How To Study The Bible
Vern Peterman · Nov 25, 2001
How to Study Bible (2001-02), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826223858169

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, this morning I got the handouts on your desk because I... No kids, all right. But anyway, I like to do that because that saves me from passing out. Anyway, this is a supplement to the chapter 7 in the book on figures of speech. A few thoughts come to mind. When Nancy and I were first married, we discovered kind of the fun in figures of speech, especially if you take some of those figures of speech and think of them literally. Here's an example. Nancy and I were buying our first house. We were sitting there in the real estate agent's office, and he was talking on the phone trying to get the process through and buying our house.

And he was listening to one of these guys who was yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. And we could tell he was just doing a lot of listening. So we gave him an apple, because we had a bunch of apples, you know. And so he turned the phone up like this, and chewed, you know. And so I said, Nancy, he's speaking off the top of his head.

And so here's a figure of speech, you know, if you take it literally, it's funny. Another one that we talk about, and this is another one, we talk about striking a happy medium. Take that literally. Here's this person who does seances, and they're really happy, and you just whack them, all right?

But there's lots of figures of speech that we use and are accustomed to using. Why do we use figures of speech? Why don't we just talk literally all the time? What's that? Yeah, figures of speech make for interesting language, don't they? What's another reason we use figures of speech? Sometimes it's more clear. Exactly. And not only more clear... It looks as though it's from a different angle. Yes, exactly.

We may take something that we understand better, use that as a figure of speech to help clarify something that isn't as well understood. Okay? Good. And what's another reason why we might use a figure of speech? Probably the same thing that emphasizes a subject or a point. Very good. We'll use figures of speech for emphasis because A figure of speech sometimes will drive a point home that otherwise might just be kind of lost. Good point. What's another reason?

They create a picture in our mind that helps solidify our ideas. If you've ever read Jerry Lucas has done books and things of that sort, he's the basketball player, on memorizing things. One of the things that he does is he says use pictures, use pictures to help fix in your mind some particular thing you're trying to remember. Using that, he went through and memorized a whole bunch of people in the crowd, their names and all that. And what he did is he pictured that person doing something funny. So figures of speech help things stick in our minds too.

What's another reason? Another reason might be it's a shortcut. I can use sometimes one word and that will communicate something that we've spent a whole bunch of time otherwise explaining. And once we understand the shortcut, then it's a way of communicating efficiently. So there are different kinds of figures of speech and they all have one or more of those advantages that we just talked about. What I have here is a brief list that I'd like us to go through. This is a sampling and it gives some examples. The biggest study ever done on figures of speech in the Bible is this.

What I'll do, I couldn't get it to print out, but there's a shorter version of this that's only 20 pages long. And I couldn't get to print out by the time we had to leave. But what I'll do is have that available for you to take a look at. But this is by Bollinger. He finished this just a little over 100 years ago and published it. And it's now available in reprints.

I wouldn't necessarily suggest you need to go out and get it, but the reality is that if we understand some of the different kinds of figures of speech, it will be helpful for us in understanding Scripture. A couple things to note. One is that there are some translations that will take the figures of speech that mean something in Greek or in Hebrew and they will take that and convert that to some more English language figure of speech. Now what's the advantage to doing that? Excuse me, what's the advantage to doing that? To taking something that might be a Greek or a Hebrew figure of speech and converting it into one in English. That would be more English use.

Well, hyphenize what's going on. Sometimes our idioms in one language are not the same in another language. Yes. There's a similar idea but totally different words. Alright? We may have some figure of speech that comes out in the Bible and we read over it in a kind of first reading and not recognize it. Here's a for instance that I became aware of and it's not immediately out of the Bible.

In our language we say, you're pulling my leg. If you're teasing me or joking with me, right? In Spanish the phrase is, you're pulling my hair. We think that's funny, but to them, they say, you're pulling my leg, that sounds funny. And it's because figures of speech are oftentimes woven in with our culture, the way we're accustomed to speaking. But what's the problem with that? Can there be a disadvantage to having a translation that takes the figure of speech and carries it over into English? Ah, it may not convey the idea thoroughly. There's something else. How do you know they've done it right? How do you know they've done it right? They may have missed something. They may have ended up miscommunicating. Yeah. Okay. How about that? Okay. To carry me on your arm? Okay. Are you trying to carry me on your arm? Isn't that funny?

