A Guide to Interpreting Scripture

Context, Harmony, and Application

Michael Kyomya

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780310107057
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

According to Dr. Michael Kyomya, misconceptions about what the Bible actually says can breed confusion and false ideas about God and the Christian life. Therefore, it is critically important that you know how to interpret Scripture carefully. Dr. Michael Kyomya explains what interpretation is, why it is important, how to do it, and the pitfalls to avoid. He illustrates his points with examples from his own experience and from sermons he has heard in Africa. Dr. Kyomya makes it clear that interpretation is not just something for scholars, but also is useful when preparing a sermon or a Sunday school lesson, as well as in your own personal study of the Bible. The writing is simple and clear, and the illustrations are both amusing and informative. Full of ways to enrich personal study of the Bible, this guide will equip you with the knowledge and instruction you need.

1

INTRODUCTION

A preacher once said, “I am not bothered by the various interpretations of this Bible passage. I only care about what the Bible says.” Like that preacher, many people think that interpretation is simply an academic exercise that can be divorced from what the Bible actually says. This is a misconception. We cannot know what the Bible says without interpreting it.

Lack of interpretation in reading the Bible can cause severe problems, which have led many people astray. For example, how do we interpret the title “Son of God” ascribed to Jesus in the Gospel of John? Some groups teach that since Jesus is the “Son” of God, he must be less than God. They fail to recognize that the gospel writer is using the word “son” in a different way from the way it is used today.

Even some well-meaning preachers and teachers have stumbled and misled others because of their lack of interpretation. They preach exhilarating sermons that are interpretatively wanting and hollow. I remember one such sermon. An influential preacher was preaching on Genesis 13:10 in which Lot chose the “low” lands of Sodom and Gomorrah after Abraham gave him a choice of where to live. This preacher made much of the term “low” lands. To my consternation he said that “low” in the Bible connotes evil. Thus low land is evil, while high land is good. According to the preacher, this was why Lot’s choice proved to be calamitous.

Many in the audience were very impressed by this unique interpretation, but unfortunately it was rooted only in the preacher’s fertile imagination. There was no evidence from the Bible to back him up. Clearly, the plain or “low” land was not evil because it was low but because the people living there were evil and ungodly. After all, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in the low valley of Hebron, and it was fine (Gen 13:18; 35:27; 37:14).

Flawed interpretations of the Bible are widespread in the church. That is why it is so important that we learn how to interpret the Bible. We do well to remember what our Lord said about the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection:

You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead – have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living. (Matt 22:29–32).

The Sadducees knew the verse that Jesus quoted. They had read it before, but they did not know its interpretation and they went astray.

When Paul talks of the tragedy of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus, he says:

Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. (Rom 10:1–3)

This whole tragedy had bad interpretation at its core.

We should also remember Paul’s exhortation to Timothy: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15).

Today, many people show great zeal for God and zealously preach and teach the word of God, but lack skill in interpretation. It behoves us to pay close attention to this issue because “then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching” (Eph 4:14). We should be like the people of Berea in the book of Acts, who were commended because they were “of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11).

It is interesting to note whose teaching the people of Berea were checking: It was that of the great Apostle Paul! He was teaching and preaching to them, and they were checking whether his message concurred with the word of God. We need to be Bereans today and check all the preaching and teaching we hear, whether it comes from an eloquent and famous preacher or an acclaimed scholar or teacher. We need to be on our guard and to make sure that what they say concurs with the Scriptures. To be able to do this we need to know how to interpret the Scriptures correctly. This applies to all of us – preachers and teachers, students of the Bible and ordinary believers. We all urgently need to learn more about interpretation.

Some years back, some groups disdained biblical and theological training, scholars and theologians. I am happy that such thinking is becoming more and more a thing of the past, because the concept of training is not of the devil; it is of God. Rather than reject all of scholarship, we need to distinguish between good and bad scholarship. God has used, and continues to use, good scholarship and theology to promote the gospel. Remember, even the Bible translation you use is a product of hard work by scholars and theologians.

Anyone who disparages teaching or training has no right to be teaching and training others. If you are teaching others, why should you not be taught and trained? Proverbs 12:15 reminds us that even “the wise listen to advice”. Mark 4:34 says that the apostles were trained and taught: When Jesus “was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything” to them. Jesus could have breathed all knowledge into his disciples, but he chose to train and teach them for three years.

Training in the Bible and theology is crucial because without it church growth will be stunted and the church will go astray. And training in how to interpret the Bible is vital because all preaching depends on interpretation, all teaching depends on interpretation, all theology depends on interpretation. The rapid growth and mushrooming of churches in many parts of the world creates a crying need for trained leaders who will be able to nurture them.

This book deals with the need for interpretation, the definition of interpretation, the foundation of interpretation, approaches to interpretation, some principles of interpretation, and some hindrances in interpretation. It also considers the matter of application, which is the logical and necessary step after interpretation.

The three appendices deal with a few specific issues. The first looks at the interpretation of Wisdom literature such as the books of Proverbs and Psalms. The second deals with interpreting figures of speech, and the final one lists additional resources that can help you to interpret Scripture.

