12 Principles of Bible Interpretation

Based on the course: History and Authenticity of the Bible (Lessons 20, 21, 22) by David Hocking.

Hermeneutics means interpretation or in bible study, the critical interpretation of the Bible. The bible has been interpreted in multiple ways by multiple people. But there’s really only one interpretation of the Bible – the one the Lord intended for it; the one the Holy Spirit wanted people to understand when it was written.

Let’s look at 12 principles that we can adopt to help us in bible interpretation.

#1: Faith – Dependency & Prayer

Any interpretation of the bible must be dependent upon the Lord. When you’re preparing something from the Word, start by getting down on your knees in prayer. Open your heart to God and ask for His help and guidance as you study His Word. Psalm 119 is a great psalm about the God’s Word.

Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law (18)

The Hebrew word for wondrous is incomprehensible (too difficult to understand). There are many things in the Bible that are difficult to understand; the secret is to go to the Lord and depend upon Him and not your own understanding.

I have declared my ways, and You answered me; Teach me Your statutes. Make me understand the way of Your precepts; So shall I meditate on Your wonderful works (26-27)

Have you ever asked God to “teach me Your statutes?” Do you asked Him to “make me understand?” To say, “make me understand” suggests that there’s a natural tendency on our part not to ask for understanding and God, somehow, needs to give us these gentle nudging and prodding.

Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, And I shall keep it to the end. Give me under-standing, and I shall keep Your law; Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart (33-34)

Sometimes you will find that the Bible contradicts what you previously thought. You’re then faced with the issue of whether or not you bow yourself to the Word or keep doing/thinking what you thought. At other times the Bible will clearly show you something you should do, but it’s contrary to what you do so your mind begins to ponder about whether there’s another interpretation for this passage.

You are good and do good; Teach me Your statutes (68)

Why do we want to learn the Word? Because God is good and He do good. All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). God is good. His goodness leads to repentance (2:4). We want to learn and know that behind everything we see, smell, feel, taste and touch is the goodness of God and God alone.

Your hands have made me and fashioned me; Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments. (78)

You can learn something by memorizing it; you might even be able to reduplicate something on a test. But has it become part of your life? We want the Word to be second nature to us.

Let my cry come before You, O Lord; Give me understanding according to Your word. (169)

All the way through this, there’s a hunger and thirst for God’s Word. There’s a cry from His servant, “Lord, I want to know Your word more than anything else.”

You cannot interpret the Word without prayer. It is a school; it is hard work; it is discipline.

What are you like when you are all alone with the Lord? Do you truly desire Him to show you His Word or do you simply just want Him to bless what you’ve have already decided? Do you have a heart of humility and brokenness before Him?

Another thing you can add to prayer is worship; in other words, how to pray. Focus more on praise and blessing and exalting and magnifying the Lord. If you need direction, pray with the Psalms in front of you – 

“I will praise You, Lord, with my whole heart. My heart sings to You, Lord. My heart speaks of Your wondrous works. Lord, you are so full of compassion and kindness and You’re so gracious.” “Righteous art Thou, O Lord; Upright in all Thy judgments”

This puts a new little boost and life into your prayers so it doesn’t become routine.

Without faith we cannot please God (Heb. 11:6). If we’re going to see God answer, He will answer if we diligently seek Him (Jer. 29:13) In prayers, our focus must be on the Lord. Relate to Him as your heavenly Father and tell Him all that He means to you. Speak of how He’s such a blessing to you and how much you love Him. When diligently seeking Him, He has promised to reward us. 

#2: Holiness

God reveals more to those who walk with Him than those who don’t. Proverbs 28:9 says that “One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, Even his prayer is an abomination.” 

If you’re not walking according to God’s Word, your prayers are an abomination before God; your prayers are as good as that of the hypocrites (Matt. 6:5).

He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy (13).

If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear (Ps. 66:18).

If I’m entertaining sin in my heart, if I’m coveting, if there’s a sin I’m hiding the Bible says the Lord will not hear me. My desire to know God’s word and to interpret it correctly is affected by the way I’m walking with the Lord.

Here's another powerful verse from Heb. 12:14, “…without holiness no man will see the Lord.”

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9).

This says that if you’re not walking with the Lord, you will not have the ability to understand the Word. You may think you do, but it could be that you won’t see God wants you to see. Relating to the entire Bible itself, this tells us that by human comprehension, it’s impossible to understand the things of God and what He has prepared. 

#3: Obedience

Obedience is very closely related to holiness. Continuing with 1 Cor. 2, we see in v10 that

God has revealed [the Word, the things of God] to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

We also see in v14 that
the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Who is this “natural man”? Continue to 1 Cor. 3:1-3. 
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?

Remember that there were no chapters and verses in the original autographs so if we’re reading 3:1 in continuation from 2, then Paul is talking to the church. This implies that the natural man are not unbelievers but are carnal believers (carnal means of the flesh; human nature) — the opposite of being spiritual and understanding all things.