Anyway, just quickly, one of the disadvantages, if you look at these translations, is it helps for us, I think, to understand the culture in which Scripture was written. That's one of the things that I try to do, for example, in the main service. I spend a fair amount of time before we study the messages to each of the churches to understand what that church was going through. What was it like?

And so I think it's helpful to understand more about the actual background of the Bible instead of just trying to get around it. That's why I personally prefer a translation. Okay, go ahead and give it to me as it is and let's study it and understand it because then that's better. I'll understand the message of Scripture better that way than if everything is just completely transported over into English and then I miss the context, the cultural context. Okay, let's go ahead and grab this thing and I want to kind of run through it. And just the subject we talked about is there in the introduction.

There are... What's that? I just said that was kind of a figure of speech. Oh, yes. Oh yeah, we use figures of speech constantly, I tell you. And a lot of times we don't even realize it. Okay. One common one is the simile. Liking one thing to another. Okay? If I say to you, you know, this guy eats like a horse. Okay? I'm not telling you that he is a horse, but I'm just making a comparison. He eats like a horse. Here's one example.

Psalm 94 verse 4, For a thousand years in your sight, or like a day that is gone by, or like a watch in the night. So there's a comparison there, right? So look for that like or as, and you'll get the simile. There are over a hundred similes in the book of Revelation. It's like a torch. It's like the sun. It was like a locust. Those kinds of comparisons show up over a hundred times in the book of Revelation. So you look for that word, like or as, and you've got it. So it's making a comparison. And then you just need to understand what is the comparison. And that helps you understand the passage. But that's the key word if I've got a simile, like or as.

Let's look at the last one in there, Revelation 1.14. Do you see that? It's right above the word metaphor in blue. This is one we've read. His head and hair were like, excuse me, white like wool. Comparison, like wool. As white as, should be white as snow. And his eyes were like burning fire. So here's three similes, all in one verse.

The next one is a metaphor, and it's basically the same thing, but it's lacking the like or as. If I come to you and I say, gosh, if I keep eating this, I'll be an elephant. You know that I'm not really meaning I'm going to turn into an elephant. But you do understand that I'm making a simile without like or as. You see that? So there, that is a metaphor. It's the same thing, but the like or as is assumed.

And you know where I talk about its shortcut? I can tell you, if I keep eating this, I'll be an elephant. That shortcut for saying, if I keep eating this, it's way too many calories for what I'm going to consume. I'll gradually gain weight and become very large. Much easier to say, I'll be an elephant, see?

Let's look at an example, a metaphor, that's Psalm 33. How about if somebody reads that for us? And it says, should, it should be shield. Somebody read that for us? If you are a shield around me, O Lord, you bestow your glory on me and lift up my head. Okay. Somebody got crazy with the scanner and the spell checker here.

The next one out, you are the salt of the earth. He's not telling them they're salt, but he's making that comparison. I don't know how many metaphors there are in the book of Revelation, but as we go through it, be looking for those because I'm sure they're there as well. Another important one from the Apostle Paul is the last one listed in Colossians 118.

He is the head of the body. You see that? So that's an important metaphor used frequently in Scripture and we base a lot of doctrine on it, don't we? He is the head of the body. We don't mean that we walk around and we've got Christ and he's just the head. We use it as a metaphor. It communicates something with that word picture that once we understand it helps us get better understanding and it helps us also in shortcut to communicate what would take lots of words.

The next one, idioms of overstatement. These words of overstatement are sometimes funny if you take them literally and sometimes almost frightening. Hyperbole is the first one, an exaggeration to make or reinforce a point. This was Bud's point. And that's that you can use emphasis by using hyperbole. And that's exactly what Christ does frequently. Let's take a look here. He gives an example.

Perhaps the most famous and most misunderstood hyperbole is found in Matthew 19.24. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. That's a statement of extremes. And also, it's a physical picture, right? That's real easy for us to relate to. Here's another one.

Jesus says, before you go picking out the speck in your brother's eye, take care of the what? The beam in your own, okay? And Christ was a carpenter, right? And the word He used was for a structural beam. Big, giant, massive beam, okay? And so what is He using? He's using hyperbole. He is making an extreme statement to get the point across for emphasis. Now, next item down that list there.

