Listening to the Biblical Text

In this section, we want to give an overview of the entire process of reading in context. This method is nothing other than the process we would use to understand anyone trying to communicate with someone else in any context. If your spouse is talking to you, you have a lot of background to go on. You (hopefully) know a bit about their story and how they think. You (hopefully) know what they mean when they say certain things. You (probably) know a little about the situation they are referring to.

If you think about it, it is much more difficult to know this sort of context when it comes to the Bible. Take the book of Hebrews. It does not say who wrote it (titles were added later). It doesn’t say who it was written to. It doesn’t give a lot of details on the situation behind it. Then consider that, when we start out, we are not likely to know much about the first century world when Hebrews was written. In fact, even those scholars who know the most only have the bits and pieces of information that have survived the sands of time!

It is no wonder there are so many different interpretations! When you consider that there are so many gaps that can be filled with our imaginations, it is no surprise that there are so many different churches, each with its own take on what the Bible really means. You can see why we need the Spirit to help get us to where we need to be. The Spirit helps fill in the gap between what the text says, what the text doesn’t spell out explicitly, and what we need to hear!

Steps to Apply the Text

When we lack such important information, it becomes even more important to listen to the text and to open our minds to what is there in the text. The process of reading in context – of listening to the text – is common sense. It is hard to argue against it because of how obvious it is. Dr. David Smith presents this process in four steps: 

1. Pray – “Lord, open my eyes to see and my ears to hear.”
2. Observation – seeing what is there in the text (“What does it say?”)
3. Interpretation – using context to understand the text (“What did it mean?”)
4. Application – connecting God’s word to today (“What does it mean to me?”)

Let’s look at each in more detail.

1. Pray

First pray. Pray because God can help us think straight. Pray because the Spirit can remove obstacles in our minds and hearts.

2. Observation

First pray. Then observe. What did the text say? Lessons 2 and 3 in this course will introduce you to the discipline of suspending your judgment on the text’s meaning and listening to it. What do you see? 

As far as details, what are the key terms? Who is addressed? What is the timing? What is the setting? What is the tone? What are the transitions?

As far as the big picture, what section is this passage in? What is the outline of this section or book? What are the key topics and transitions?

As a discipline, you pretend that you are seeing the text for the first time and you know almost nothing about it. You know no theology. You have come from a different planet and are reading it for the first time. Can you listen to the text on its own terms without bringing to it all the noise in your head?

3. Interpretation

Pray again. Then after you have tried to listen to the text, now we interpret it anew. We gather evidence from the passages around the verses we are interpreting. We gather evidence from history and cultural background. After we have done all our own praying and thinking, we might look to a study Bible or commentary. 

For key terms, we might do a word study. To answer our questions, we gather evidence and form hypotheses, just as we might when we are trying to figure out what happened to our keys. What is the most likely explanation for what we are seeing in the text?

4. Application

Pray even more. This is the step that is most important because it is when the text reaches into our own lives. The Bible is inspired and inerrant. But what if it does not appropriately reach into our lives? The word of God has not failed (Rom. 9:6), but our lives will fail because we have not listened or been transformed by it.

This is much more than a rational step. On the one hand, can we identify points of continuity between “that time” and “our time”? We should assume the text applies directly to us unless there are clear points of difference in context, without making excuses.

However, we especially need the Spirit at this point. We need the Spirit’s protection from the Devil’s interference. We need the Spirit’s inspiration to see what we need to see. And yes, we need the Spirit’s help for our minds to think clearly.

The process we have just set out is sometimes called inductive Bible study. It is an attempt to let the text sit in the driver’s seat rather than us, to “induce” the meaning from the text through our study. It is, first, a process of drawing meaning “out of” the text, which is sometimes called exegesis. The opposite approach is reading meanings into the text, shoving our meanings down the text’s throat, as it were, which is sometimes called “eisegesis.”