2

NEED FOR INTERPRETATION

One day, my wife and I were with our friend Jane when she heard that someone called John had just died. Jane responded, “Oh, that’s wonderful!” I wondered what was going on.

Later, I commented to my wife, “Jane must really have hated John!”

“No. She loved him very much,” my wife replied.

I persisted, “But when she was told that John was dead, she said, ‘That’s wonderful’.”

“Oh,” said my wife, “Jane doesn’t know much English. And in her part of the world, ‘wonderful’ usually means ‘bad – very bad’.”

I replied, “That’s wonderful!”

Simple Misunderstandings

Sometimes we misunderstand what a person says or writes and we need help to interpret what they meant. An example of this is found in the Bible. Just after Jesus had told Peter to follow him, Peter asked Jesus about John, saying, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answered:

“If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” However, the disciples misunderstood what Jesus said: Because of this, the rumour spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” (John 21:21–23)

The disciples missed the point and needed help with their interpretation.

The Corinthians also misunderstood Paul’s instructions. Paul had written them a letter telling them not to associate with people who were “immoral”. However, the Corinthians mistakenly thought that Paul had told them not to associate with immoral people in general. So when he wrote to them again, Paul said,

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with the immoral people – not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. (1 Cor 5:9–10 RSV)

Paul was writing to the Corinthians in their own language – the language they knew very well. But they still misunderstood him! This goes to show how easy it is to stumble even over what is familiar to us.

To give another example, not long after feeding four thousand people with only seven loaves of bread, Jesus and his disciples prepared to cross the Sea of Galilee (Mark 8:11–21). Just before their departure the Pharisees argued with Jesus and demanded he give them a sign from heaven. Then as they set out in the boat, the disciples discovered that they had forgotten to bring bread with them. All they had was one loaf.

As they were sailing along, Jesus charged them, “Be careful … Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” Yeast is used in bread-making, and, as you can imagine, bread was the “familiar” and consuming topic of conversation at that moment. “They discussed this with one another and said, ‘It is because we have no bread.’” The disciples took the familiar meaning, or the meaning that quickly came to their minds, and betrayed their lack of trust in Jesus’ power to provide abundantly, even from a little.

This interpretation brought a stinging rebuke from Jesus. He had just demonstrated his power to perform miracles and provide food by abundantly feeding four thousand people with only seven loaves, and on an earlier occasion he had fed more than five thousand with only five loaves. Knowing all this, the disciples still worried about not having enough bread? So Jesus asked them, “Do you still not understand?”

The disciples took the familiar meaning of the word “yeast”, the meaning that quickly came to their minds. But they were mistaken.

Learning skills in interpretation will sensitize you to move more cautiously and will minimize such stumbles.

Sometimes we misunderstand what someone says or what the Bible says, even when the words are familiar.

Difficult Passages

The Bible contains some passages that are difficult to understand. Peter acknowledged this when he said:

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand. (2 Pet 3:15–16a)

This is the Apostle Peter pointing this out! If he acknowledged that some passages are difficult, then surely we too should move cautiously and learn interpretation. If we do not, we may stumble over the difficult passages that, Peter continues, “ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Pet 3:16b).

Different Contexts

If some of the disciples could misunderstand Jesus when he spoke to them face to face, if the early church could misunderstand Paul’s words in his letter, and if Peter acknowledged that some things in Paul’s letters were difficult to understand, we can certainly also misunderstand them today. We need to learn about interpretation.

This is especially important because we are removed from the original events and situations of the Bible by several thousand years, by our culture and by our language. There will certainly be things in the Bible that are difficult for us to understand and things that we can easily misunderstand. These may be cultural and historic references as well as concepts and words.

I had a vivid illustration of this when I was visiting an American friend called David. He gave me his wedding album to look at. As I paged through it, I came across a photograph of David dancing with an elderly lady, with his arm around her waist. Being an African from the Busoga culture, I wondered what was going on. I asked him, “Who is this elderly lady you are dancing with?” To my utter consternation David answered, “My mother-in-law.”

What a difference culture makes! In my culture, it is unthinkable even to lock eyes with my mother-in-law when conversing with her from a distance. Dancing with her would be unheard of, and even evil! The possibility of doing so cannot cross my mind. It is easier to think of walking to the moon! But there was David dancing with his mother-in-law.

Suppose someone wrote about that wedding, and said, “David danced with his mother-in-law for about five minutes. Then they rejoined their friends at the table.” A Musoga would interpret this as saying that David was a pervert! But David was actually a godly guy, doing what was customary in his culture. What he was doing does not violate the word of God.

Can you see how easy it can be for us, who are far removed from the culture of Bible times, to misinterpret a book that was written in foreign languages thousands of years ago?

Different Meanings

Another contemporary example may help t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Need for Interpretation
• 3. Definition of Interpretation
• 4. Methods of Interpretation
• 5. Importance of Observation
• 6. Importance of Context
• 7. Pitfalls to Avoid
• 8. Two Types of Context
• 9. The Harmony of Scripture
• 10. Application and Context
• 11. Application and the Harmony of Scripture
• 12. Conclusion
• Notes
• Appendices
• Further Reading