The last one on that list right before Hendiadis. your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away? Now, do you take that literally? I think what Christ intended was for the literal thought of it to be shocking, for emphasis, so that we would see, oh, what He's talking about is, I need to deal with sin seriously. I need to deal with sin severely. So he used it for emphasis, he used hyperbole to make a point. Hindiadist, a combination of two or three things to express the same meaning.

Can someone read the first one, Psalm 27.1 for us? So what are the multiple things that he has used there to describe the Lord? Okay, he's used light and stronghold and what else? And salvation. So he's used three words there to describe the Lord.

What's the advantage of doing that? Why not just pick one word and go with it? What's the advantage of using several different words like that? How does that help? Okay? Sometimes it's like getting, you know, several different ideas that by putting them together, it gives us a fuller sense of what's going on. Here's a for instance. Many of us...

The three have nothing to do with one another. In reality, the three have nothing to do with one another. That's right, that's right. Salvation and light and stronghold, I mean, what have they in common? That's right. And yet, the three are put there to give us a fuller understanding of who the Lord is.

Each of us as individuals, even though we're one person, frequently have multiple roles, don't we? You may be a parent, child, grandparent, uncle, all those kinds of relationship roles. You're a neighbor. You're a citizen. You're an employee of some kind. All those are true of you, aren't they? And the reality is it takes multiple descriptions to get a fuller sense of who you are and what you do. And that's the same reason for this kind of use. It oftentimes takes multiple descriptions.

And if we go through Scripture, we can find even more. God is... fill in the blank. What is it? God is love. So there's another one. We could go through Scripture and find all these descriptions of the Lord. Sometimes they're kind of in one place, like we just saw here. Other times they're scattered. But the reality is those multiple words are a kind of a figure of speech that help us have fuller and better understanding. Idioms of understatement. That goes the other way.

The example there in Judges 10.14, Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble. David returned home to bless his household. Michael, daughter of Saul, came out to meet him and said, How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants, as any vulgar fellow would do.

It is a form of sarcasm, isn't it? but its intent is again to make emphasis, but in the opposite direction, by understatement or by negative statement. Now, one that you're going to hear this morning when we get into the book of Revelation, litetes or meiosis, and basically those are just two words for the same thing, a phrase that understates or lessens one thing in order to magnify another, sometimes stating the negative of one extreme to emphasize the other extreme. Now, let's get the examples here so that it makes some sense.

Genesis 18.27, somebody read that for us? Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes. Okay, is Abraham nothing but dust and ashes? Why is He making this statement? Why is He making that statement? Ah, okay. In other words, the idea is He'll make this extreme statement in order to emphasize the comparison between Himself and the Lord.

Isaiah 41.14, which is a couple down there, Little Israel for I myself will help you declares the Lord now. We know that Jacob is not a worm Yeah, I don't know if he was little or not, but but the point is it's by extreme comparison Now one that will be looking at this morning is this this next one. This is Paul answered. I am a Jew That will be look.

We'll be looking at this morning in the main service I am a Jew from Tarsus and Cilicia a citizen of no ordinary city What does he mean, a no ordinary city? Does he mean it isn't a city? What does he mean? It's an unusual city. If he says it's not an ordinary city, it's an extraordinary city. So he makes a negative extreme statement in one to emphasize the other. If I said to you, that is not a small problem, What do you understand? That's a big problem. Okay? All right?

And that's the kind of, litetes, or meiosis, that's that kind of figure of speech. You will find it in many places in scripture. And the form we read here in Acts, Luke loved to write that way. He has several of them spread throughout the book of Acts. Okay? He likes that figure of speech.

Euphemism. We have euphemism, as a matter of fact, they give an example here from the movie Monty Python. Basically, some terms we have an incredible number of euphemisms, alternate terms for. It says, Monty Python's famous parrot sketch utilizes English euphemisms concerning death. It snuffed it. It's pushing up daisies. It's popping its clogs.

