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Biblical Hermeneutics

Transcript - HR501 Biblical Hermeneutics Understanding Biblical Interpretation© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 03 of 12HR501

Basic Principles of Interpretation

Biblical HermeneuticsUnderstanding Biblical Interpretation

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

One of the greatest obstacles to understanding the Bible is ignorance of the principles and rules of the Bible. As with every culture, every time you go into a new culture there are just different nuances and different ways of handling things. Since language is the medium of communication, the thoughts and desires of the mind of God, in this sense here, are actually being communicated to us by virtue of what we call revelation. We were just looking at that in lectures 1 and 2.

So God communicates revelation, which we are not afraid to say, not only involves emotional aspects and volitional aspects, but it also has a propositional aspect to it as well. Sometimes Evangelicals only see the propositional, which is to miss it [the whole meaning]. But certainly in the Postmodern Age, the propositional is always the part that is under great question [suspicion]. And many wonder if that really is part of what God wanted to communicate to us. No less than the mind of God, then, comes to us through this process of His communicating with His men who give that Word of God.

But are the principles of interpretation that we are dealing with here to be applied to Scripture in a similar way that we apply principles of nterpretation to all [other] literary works? Well for a good part of that question, [the answer is] yes, because all communication is a gift from God. We want to talk about the whole business of what’s involved in this special work [in us] which we call the image of God. This is what makes people distinctive from all other parts of creation. Animals are made by God, flowers are made by God, people are made by God. But actually man and woman are made in the Imago Dei, [the “image of God”] to use the Latin term here. And as part of the image bearers, right away they

Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Ph.D.Experience: President Emeritus and

Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological

Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts

Transcript - HR501 Biblical Hermeneutics Understanding Biblical Interpretation © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.


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are dominion-havers. God set the men and the women over all of creation. That does not mean they could run roughshod over it and they are not to be environmentally conscious, they are. But as a matter of fact, who was the creation made for? The difference was it was not made for the animals; it was made for men and women made in the image of God.

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

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

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

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

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

What is to be done first when I begin interpreting? Well the whole thing, when we come to talk to someone and they begin [to speak] all excitedly, we say, “Wait a minute. What are you talking about?



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

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



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But now God had told him, at this place here in Genesis 15, “Get three animals and cut them in half, one half on either side. And then two birds; they’re too small, don’t cut them up.” Then he caused a deep sleep to come over Abram, now Abraham. He is “zonked,” but he sees the Lord as a firebrand as a flame of fire goes between the pieces. Now the word for make a covenant is the word literally to cut a covenant. It comes from the Hebrew term karath [“to cut”].

He cuts a covenant. Why? The person that passes between these pieces says, in effect, “May it happen to me what happened to these animals if I don’t keep what I promised.” Now everyone thinks Abraham went through too, as well [but he most certainly did not]. So this was a contract. This was no contract! It’s not a social contract so if one side “welshes,” therefore the other side is out [voided], no, no, no. This was God alone, so take this out [He went through the pieces]. These don’t belong here. Therefore this is what we call a unilateral—one-sided—not a bilateral covenant. If it had been bilateral, then you could say, “Well Israel certainly hasn’t kept their side in the bargain.” That’s true. And they went into captivity, and we haven’t heard basically from them as far as a nation’s concerned since that time. But it wasn’t bilateral. It was one-sided. Uni, “one,” [lateral]—means “side”—one side. [The covenant depended only on God].

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



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specifications that are coming into that one context. So do we know the context of the whole Bible?

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

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

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

Ecclesiastes, now there’s a book! Most people think that was written on Monday. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” sounds like he had a bad day. Well, no. As a matter of fact, I don’t think



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Havel [or Habel], which is the rendering there, which we bring over in English as Abel the second child born in the Bible—his name really means zilch, zero, vapor, vanity, what you see on a cold morning. Why they named him Abel, I don’t know, but it must have been a bad time. But I still think we have not gotten that in Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, what I think he means is, “change, change, change.” Havel [Habel] means transitoriness, of transitoriness. All is transitory, which is a very modern book. What we see is change, change, change, change and [we] just can’t keep up with it. So I ask “dear writer (which I think was Solomon, lots of people don’t think so. But he said that he was a son of a king and other kind of hints in the book). We come to Ecclesiastes 12, the last two verses, 13 and 14, “Here is the conclusion to the whole matter (I say, “Yes! I want to here it. What are you trying to do?).” He said, “Here is the conclusion to the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is what a man and a woman is all about.” That’s it? Yes! “If you want to know the “man-ness” of a man and the “female-ness” of a woman, then you’ve got to come to know who I am and what My Word is. That’s what I was trying to show you here. Everything else is zip, zip, zip, [a fog, a breath, a vapor] transitoriness, transitoriness, change, change, change. But not Me [says the Lord]. I don’t change, My Word doesn’t change. Get an anchor buddy, get an anchor, and it’s found in Me.” I think that’s how we interpret that book.

