How to Study the Bible. Lang. III: Poetic Forms & Structure

This is the third week on elements of language. And the thing we're covering this morning is poetic forms and structure. And so what I'd like to have you do is kind of practice with me on this. Do you need a binder? You got one? OK. Let's get you with this.

And the first thing I've got to tell you is that the back of last week's and this week's, the last page goes in the appendix behind the orange sheets. In front of the orange sheets, things are numbered. And this today's page is 19 through 22. and I can catch up with you afterwards if that's still a little confusing. So anyway, this week we're looking at the third week of Elements of Language, Poetic Forms and Structure.

Now the poetic forms thing is not that tough, because for one thing, For one thing, a lot of people doing this, they're farmers and shepherds, orchard keepers, vineyard keepers, and people like that. So this can't be terribly complicated. But one of the things that we look at is Hebrew poetry patterns.

How did they write their poetry? We write our poetry so that it rhymes. They wrote their poetry so it rhymes not in sound, but in meaning. They didn't care what it sounded like, which to us would grate on the ears, but they rhymed the meaning. And they would rhyme the meaning by stating the same thing in the same kind of order of meaning, and then they would also rhyme by having a mirror image of meaning, say the same thing only essentially stated backwards. They would also rhyme but with a negation of the opposite as a contrast in meaning. This and not this. And then they would state the whole by putting together two halves. And we'll look at examples of this.

Now, why the saying things again? And that was a common Jewish thing. Why say everything twice and sometimes three times and more? It makes it clear. You're restating it. Ever had somebody say something to you and ask them, can you put it another way? So it gets the point across. Yeah. And that's one thing. By stating it twice, sometimes three times, occasionally even four times, by hearing it several different ways, you make sure you get the point, don't you? And it helps clarify. So clarity is one reason.

What's another? Yeah. Emphasis. You say it again for emphasis. It's important so we say it again and sometimes even again. Okay? Now, Psalm 6 is a good one and it's on here and I've deliberately put it in some kind of poetic structure and even bolded some things so that you can catch on to what's going on there. Pardon? Yes?

Are there other languages that have the same pattern or It's interesting, we inherited more of a Greek way of thinking about language and symbols. And so we tend to want to rhyme sounds like the Greeks did. We also tend to, if something is described, we put together what does that look like.

It's one of the reasons because the Jews, again, they thought more what does it mean. It's one of the reasons we read through Revelation and some of the descriptions sound bizarre. because we're thinking, what does that look like? Here's Christ and he's got hair like wool and his eyes are on fire and his legs are like molten bronze and he's got a five-foot sword hanging out of his mouth. And we think, wow, that's weird, right? Well, it's because we put it together from a Greek tradition that says, what does it look like? Whereas the Jews put it together from their tradition that says, what do the things mean?

So the difference there. Now, to get back to your question, that was more of a Middle Eastern way of looking at things from that time, so there were other adjacent cultures that had a tendency to do it similarly. But we tend to come from a Greek way of thinking, which is one reason why learning to take a look at it. It's not that difficult to learn to read it, but we have to realize that that's the case. And why do they keep restating things? Well, that's because that's the way they do their poetry.

So the answer is yes, there were other adjacent cultures at the time that did similar to what you have here. Just like we read, left to right, as did the Greeks, Hebrews, and even modern Arabic, right to left. One of the things you see there in the initial few verses of Psalm 6, what are some of the words that jump out at you as repeated?

Oh, Lord. Remember that bolded there. Can you see the restatement in the first verse? Oh, Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chasten me in your wrath. See that? Rhyming the meanings. It sounds funny because it doesn't sound like the Lord. Okay. Since when do we... Your anger. Your wrath. Ah, okay. One of the things that we say, anger and wrath.

Why would the Old Testament contain more mention of that? And that's a part of it. Why else? They're under what? Law. They're under law. And that's a big difference. That's right. That's right. And it's because they're under law and law stimulates anger, right? That's correct. It would be a righteous anger and not a fleshly and a human kind of anger. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am pining away. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are dismayed and my soul is greatly dismayed. See that? See the rhyming? But you, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord. Rescue my soul and save me. Rescue my soul. Save me.

