Every so often we meet someone who says with great feeling, “You don’t have to interpret the Bible; just read it and do what it says.”

We agree that Christians should learn to read, believe, and obey the Bible. And we especially agree that the Bible need not be an obscure book if studied and read properly. In fact we are convinced that the single most serious problem people have with the Bible is not with a lack of understanding but with the fact that they understand most things too well! For example, with such a text as “Do everything without grumbling or arguing” (Phil 2:14), the problem is not understanding it but obeying it—putting it into practice.

Unique interpretations are usually wrong.

The first reason one needs to learn how to interpret is that, whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s or human author’s intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text.

in any case the reader of an English Bible is already involved in interpretation. For translation is in itself a (necessary) form of interpretation. Your Bible, whatever translation you use, which is your beginning point, is in fact the end result of much scholarly work. Translators are regularly called upon to make choices regarding meanings, and their choices are going to affect how you understand.

Good translators, therefore, take the problem of our language differences into consideration. But it is not an easy task. In Romans 13:14, for example, shall we translate “flesh” (as in KJV, NRSV, NASU, ESV, etc.) because this is the word Paul used, and then leave it to an interpreter to tell us that “flesh” here does not mean “body”? Or shall we “help” the reader and translate “sinful nature” (as in the NIV, TNIV, GNB, NLT, etc.) or “disordered natural inclinations” (NJB) because these more closely approximate what Paul’s word really means? We will take up this matter in greater detail in the next chapter. For now it is sufficient to point out how the fact of translation in itself has already involved one in the task of interpretation

A more significant reason for the need to interpret lies in the nature of Scripture itself. Historically the church has understood the nature of Scripture much the same as it has understood the person of Christ—the Bible is at the same time both human and divine. “The Bible,” it has been correctly said, “is the Word of God given in human words in history.” It is this dual nature of the Bible that demands of us the task of interpretation.

Because the Bible is God’s Word, it has eternal relevance; it speaks to all humankind, in every age and in every culture. Because it is God’s Word, we must listen—and obey. But because God chose to speak his Word through human words in history, every book in the Bible also has historical particularity; each document is conditioned by the language, time, and culture in which it was originally written (and in some cases also by the oral history it had before it was written down). Interpretation of the Bible is demanded by the “tension” that exists between its eternal relevance and its historical particularity.

The fact that the Bible has a human side is our encouragement; it is also our challenge, and the reason that we need to interpret. Two things should be noted in this regard:

1. One of the most important aspects of the human side of the Bible is that, in order to communicate his Word to all human conditions, God chose to use almost every available kind of communication: narrative history, genealogies, chronicles, laws of all kinds, poetry of all kinds, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama, biographical sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses.

To interpret properly the “then and there” of the biblical texts, you must not only know some general rules that apply to all the words of the Bible, but you also need to learn the special rules that apply to each of these literary forms (genres).

2. In speaking through real persons, in a variety of circumstances, over a 1,500-year period, God’s Word was expressed in the vocabulary and thought patterns of those persons and conditioned by the culture of those times and circumstances. That is to say, God’s Word to us was first of all his Word to them. If they were going to hear it, it could only have come through events and in language they could have understood. Our problem is that we are so far removed from them in time, and sometimes in thought. This is the major reason one needs to learn to interpret the Bible.

Thus the task of interpreting involves the student/reader at two levels. First, one has to hear the Word they heard; you must try to understand what was said to them back then and there (exegesis). Second, you must learn to hear that same Word in the here and now (hermeneutics). A few preliminary words are needed about these two tasks.

The first task of the interpreter is called exegesis. Exegesis is the careful, systematic study of the Scripture to discover the original, intended meaning. This is basically a historical task.

The first task of the interpreter is called exegesis. Exegesis is the careful, systematic study of the Scripture to discover the original, intended meaning. This is basically a historical task. It is the attempt to hear the Word as the original recipients were to have heard it, to find out what was the original intent of the words of the Bible.

The key to good exegesis, and therefore to a more intelligent reading of the Bible, is to learn to read the text carefully and to ask the right questions of the text.

The historical context, which will differ from book to book, has to do with several things: the time and culture of the author and his readers, that is, the geographical, topographical, and political factors that are relevant to the author’s setting; and the occasion of the book, letter, psalm, prophetic oracle, or other genre. All such matters are especially important for understanding.

To answer most of these kinds of questions, you will need some outside help. A good Bible dictionary, such as the four-volume International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ed. G. W. Bromiley [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995]) or the one-volume New International Bible Dictionary (ed. J. D. Douglas [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999]) or Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (ed. David Noel Freedman [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000]), will generally supply the need here.

The more important question of historical context, however, has to do with the occasion and purpose of each biblical book and/or its various parts.

The answer to this question is usually to be found—when it can be found—within the book itself.

This is what most people mean when they talk about reading something in its context. Indeed this is the crucial task in exegesis, and fortunately it is something you can learn to do well without necessarily having to consult the “experts.” Essentially, literary context means first that words only have meaning in sentences, and second that biblical sentences for the most part only have clear meaning in relation to preceding and succeeding sentences.

The most important contextual question you will ever ask—and it must be asked over and over of every sentence and every paragraph—is, “What’s the point?”

The second major category of questions you need to ask of any text relates to the author’s actual content. “Content” has to do with the meanings of words, the grammatical relationships in sentences, and the choice of the original text where the manuscripts (handwritten copies) differ from one another (see next chapter). It also includes a number of the items mentioned above under “historical context,” for example, the meaning of denarius, or a Sabbath day’s journey, or “high places,” etc.

Although the word “hermeneutics” ordinarily covers the whole field of interpretation, including exegesis, it is also used in the narrower sense of seeking the contemporary relevance of ancient texts. In this book we will use it exclusively in this way—to ask the questions about the Bible’s meaning in the “here and now”—even though we know this is not the word’s most common meaning.

A text cannot mean what it never meant. Or to put it in a positive way, the true meaning of the biblical text for us is what God originally intended it to mean when it was first spoken.