So if I’m going to do any work in Ecclesiastes or any work in John or any work in Matthew or any of these other kinds of books, I need to ask, “What’s the purpose, what really is the organizing theme not only for the whole Bible, but now I need to know for that individual book and how that particular book comes across.” Some books don’t state their purpose directly, but what we need to do is examine the didactic or teaching parts or, like in the book of Hebrews, the hortatory parts—let us, let us do this, let us do that. So you can begin to get the purpose by looking at the “let us” passages and how they work out together.

The general scope and plan of individual books—some writers put their plan right at the beginning, some at the very end, and some let us pick it up from reading what the book itself says. The book of Genesis, here it puts ten times, “These are the generations of . . .” These are the generations of heaven and earth, these are the generations of Adam, these are the generations of Noah, these are the generations of Abraham, and so on it goes. Each one of them begins the word generations—tôledâh ( ,(ּתולדה [which] comes from the verb yâlad ( ילד )—“to bear, to beget.” So these are the



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histories of—history of this, history of that history of that. And when you come to Matthew, how does he pick it up? “These are the generations of Jesus Christ the son of Abraham, the son of David.”

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

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

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

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

Thirdly, there is the immediate context. So now we’re going to teach on a particular paragraph or set of paragraphs in the Bible. This becomes, then, the immediate context. (Now this radiating out here from both of these [contexts], are elements which are going to make a contribution to that immediate context as well). In that immediate context, I think I need to mark off the teaching block. We call the teaching block a pericope. This will be the teaching block. Now these teaching blocks can really be quite large. For example, if you’re going to do a narrative passage (we’re



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going to look at narrative here, a little later on), but in narratives, the teaching blocks are not going to come in paragraphs, but in narrative they’re going to come in scenes, wherever we have a change in the time or place. Sometimes [as] a speaker, we need to have a change and this would be equal to a paragraph in prose. So a paragraph is a complete unit of meaning—so is a scene. And therefore narratives are going to need that [to watch for scene changes].

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

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

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

At any rate, he’s one of the “ites” of the Bible. It’s a Gentilic ending (I love all these Gentilic endings. There are the Amorites and the Girgashites and the Hivites and Hittites. I generally do all of these and add at the end, “Termite,” just to see if anyone is listening,



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and usually there are several people still awake and they smile. But my granddaughter, who was with me some years ago, she’s now 14. But Sarah, when she was about 3 or maybe older, she said, “Granddad, You remember all those ‘ites’ you had?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “You forgot one.” I said, “What is that?” She said, “The ninety-nights.” So I’ve added them too, as well—the ninety-nights with the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Amorites and all the rest of the “ites”).

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

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

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

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

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

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



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asking for . . .”

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

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

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

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

She then takes it out on Elijah. She said, “What do you have against [Verse 18] me, oh man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin, and kill my son?”

And he doesn’t give her lip back and say, “Shut up woman, I’m pent up in this house. I’m a great speaker. I’m normally out, but for these 3 years, nothing but this kid running through the house all the time.” He said, “Give me your son” (I love Mendelssohn’s Elijah Oratorio (and I think I like the baritone solo, “Give me your son!”). You could almost hear the mother. “No! I lost my husband, I lost the farm, I lost everything, and now my son. You want that too? No!” But she hands over the corpse [to Elijah].

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

Now I look at that passage and I say, “That’s one pericope”—teaching block—but it has four scenes.” Scene one, [the] palace; scene two, [the] brook Kerith; scene three, [the] city gate of Zarephath, which is a suburb of Sidon; scene four, the room with the dead son. And I keep saying, “Okay, what’s the point of this pericope? I found the unity of the Bible. What is the purpose



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there?” I look at the book of Kings. I didn’t give this to you, but remember Elijah and Elisha. Elijah is very upset about what is going to happen, and God gives him a fellow compatriot, Elisha. He was out plowing a very prosperous farm. He had one of the 12 John Deere’s—well, yoke of oxen. He takes his oxen and cuts it up, his tractor (wonder what his father thought), and made a feast out there. He’s going to the Lord’s service. Not, “Boohoo, I’m going into the Lord’s service to serve Him.” It’s feast day! “Hey God called me for this wonderful time!” And here we have this wonderful conclusion here that’s coming in this passage.

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

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

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

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works in terms of an immediate context here.

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

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