Similar, right? Because of your lovingkindness. For there is no mention of you in death. In Sheol, who will give you thanks? Now that's an example of a mirror image. You see you is in common. They're both said to the Lord, right? For there is no mention of you in death. Sheol is the Hebrew place of the dead, right? So the first line in verse 5 ends with death, and then the second line starts with death, and then the thanks is a response to there is no mention. Yeah, it's a mirror image in the Hebrew form.

In verse 6, I am weary with my sighing. Every night I make my bed swim. I dissolve my couch with my tears. Notice the repetition of my and sighing, bed swim, tears. Now, how about my eye has wasted away with grief. It. What's it? My eye, right? My eye has become old because of all my adversaries. Think about that because Hebrew is very pictorial. When He says, My eye, is He just talking about this? What do we use this for? This is how we see things, isn't it? So you're on to a good point, and that's that in the Hebrew language, lots of figures of speech. One of them that we noted in the Bible study Thursday night, when we were studying through the book of Joel, Joel uses a powerful figure of speech.

He says, the land mourns. The land mourns. Wow! That's quite a figure of speech. Okay. Depart from Me, all you who do iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of My weeping, the Lord has heard the voice of My supplication and receives My prayer." See that? Weeping, supplication, prayer. The Lord has heard. The Lord has heard and receives. See that? Those are ways in which there's restatement. Now, all my enemies will be ashamed and greatly dismayed. They shall turn back and will suddenly be ashamed. So the will be ashamed is a repeated theme and then kind of sandwiched in the middle. And greatly dismayed they shall turn back.

So why look for these poetic forms? You can look for them because first of all, except for Luke, probably all the rest of the authors of scripture were Jewish. And so they tended to use these forms. And Luke wrote about a lot of Jewish people. So guess what? Even Luke's writing is going to have a lot of these forms in them. Let's take a look at the top of page 20, second page there. These patterns are not just found in the Old Testament. Here are some instances in Paul's writings where he made his point in these Hebrew poetry patterns. Here's 2 Corinthians 4, 7-11. We had an elective in 2 Corinthians here just a few years back.

And we start there with verse 7, But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power of God will be of God and not from ourselves. So notice, treasure on the one hand, then earth and vessels. Surpassing greatness of the power of God from God and ourselves. Then you start to see another set of opposites that he puts together in verses 8 and 9.

Basically, here's the summary. He says, we're like this, but not like this, four times in a row. We're like this, but not like this. We're like this, but not like this. We're like this, but not like this. And he does that four times. We're afflicted in every way, but not crushed. We're perplexed, but not despairing. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. always caring about in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our body.

For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. You see the repetition in the last part of the passage there? There is a complete, complete repetition of, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our... See that? It's verbatim, repeated below. Everybody with me?

And so what we find there, that is exactly repeated, and so what we find is him restating the other parts that are not exactly repeated. So what that says is body, at the end of the first line, is the same as mortal flesh in the second line, right? And the thing is, if you are wondering about what body does he mean, Well, guess what? The restatement, just like Marilyn pointed out, helped clarify it.

Right? Right before that, always caring about in the body the dying of Jesus, and then below that, for we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake. See the restatement there? So you can look for things like that. It helps to understand it. It helps to interpret it.

It serves as a cross-check on, am I understanding this correctly? Now, what I suspect is some of the Greek people who read some of this Jewish stuff were a little almost driven nuts by it because They're not used to that repetition. They say, why does he say everything twice? Three times sometimes, okay?

But there was also the help because if there's any difference in language and culture, the restatement helped clarify. Marilyn's point, right? Helped clarify things. And as was also pointed out, emphasis. Emphasis, okay? So it does help. Yeah? So that, is that, is that always the case where, where has the purpose filed so that.