It's shuffled off this mortal coil, etc. As a matter of fact, I heard somebody went through and they found some 60 plus different alternate terms for somebody being dead. I mean, we have a million of them. How about this? Money. What are some different terms, euphemisms for money? Can you think of some? Bucks. Some others. Lettuce. Green. What's that? Gephus. Nancy said lettuce. I've also heard of cabbage. Another one that you hear. What's that? Dough. We could go down the list. The bottom line is we use euphemisms all the time. We use those kinds of things all the time. And essentially what happens, Scripture does that too. And a lot of times it'll use it, Paul uses for example the euphemism and they quote it in here. What does he describe death as? We talked about death here with Monty Python's definition. How does he describe death? What's his euphemism? By the fern? There's another one. What was that? Bought the farm? He bought the farm, you know. Yeah, kicked the buckets. I mean, we could come up with a list.

The list goes on and on. But Paul calls it sleep. He says they sleep. And that's his euphemism for death. Let's ask this question. Why do you think Paul uses that euphemism? Because there's life after death. Ah, okay. He is emphasizing that it is not a permanent event in the sense of things are not over. It is a temporary stage and it doesn't have consequences of annihilation.

So that's why he would use this euphemism and call death sleep, which he does again and again. One that they give at the very bottom of that page, Genesis 15, 15, You, however, will go to your fathers." Here's another term. We say, you're going to meet your maker. All those are euphemisms, they're figures of speech. Now, what happens if I don't recognize that figure of speech?

Pushing up the daisies. What am I going to think? What's this guy doing? Going to the nursery and pushing up daisies? So we understand these figures of speech, And it's important that we do when we see them in Scripture. When it says, you're going to go to your fathers, it doesn't mean this guy has multiple fathers and he's going to go and visit them. You're going to die. You're going to join them where they are. Okay, let's look at the next part. Antithesis. Paul loved to use antithesis.

And it's the idea of listing this, not that. This, not that. This, not that. A friend of mine was noticing, you go in the book of Ephesus, excuse me, the book of Ephesians to the church at Ephesus, chapters 4 through 6, he says, not this, but this. Not this, but this. Not this, but this. You can go through that passage, 4 through 6, and underline the word but or instead and see every single one of those. Not this but this. Don't be foolish but be wise. And he goes on and on and he keeps repeating it. Don't do this but this. Don't do this but this.

And that's antithesis. That's another figure of speech. Why would you use antithesis? How is that helpful? Okay, at a comparison, we get a sense of comparison, good. If I come to you and I just say, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, does that tell you what to do? No, okay. So that's one advantage of antithesis, I can get you to understand this is the direction not to go, but contrast with that something constructive that says this is the direction to go. Don't be foolish, but if I just leave it at that, that doesn't tell you what to do, but be wise. Don't do this, but do this.

So antithesis is helpful because otherwise if we're left with just a negative, then we have nothing constructive. But seeing them both together gives us the fullest picture of what not to do and what to do. Next one down, and this is important. Idioms involving omission. Ellipsis. There is a lot more of this in scripture than we realize, and the truth is there is a lot more of this in our speech than we realize.

Have you ever been with somebody and You find that the two of you can sit there and just kind of nod at each other and grunt and wave your hands and it's like a full conversation is going on. You ever see that? Ever see that? Ever notice that? I know several of you are chuckling. It's funny, isn't it?

You just kind of grunt and wince and things like that and it seems like a full communication is taking place. And what it is, that's the ultimate in ellipsis. It is communication with something not inserted there and yet we fully understand what the full context is.

If I come to this group and I said, hey folks, do you believe in the second coming? What's happened? I've truncated my question, haven't I? On the basis that I believe you understand what I haven't said. The second coming of who? When? For what? Does that mean Vern's going to come back after he walks out of the room? No. We understand we're talking about the second coming of Christ and that it's yet to take place, because that's a context that we understand between each other.

The same thing happens in Scripture. Let's look at the example that they have there. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and, if you read it literally, every boastful tongue. They inserted there, may the Lord cut off every boastful tongue. Don't we have the right to food and drink? Now, what's assumed? It's not said.

This is 1 Corinthians 9.4. What's assumed?

To eat food. Ah, okay. To eat. So the verb there, to eat, is assumed. What else is assumed? To drink wine or water or beverages. Yeah, this is real truncated. What's that? The kinds of food. The kinds of food, alright. What else is assumed? Anytime we use a pronoun, that's really ellipsis, isn't it? It's a kind of ellipsis. What do I mean by that? The question I just asked was ellipsis. What do I mean by that? I didn't tell you who I was. You understand in the context that that means Vern. I don't say to you, what does Vern mean by saying those words?

