How To Study Your Bible: 5 Tips

When reading the narrative sections, the sections with stories, they can seem boring to us because they seem so different than the detailed language of modern storytellers. The stories of the bible are terse. There’s not much detail on the surface.

However, when we jump into their world and understand how they tell their stories, we’ll begin to pick up on details we’ve missed.

These features of the narrative are called poetics. Poetics are as Adele Berlin says, "Poetics is to literature as linguistics is to language". They are the basic elements of literature, the building blocks. Most of this will be found in the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament. I’m getting these from Bruce Waltke’s book, An Old Testament Theology.

Here are 5 poetics to look for when reading biblical literature.
Motif

A motif repeating pattern in music and literature.

These don’t mean much on their own, but as you reading the story, they help shape the story.

Some examples in Joseph story are the repeated use of dreams, pits, prison, and silver.

Joseph has a two dream when he’s a young boy, he interprets two dreams when he ’s in prison, and he interprets the dreams of the Pharaoh.

Joseph is sold for 20 pieces of silver by his brothers. Joseph as the governor of Egypt gives his brothers their silver back when they return the first time. And Joseph puts his silver cup in Benjamin's grain sack when they leave the second time.

Water is also a motif in the life of Moses.

There’s a lot of these. We can find these when we’re constantly reading the bible, and when we’re reading we look closely at what’s happening.

They can even go beyond just a book. Egypt is a motif through the Old Testament in particular. Abraham goes down to Egypt during a famine. Joseph’s brothers go down during a famine. Joseph goes down to Egypt to become a slave. The people of Israel go down to Egypt to become slaves. Lots of stuff happening with Egypt.

Leitwort
A keyword, or “lead word” is repeated in a story that gives the story a deeper meaning. One of my favorites “game” and “delicious food” in the story of Isaac giving the blessing to Jacob. Isaac’s love of game becomes his downfall.

Leitwort is different than a motif because a motif is an object of the story and a leftward is an object of telling the story.

Finding these requires an attention to detail, as well as some understanding the biblical languages, but I don’t think this is required.

Foreshadow/Preparation
This literary device sets up future events.

Gen 25:28 Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

The author is telling us something that will happen in a future event

Like in,

Gen 22:1 After these things God tested Abraham

Foreshadows help set up future events of what’s to come. A special type of foreshadowing is a typology, which I’ll take a whole video to explain.

Foreshadows go beyond the poetics of a book. I think when Joseph’s brothers come out of Egypt with their silver still could be seen as a foreshadow of the Israelites of a future generation plundering the Egyptians when they leave their bondage.

Mount Moriah is where Isaac was almost sacrificed. Mount Moriah is where the Angel of God stopped where destroying the people because of David’s census of the people. Mount Moriah becomes the place of the temple. And into the New Testament, Jesus was offered up like Isaac, outside the gates, but near Mount Moriah.

I’ll go into more detail with this idea in a future video.

Generalization
Number 4, generalization. This is when an author overviews before getting into the specifics. The beginning of the book of Judges starts this way. Judges 2 tells us the process of the downward spiral of the people.

Proverbs 1:10 tells us sin is seductive, 11-14 shows us the seduction, and 15-18 shows the dangers of this seduction.

This helps to get the whole of what’s going on the text by telling us what the author is about to tell us in detail.

Refrain
Last one, Number 5, refrain. This is a repeated phrase that breaks up a narrative as well as helps us understand how to look at the text.

At the end of Judges, there’s a series of terrible events. Before some and after the others, there’s a refrain of “In those days, there was no king in Israel.” This refrain makes the same point but emphasizes the moral bankruptcy of Israel in the different stories told.

This is the author showing us the point of what’s written by going over the point over and over.

Closing
Well, that’s it for poetics today, these have helped me not only read better but gets me exciting about reading the bible.

When we read the bible, even in the narrative sections, we’re in the hands of master storytellers. Writers who weren’t just writing history, but they were writing it in a way for us to learn from what was written.

That’s beautiful storytelling.

Видео How To Study Your Bible: 5 Tips канала Bible Culture - with Abe