No, it's just that he repeats that verbatim in that section. And that's telling you pretty clearly we've got a repetitive pattern here. And then what's different between them can be fairly well equated because we have so much of it that's directly repeated. So when he says body, does that mean this body? Does it mean a heavenly body? Does it mean the body of Christ? Well, the fact that he rhymes it with mortal flesh kind of gets the idea across, right? That answered your question.

Okay, let's look at Ephesians 2, 19-22. So then we're no longer strangers and aliens, but By the way, that's a real common pattern with Paul. We've seen it in Galatians. You'll see it all throughout Ephesians, especially in the last half. Not this, but this. Not this, but this. Don't be fools, but be wise. Don't get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. If there's not New Testament saints only, then there wouldn't be very many of them when this was written. Or would that mean all the saints from all different dispensations? Fellow citizens of the saints or of God's household? I'll tell you what, let me take a look at that. Just so I'm not jumping to conclusions. Good question. Let's look at the pattern here.

You're of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone. And then in verses 21 and 22, notice the repetition. In whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord. verse 22, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

See the rhyming there? Does that click? What do you find is identical between those lines? Those are similar. Those are rhyming. But the in whom is identical and the being is identical, right? Anything else? Pardon? Into, okay. Into and what else? In the, see? So what you have is those are some identical things and then what he's done is to vary the things between those by rhyming them.

I would say in this one, it is pretty well identical, even in the Greek, in at least the equivalent. But you're right. In some cases, without having checked, you might want to check it. If you're trying to get real specific, you could check in the original Greek. Yes, together is another one. Thanks. So what you find is there's plenty that's identical in short bits and then a rhyming between the two lines where they vary slightly. Yes? What does that mean when it says apostles and prophets together? Does that mean they're together? Apostles and prophets in verse 20.

The Apostles and Prophets are listed three times, Apostles and Prophets, Apostles and Prophets, Apostles and Prophets, in the book of Ephesians. And so it's interesting, they are paired up in three times, and this is one of those. What's interesting is this one says the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. And the Apostles and Prophets then were the starting place for this body called the church. Why would they be paired up? Why would he say apostles and prophets together three times in the book of Ephesians? Well, they wouldn't contradict each other because if they're speaking for God, it's going to work together.

There was a period in which the apostolic and prophetic gift were given and that's why, one reason he says it's the foundation. You don't keep building the foundation all the way up, right? If you had somebody and they had the second story of their house and they're still going up with foundation, you'd say, wait a minute. Yeah, what's going on here? The foundation is to start, and the founding gifts, principal gifts, are these apostles and prophets.

They are of the ones mentioned, five mentioned, in Ephesians 4.11. Apostles and prophets are there also again. They're the first two. And they are gifts to the church.

Isn't that interesting? but also mentioned together. And a key thing, that will also fit into something else we're about to talk about, and that's two halves making a whole. The Lord used apostles and prophets to reveal things to the early church in a miraculous way and in a special way so that we have the Word of God and the people at that time could have direction that they didn't have because they didn't have the Word of God complete. Here's another pattern.

Both halves conveying the whole. And the most common one, one that shows up in the first verse of the Bible, one that we're going to encounter when we start studying the book of Genesis a month from now. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Why didn't they just say, in the beginning, God created everything? To make the distinction between what and what? Heaven and earth.

One of the things that this Jewish figure of speech does is by looking at the two halves, you notice that the two halves are both physical. So that tells you the physical world. And so that's one. There's a distinction between the two. This idea of putting the two halves together also gives people a sense of confirmation. If there's two counterparts that complement one another, then you have a sense of the whole.

And it gives you a picture of things that's different from God created everything. If I just said God created everything, what might be the first things to come to your mind? Yeah, in other words, we might think just earthly, and the stars might be not in our mind first off. We might be thinking about living things and non-living things. But the first distinction here is heaven and earth.

So that's the emphasis that Scripture puts on it. This happens repeatedly throughout the Old Testament with different variations all the way into the New Testament and into the last book of the Bible as well. So from the first verse to the very last chapters of the Bible, you've got this pattern. Here's 1 Chronicles 16, 31, the first part.

Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. And that, by the way, is a fairly common Old Testament pattern. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. And here's another thing. How can the heavens be glad? Let the earth rejoice? Ever seen the earth smile? What do we have there besides a poetry pattern? A figure of speech, right? A figure of speech. Let the trees of the field clap their hands. There's a figure of speech.

Alright, here's Job 35.11.

Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth? Who makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens? You see the earth and heavens pattern and You also see in the animal kingdom, you get the ones that are on the earth and the ones that are in the air. So they've got those separated between the two as well. And you have a poetry pattern, teaches us more than, makes us wiser than.

You see that? You've got the two halves make the whole, both for heaven and earth, and beasts and birds, and you have the Hebrew poetry pattern of rhyming the first part. Yes, exactly. Good point. New heaven and new earth are two halves of a whole again, aren't they? Didn't just say, we'll keep the old heavens, but we'll make a new earth or the other way around. New heaven, new earth. You're right.

It's two halves of a whole. Okay. Other two halves and a whole equals the whole word pairs would be Jews and Gentiles. What's the definition of a Gentile? It's a non-Jew, right? So between Jews and Gentiles, you've got the whole, right? Land and sea, right?

That's another one that you'll find frequently matched up. So you've got some passages that that shows up too. Okay. Yes, Dave. What is it a figure of speech for? He's asking about the Chronicles questions. Let the heavens be glad. It's because you're using human emotions to describe the heavens and the earth is rejoicing. You're applying human emotions to the earth. That's a figure of speech. We do similar things with the Lord. We say that the Lord hears us. Or even in the Old Testament, the Jews would say, Lord, hear me with your ear. They used the Lord's ears or the Lord's eyes. The Lord's eyes are upon you.

Figure of speech. on page 20. Now we get into structure. Primarily what we're going to talk about here is chiasm. I've got in the appendix, if we have time for it, I've got in the appendix some other possibilities for structure. You're laughing. You and your chiasm. Oh yes. Chiasm, here we go. Because there's a bunch of them. And I'm going to give you a sampling from different places. Chiasm, a literary mirror image. That's the idea.

We're going to see this in Genesis. Here's Genesis 3, 9-22. What happens? The Lord God said, and then the interactions with his creation. And then the next one is Adam talks to God about Eve. The next one, Eve talks to God about the serpent. And then God judges the serpent. By the way, the Lord doesn't even bother talking with the serpent, other than just telling him, here's what's happening. God judges the serpent and promises a Savior.

Now, the middle of a chiasm is typically not repeated, but it's the middle also a way to emphasize. So here's the turning point in the chiasm, or the reflection point. God judges the serpent and promises the Savior. And then what happens? God goes back to talking to Eve, but lays the judgment on Eve. And then in B' there, the apostrophe, God judges Adam. And then finally, the Lord God said in interactions, So here is a small scale within a chapter, chiasm. Then we have below that the book of Ruth, the whole book. It starts off with an introduction, ten years at Moab with death. And then the final is the epilogue, ten generations of births. Years and generations wouldn't equate with it. No, they wouldn't, but the ten would.

And the other thing you'll find with chiasm, sometimes they will rhyme or restate, but sometimes they'll also have a contrast. What's the contrast here with the first and the last? Starts with deaths and ends with births. Yeah. So that's one of the things you'll see in chiasms. There will sometimes be a contrast and not a direct comparison. So the number 10 starts off, but it begins with death and ends with births. Yes. Yeah. The reflection pattern. Yeah. Yes, oh yeah.

Here is Isaiah 61 through 22. This is one that we went through when we studied Isaiah. Here it starts off with the Lord is the light of Zion. It ends up with the Lord is the light of Zion. This is on the top of page 22 there. And Zion is also the pivot point. Zion, the key to world destiny. Kind of amazing. So you'll find that reflective pattern. One that we pointed out going through Isaiah, here's a one-verse chiasm.

1 John 3.9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. There's one verse. Now, question that I breezed over initially, why chiasms? Why do they do the chiasms? What value is it and why would they do it? I mean, heaven's sakes, this keeps going and we're just scratching the surface. Why would they do this?