Extreme forms of ellipsis And to me, this is something that someone learning English for the first time must find very confusing. I can come into people in this group and say, hey, Tudun. Now, you understand what I said, right? Can you imagine coming fresh into the English language, trying to learn that and trying to make any sense out of, hey, Tudun. It's not, what are you doing? It's Tudun. and you understand what I mean, and it's a kind of ellipsis.

Any time that we say something and we've chopped out parts that with kind of common understanding we could eliminate and still understand it, that's ellipsis. And it happens in Scripture as well. How you doing? Yeah, how you doing? How you doing? Yeah, it's happening. What's that? The kids today say sup. Sup. Sup. You get the idea? This thing of ellipsis is critical. There are lots of places where scripture uses ellipsis, and if we don't sit there and take a look at it, and we try to take the figure of speech literally, oh boy, we'll be real lost. Because in the same way that we talk with figures of speech, where that kind of assumption is made, and therefore things are truncated, we simply won't understand what the question is about.

One example that I used some weeks ago was the one where the Pharisees come up to Jesus and they're starting to try to yank his chain and they say, hey, you know, is it permitted, you know, did Moses command that we have the right to divorce or not? And what's behind that whole question was the cultural thing because they had two different court systems and you could pick which court you could get divorced him. And one was liberal and one was conservative. And so what they were trying to do was to trick him on that.

So people who interpret that passage without understanding the ellipsis, what is said without being said in the passage, they'll completely misunderstand that passage. They will interpret it wrong, and they do. You will find commentaries that just look at the text without understanding the shortcut that they're taking when they're asking the question. So, anyway, it's critical when you look at passages, ask yourself, what kinds of figures of speech have I got here?

Let's look at a little bit more. We're going to run out of time. This next one's idioms of association. Metonymy. Some of these names are strange, aren't they? Substitution of a noun for another closely associated noun. So, let's take a look at the first example. I think that's going to be the most helpful.

He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish His throne forever. There are three terms used in what is called the Davidic Covenant. 2 Samuel 7, the Lord promised to David a house, a throne, and a kingdom. When He said, I promise you a house, He's not talking about this thing with studs and sheetrock and insulation and wiring and all that. That term had to do with, you're going to have a family lineage. So he used this term, house, and there was this entire understanding about the family lineage about it.

A throne. Well, David already had a throne and he'd say, well, okay, I'll give this to the next king down. That's not the point. The throne is a place of authority, so it's using the word throne for a place of authority. And then the last one, the house, throne, and a kingdom. The kingdom issue isn't just having a kingdom, but it's a specific kingdom. There was a lot more definition to it. A kingdom over Israel, for one. It's not in here.

So, critical, a lot of times a word is used, it is not only shortcut, But if we just simply take it in its pure literal form, we'll completely miss the meaning. So we have to look real carefully, how is that particular idiom, figure of speech, used in Scripture? And I can look at various places in Scripture, similar kinds of contexts, that will help me understand how those idioms are used. And quite frequently, it's amazing, over 40 generations and 40 different authors, the idioms of Scripture are amazingly consistent.

We're running out of time here, so I'll leave it to you to look through the rest of this. There's also chapter 7 in the book. What we're going to do is next week shift over into a kind of related subject. We're going to deal with allegories, parables, and types. Allegories, parables, and types.

Those three are items that a lot of people have gotten confused on. We don't like to get confused, right? So we're going to take a look at those because when we look at those kinds of things in Scripture, we want to have a handle on, how do I interpret this and really have a good solid understanding of it and not just be guessing?

Because for almost every parable out there, there has been a gazillion different interpretations. And like we talked about weeks ago, A whole bunch of them aren't right. When Jesus told a parable, he had one message in mind, one meaning, and not 53, and not 530. Alright, let's pray.

Lord, we're thankful that you've used such colorful language, and in many cases you've used a word or a phrase to help us to understand quickly what would otherwise take a lot of time. And Lord, you are the one who inspired these figures of speech that had the authors of Scripture lay those down for our benefit. And we just ask as we go through it, even in the main service this morning, that you would be teaching us, guiding us, leading us into all truth. Thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen.