cherubim and the greatest
trees in Eden (perhaps the tree of life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?)
Perhaps advocates of the devil-interpretation press their case that being in Eden
refers to the devil in Ezekiel 28 but not in Ezekiel 31 because they can only fit
Ezekiel 28 into their view in some other respects. (Some cite the “pipes” on his
body, but this is based on only one translation, which the Hebrew does not appear to
support here.)
The adornment of precious stones (28:13) alludes to Tyre’s great wealth, elsewhere
described in terms of gorgeous array (27:4-7, 24) and trade in diverse merchandise
including precious stones (27:16, 22). The wickedness of 28:15 is the wickedness of
Tyre’s merchant interests (28:16), her “dishonest trade” (28:18 NIV) elsewhere
referred to in the context (27:2-36; 28:4-5; cf. 26:17). The king’s pride on account of
his beauty (28:17) recalls the pride of the ruler of Tyre who claims to be a god yet is
merely a man (28:2), proud because of the wealth Tyre had amassed through trading
(28:5). That fire would come forth from the ruler of Tyre (28:18), just as ancient
cities were normally destroyed by burning in their midst (cf. e.g., Amos 1:4, 7, 12;
2:2, 5--especially Amos 1:10, against Tyre).
Ezekiel refers to an arrogant human ruler. The ruler in this passage exalts himself in
pride and is cast down; the casting down is more explicit in the oracle earlier in the
chapter (28:2-10). He claimed to be a god, enthroned in the heart of the seas (28:2;
Tyre was off the seacoast of Phoenicia). God has Ezekiel mock this ruler: You think
that you are as wise as a god (28:6), but God would bring judgment on this ruler by
other nations (28:7); then would he still pretend to be a god in front of those who
would kill him (28:9)? He was a “man,” not a god, and he would die a horrible and
violent death (28:8-10). This is hardly a description of the devil, an immortal spirit;
this is an earthly ruler who claimed to be a god, who would learn his mortality at the
time of God’s judgment on Tyre.
Yet even if these two passages referred to the devil as well as to earthly rulers—
though in context they do not—why do defenders of this view often apply these
passages to the devil yet never apply them also to earthly rulers judged by God for
their arrogance? Wouldn’t examples of human arrogance make even more useful
passages for preaching or teaching matters relevant to our hearers? I suspect that
many believers simply assume these passages refer to the devil because that is the
way we have always heard them interpreted, but many of us never closely examined
them in context. Whatever their views, I do not believe any reader can miss our
point: this passage has a broad context in the surrounding chapters, and our short-
cuts to learning the Bible have failed to study the books of the Bible the way God
inspired them to be written.
12. Strengthened for Contentment in Philippians 4:13
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