Part of it is the way they thought, yes. Our tendency is we want to make an outline of things to kind of get the big picture, how is this structured, and those may be somewhat helpful. But the truth is that, yes, that would be more the way they thought.

They very commonly went to chiasms. You'll either find them in books, or as we've shown here with Ruth and here with Jude, whole books will be chiasms. Usually they're shorter books, that a whole book is a chiasm. The Greeks also did it as well, which is real interesting because we talked about the contrast in the Greek and Hebrew thought, but this was also something they had in common.

There's another reason. We tend to be a reading people and a people who, we keep things on paper and more and more on the hard drive. or a thumb drive or a CD, right? That's our cultural pattern. A lot of times we don't bother memorizing something that we know we can look up, right? Their thinking was the opposite. Very often memorized lots of things. And so for them, think about this.

Here's Paul and he's writing Galatians, which is a chiasm. Here's the whole book is a chiasm. And within each of those chiasms, there's a chiasm. So here's the book of Galatians. What Paul goes through before he goes and writes this is he's thinking, OK, what am I going to tell these people? And instead of writing an outline of what he's going to tell them, he writes them a chiasm.

I'm going to go through these subjects like this, and he'll write a chiasm, and it'll be easy to remember because he'll say, I'm going to end up where I started. And right after the turning point in the middle, I'm going to go with a similar theme each side of the middle.

And so they would go like that, and if someone was making a speech, They would actually think of this like an arch. The stones in an arch, the bottom stone on the doorway on each side would be similar, the stones across from each other. And when you go into the arch, you know how there's the keystone at the top? That would be the middle of the chiasm. And they would mentally picture things like that.

And so someone was speaking, that would be one way to remember. What did I start with? Oh, that's what I'm going to end with. So that was another reason. We often think of, for example, in Jesus' time, we often think of them doing a lot of writing, but what they did is they drilled on memory. They drilled on memory. And disciples would spend time, like if they got up early in the morning, you'd see them walking along the lake just drilling on what Jesus said the day before. Memorizing it and memorizing it.

My brother knows a pastor that lives nearby him that has been involved with the ministry over in Sudan. No, no, excuse me. It's over in Ethiopia and that area. And it was real interesting. This pastor went over there to speak to the people. And they gathered together and they had this big, you know, a hut that they'd built with no walls, but just a roof. And they brought him there at six o'clock in the morning to begin speaking. The people had already been there since four, praying for him. Okay, so six o'clock in the morning, he shows up to speak and they've been praying for his speaking for two hours. He spoke.

Now the way things go there is the Islamic folks come in and they kill the pastors. So a pastor oftentimes won't return to a church until maybe six or eight weeks because there's just not enough pastors to go around because the Muslims keep killing them off as fast as they can. So what they did is this pastor spoke to these people and then a few people took him off to kind of show him some hospitalities. The rest of the day, a guy got up in front of them and drilled on what the pastor said to memorize. Everybody memorized it. And then the next six to eight weeks, that same guy would get up and say the same thing every week, memorizing what the pastor said.

Our minds don't work that way. We figure, well, I've got it on a recording and on a handout and that's cool, right? I'll put it in a binder and I can look it up if I need to. But their way of thinking about it is, of course I'm going to memorize it. And so the chiasm was a perfect memorization tool. I'm going to go into the lesson like this and go right back out the same way.

All right, here's the book of Jude, the entire book, a chiasm. We mentioned Galatians. Philemon is also a chiasm, the whole book. And so some of the values, aside from the fact that it's easier to memorize, the fact that we can see what's emphasized by it's either repeated or it's the middle, the middle point. Some of the other things about chiasm have to do with if someone says that a book, oh, somebody just hacked it together from different parts, if it has a demonstrated chiasm, the hacking together from different parts theory doesn't work so good. And I've seen that used to defend the unity, the one authorship of the Book of Daniel, which is also a chiasm. Yeah, you start raising your hand back here. Here, yeah. One of the lines that's still bothering me is on page 21. Yes. the second sentence, the B versus B prime. Yes.

They seem to be direct contradictions as opposed to mirror images. Well, and that's why I say sometimes what it will be is a contrast, just like death and birth. OK, well, but this is saying the very same person is too old to conceive and then the very same person did conceive. That's right. And so that's seen as a contrast somehow. Yes, because it seems like a direct contradiction. Yeah, we'd have to go into it, but yeah, what you will find is the chiasms are oftentimes the opposite or the reverse.

Something else, do we have various places in scripture, especially the Old Testament, where someone is unable or too old to conceive and does anyway? Yeah, so I think that's another part of it. It shows the Lord's working, you know, when it seems impossible. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And you find out, this is with Sarah, it would be an example. Sarah, Hannah, it's another one, you know, I can't, I can't, can't, all of a sudden here's, you know, here's one that was born. So, that would be an example. So what do we see here?

We can find numerous chiasms in scripture, one verse long to whole books. Why are there so many chiasms? How can they help us study God's Word? Emphasized by repetition and being the center or the pivot line. They're made as a memory tool and it's also one more thing, a cross-check for copying. The people who copied would use the chiasm to cross-check their copy. Where's my middle? Is what I've copied in the beginning of this chiasm match up with what I've copied at the end? Have I missed anything?

So they could go through and cross-check their copying with it. Made for orderly presentation. You've got something that's not just a random set of thoughts. This has a particular order to it, and the order reflects that mirror image. And it helps check our understanding. Is there either a rhyming or a contrast in the way something has been written. If we recognize the chiasm, then it may at places help us interpret because we understand what's being said. The first part of Galatians focuses on Paul. The last part of Galatians focuses on the Galatians. First part of Galatians centers on Abraham. Second part, Sarah and Hagar. So those kinds of comparisons, patterns you can see. Now, you've got this last page here. It's called Appendix Item 3. Here's another kind of structure that you might run into.

Portions of Isaiah 28 were written as if for kids. And what they do, some chapters in the Bible are written with Hebrew letters as a long acrostic. An acrostic with the Hebrew letters going through like we would go A-B-C. And then have things that come off of that first letter.

Here is an example. We list here Psalm 111, 112, and 119, and Lamentations 1 are all written as Hebrew acrostics. And here's a, for instance, here's an acrostic psalm. This is a really long one. This is like, I think, Psalm 119. Two verses for each of the 22 Hebrew consonants. Then the other pattern that we'll see, and this starts getting more into what kind of writing is it.

But Isaiah 28, 9 through 13 is a prophecy in ancient Jewish nursery rhymes. And it's funny, they've even named ministries after this passage, not recognizing that it's nursery rhyme material. One of the translations, instead of order on order, has precept upon precept. You know, precepts, ministries, you know. But really, this is nursery rhyme talk. You know, little by little, line upon line. It starts off, to whom would he teach knowledge? To whom would he interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just taken from the breast? So, questions, right?

For he says, order on order, order on order, line on line, line on line, a little here, a little there. Nursery rhyme repetition. And that's repeated in verse 12. Order on order, line on line, a little here, a little there. Just like nursery rhymes frequently are. Because kids love repetition, right? In the middle of that, in verse 11, is one that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 14. He will speak to his people through stammering lips and a foreign tongue. Or he makes reference to it.

Now the last line, that they may go and stumble backward and be broken, snared and taken captive, sounds a little bit harsh for a nursery rhyme, doesn't it? But let me ask you this, have we got nursery rhymes that are a bit harsh? Jack and Jill? What's that? Humpty Dumpty. Yeah, here's Humpty Dumpty. So we have nursery rhymes in our culture that are a little rough and ragged when you start thinking about them.

Anyway, that's the idea is just to kind of get some concept of there are other structures you're going to run across and these are some of them. Look for them because they can help us understand why did they write that way and what are they trying to say. You notice the repetition in that Isaiah 28 passage, the repetition, especially when it's real simple repetition of the same thing, that's for kids. That's for kids. That's why it's recognized as nursery rhymes. Okay, we've gone through three parts of looking at language, right?

Next couple of weeks we're going to be looking at History. Going through the history of the Bible. And matter of fact, we're going to go through all Old Testament history a thousand years in about 45 minutes. And then, the next Sunday, we're going to go all through the history of the New Testament in about 45 minutes. Okay.

Questions so far? Thoughts? Bafflements? Yes. I was trying to find it and I can't. I believe it was in one of your sermons a few weeks ago. You referred to grace to grace as part of one of the passages. Grace upon grace is I think what you're thinking of. Grace upon grace. The meaning of it was increasing grace. Well except that it gets inserted sometimes in fairly complex sentences and so it would be more of a figure of speech rather than a repeated simple thing like this. Like you see in Isaiah 28.

But let's take it for instance, his question has to do with, sometimes find, especially in Paul's writings, 2 Corinthians 3.18 would be one of them.

Glory to glory. What does glory to glory mean? That sounds like you're starting and ending at the same place, right? But it's a Hebrew manner of expression that talks about growing. There's a growth. From glory to glory doesn't mean you start with glory and end with glory and you haven't gotten anywhere. It means growing from glory to glory, one level to the next. So that's the Hebrew figure of speech, I suppose you could call it, that is referring to growing.

2 Corinthians 3.18 is glory to glory. Tom?

Just because it's for kids or a nursery rhyme, it's still part of the Bible, and it's still truth. So the truth is the truth. It doesn't matter if it's for kids or for... That's right. It's really complex and hard to understand. And you're correct. But the question is, when we're reading things out of the Bible, who was it written to? What is it saying? And so, that's really the question. It is inspired. It is true. It is exactly what God wanted us to read. So, your point is well taken.

It's only a question of how do we understand it. Oh, no. This is no discounting at all. It's a question of, in part, you look at it, if he's speaking to them in nursery rhymes, A part of it is saying, hey, you guys need to get it. This is basic stuff. Do you understand? Yeah. And it may well have been something that every child in Israel learned this. And so when he goes and writes it, it's just like, hey, man, he's talking to us like we're kids. Well, yeah.

Another one is life to life, death to death. That's another way and he also speaks that to the Corinthians. Yeah, when you look at it, especially if the meaning seems puzzling, taken directly, a good way of resolving that puzzle is to understand it as the Hebrew figure of speech. It's not ending up at the same place. It's growing in that glory to glory, life to life, death to death. And so, for example, it even says life to life, death to death. What does that mean? Death to death means increasing. Death. Life to life, increasing life. Growing in it.

It's going to be one way or the other. Either a person is going to respond to the Gospel and to the life of Christ coming in as an aroma positively, they're going to be attracted to it increasingly, or they're going to back away from it more and more.

Hebrew manner of speaking. Paul uses it in his letters. Yes. He's using it because... It's a Hebrew manner of speaking. But Paul, real interesting, that one in Ephesians where we noted in Ephesians 2, the last couple of verses, 21 and 22, where it repeats.

In that one, it's real interesting because he talks about building up a building and a temple. That was written during a time when the temple was nearing completion, but still under construction. So here's the Jews. They can relate to this temple under construction, right? And they can relate to the Hebrew manner of rhyming.

But notice who it was written to. If you start from verse 11 down to the end of the chapter, it was directed mostly at the Gentiles. So here he is talking to the Gentiles, telling them they're one with the Jews, saying it in a manner that the Jews would understand and relate to. Isn't that interesting? Message to the Gentiles in a way the Jews would understand and accept. Very interesting pattern. Paul was brilliant in the way that he wrote because he reached to both people. You Jews, you'll understand what I'm saying. But I'm talking to you Gentiles. You're one. Okay? Okay. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank You for the depth that You have written into Your Word, and for the precious truths from verse 1 to verse last, beginning to end. We just thank You for that. And thank You, Lord, that it is infinitely deep. We can study for a few months here how to study Your Word, but we will in fact never be finished studying Your Word because it is infinitely deep. because you have inspired it. We thank you for that. In Jesus' name, Amen.