Like the believer, the unbeliever also has a soul, but his spirit is dead. When you come to Christ your spirit is active but you can also quench and resist the Holy Spirit and, as it were, have water thrown on Him by our sins. We grieve the Spirit of God and our spirits is deadened and hard and we can’t discern and understand the things of God.

The unbeliever will not understand the Word; but there are many believers who don’t understand either and they have never been confronted that the problem is carnality. You can have all the education in the world, but if you’re not walking in obedience with God, you are not going to understand the Word.

Jesus says in John 7:17 that
if anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. 
Doing what God wants you to do is the key to understanding what Jesus is teaching you. 

#4: The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit not only is the One who inspired the word, but He’s the One who illuminates our minds. Jesus himself said in John 16:13 that He will guide us into all the truth.

All the truth is in the Word and the Bible tells us that the Spirit guided those who wrote the word, those holy men of God who were separated for this task.
No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21). 

In the interpretation of the Word, the Holy Spirit will give the one interpretation that God intended. He who inspired and moved the original writers to produce an accurate and reliable record is also the One who guides and open our minds to what is the original intent of the Word. 

#5: Jesus Christ

The fifth essential of understanding how to interpret the Bible is Jesus Christ himself. And by this we mean that the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation is about Jesus Christ.

Luke 24 was the night of His resurrection; Jesus is with his disciples and he tells them in v44.
These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.

At that time there was no NT as yet. Jesus was talking about the Tanakh here. The Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) is divided into 3 main parts:

1. The Torah or the Five Books of Moses or the Law of Moses
2. The Prophets consist of 8 books in the following order: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the Twelve (the Minor Prophets).
3. The Writings consist of 11 books that are ordered in this manner: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Daniel, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. The Book of Ruth was originally placed before the Psalms. However, in the Middle Ages it was moved next to the other smaller books, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and Esther.

Read Luke 24:44 again and you can see this 3-fold division. Jesus was saying that all things must be fulfilled which were written in concerning him.
And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures (45).

You won’t really understand the Scriptures until you see the centrality of Jesus Christ; that’s what the Bible is all about, God sending His Son into this world. 

#6: Spiritual Maturity

The Bible reveals that a baby [in the faith] in Jesus Christ do not have a great, in-depth understanding and interpretation of the Bible. In 1 Cor. 3, Paul says,

“I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal.”

Hebrews 5:11ff.
… of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Paul says to the Corinthian church that they are babes in Christ and carnal and he feeds them milk and not solid food. The writer of Hebrews then adds that these babes in Christ are unskilled in the word of righteousness. But the full age are those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

You don’t become a strong Christian by the number of years you have been one but by reason of use, by using the Word of God. You have your senses exercised to discern both good and evil. You don’t need to ask others what is right and wrong; this is what new believers and spiritual toddlers do. Once we are strong in the Word, we know that whatever we need, God has already revealed in His word.

This does not mean that we can’t ask an older, mature Christian for help or advice or to get their viewpoints. But you must understand that a mark of spiritual maturity is that you don’t need to go asking everybody else. Instead, you go, seek, and ask the Lord directly. You must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). 

#7: Diligent Study

If you want to learn about the Word, you ought to master Psalm 119, all 176 verses of it.

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation (99).

This is essentially saying that if you delight in meditating on the Word then you don’t need to be dependent on teachers and others for understanding and interpreting the Word.

The principle is that we all need to learn. You must learn and relearn and constantly renew what you already know. You might already know the truth but when you relearn, something different comes to you in a fresh and powerful way – that’s the wonderful work of the Spirit.

2 things represent diligent study – time and hard work. God’s blessing is on the man who spent his time to read, pray and do his own homework. It takes time to study.

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
2 Tim. 2:15 shows that if you’re going to accurately interpret the word of God, then you must study. As a principle, diligent study is more important to accurate interpretation than your background or knowledge or denomination.

The words present yourself is translated present your body a living sacrifice in Romans 12:1 and yield your body to God in 6:13-19. This literally means to stand yourself alongside of something, in this case, the Word. Stand alongside that Bible and don’t walk away. Spend some time and do a lot of study. God will bless you for it.

The blessing is in the last phrase, “Rightly dividing the word of truth.” To “rightly divide” is a Greek word, meaning “to cut and to cut straight”. It’s usually connected with a person going into a thick forest and making a path for others to walk on. He’s cutting a straight path for others. Similarly if you want to rightly divide the word of truth and show a clear path for, among others, babes in Christ, then diligent study is a key. 

#8: Simplicity

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:3).

If people don’t understand what you’re saying, perhaps it’s not because they are carnal or immature but it could be that you’re a not a good communicator and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

The entrance of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple (Ps. 119:130).

Don’t teach the Bible with the intention of showing your audience how much you know. But rather help them understand what is difficult in the Bible and make it simple so everybody gets it.

Keep it simple. Jesus quoted the Psalms in Matt. 21:16, … Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise. Again He says in Luke 18:17 that …whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.

If the plain sense makes good sense, seek no other sense. But you’ve got to be walking with the Lord in order to say that. 

#9: Context

This is one of the more serious matters of interpreting the Bible. In simple terms context means observing the passages surrounding a given word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, a topic, or a book. All of these are crucial; they’re not there just to fill up the space. You must consider all of these to understand the context of a passage.

Context of a book (i.e., a book of the Bible)

This means how the book is organized. Who’s the author? When did he wrote it? Who’s the audience? How is the book outlined and organized?

Some bibles will have an introduction to each book along with some other useful information. For example, my study bible has a summary of the book; some vital stats like author, date, setting, key people; and the main themes of the book.

You could also determine the outline yourself by reading the book. Take Ephesians for example – the first three chapters are the doctrine of the church; the last three apply it. First doctrine, second principles, then practice. In Proverbs the first 7 verses help to understand how the book is organized.

Topics

Now within each book, there are topics. Sometimes the book itself indicates a multiple group of topics. For example, do you remember the phrase ‘now concerning…’ in 1 Corinthians? How we understand the division of the text to different topics will affect the context of what we’re studying.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are crucial to interpreting the Bible because of the way they’re written. More so in Greek than in Hebrew writings, a paragraph has one central thought, that’s why it’s a paragraph.

Let’s look at Ephesians 1 as an example. This is from the Authorized (King James) Version.

 

The first paragraph is the opening two verses, that’s just a greeting.

It would seem odd that verses 3-14 is one paragraph only. This must be that there’s only one central thought here. The passage talks about multiple things – predestination, election, adoption, grace, redemption, forgiveness, wisdom, His will, dispensations, inheritance, the Holy Spirit’s ministry sealing you – but there’s only 1 central thought.

There’s also only one main verb here and everything else is related to it. The verb is Blessed! It’s not the first one from verse 3 but the next one, “Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings.” This whole paragraph tells us how God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings.

Within a paragraph, often there is symmetry or rhythm or meter – this means that it’s already organized for us so that we don’t have to. So if we’re teaching this one paragraph and the one central thought is how God has blessed us, and if we don’t have any more paragraphs, then that one thought will be the title of the message.

To outline this message, we will find out within the paragraph, the context. How is this organized? Look carefully and you will see:

• To the praise of the glory of His grace (6)
• that we should be to the praise of His glory (12)
• Unto the praise of His glory (14)

We have 3 points of praise of his glory; 3 doxologies and therefore 3 points to your message and each one focusing on the praise of the glory of His grace.

How will we divide this passage into 3 points? v3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father…” It’s the Father who has blessed us, the Father who chose us, who predestinated us, who made us accepted in the “Beloved,” of v6. The first then doxology is to the Father.

v7 “in whom we have redemption through his blood…”. Who’s he talking about here? The beloved from v6 – this is obviously Jesus Christ. The Father made us accepted in Christ and in Him we have redemption. This also ends with the next doxology in v12, that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. This doxology is to the Son.

v13-14, “… ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance”. This third doxology is to the Holy Spirit.

We got this using the basic interpretation of context. How was this paragraph put together? The front of your Bible should tell you how they have marked the paragraph. If they haven’t marked it, perhaps get a Bible that does.

See how this same passage is presented in the New King James Version.

Sentences

Let’s now look at the context of a sentence. This would be the paragraph in which the sentence is found or whatever precedes it or follows it. This can get complicated but let’s try to understand this from the earlier passage of Ephesians.

v5 says, “…predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.”

This is a clause or a phrase, within an overall sentence. In this case a problem can arise because if you look at the Authorized KJV verses 3-14 is one single sentence so you would need to identify clauses and phrases like chosen, predestinated, accepted etc.

Words

Everything the Bible says about a word can have context and it’s also possible that the context of a given word in one passage can be different from another passage in the Bible.

Let’s take an example from Rom. 3:24, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Freely here means without cost.

John 15:25 “But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’
The word without a cause, C-A-U-S-E, is the exact same word in Greek translated freely, in Rom. 3:24.

Now if we go back to Romans and translate as we see in John, the verse reads, “Being justified without a cause by His grace.” This makes sense too; there was no cause in us that caused God to redeem us.

In passages like this example, you have to decide; does it mean COST or CAUSE? If it’s COST then we can emphasize more on redemption – the payment of a price. If it’s CAUSE then emphasis can be on grace because grace gives us what we don’t deserve; there is no cause in us as to why we should be redeemed.

There’s probably no right or wrong answer or you do further study yourself. What we see here though is that there is a context around a given word, not only what is said in the passage, but how it is used in different passages in the Bible. 

#10: Language

The hardest work in interpreting the Bible is language. Let’s try our best at understanding this though.

Finding the root meaning of words

Let’s look at Romans 12:8. There’s a spiritual gift of ruling here but some say this means leadership – leading rather than ruling. In order to understand it ourselves though, let’s look at the root meaning of the word.

Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.

I’m using https://www.blueletterbible.org/ to illustrate this.

We see that the Greek word is proistēmi. From the root word, we see that this is made up of 2 words in Greek. Histēmi is used all the time in Greek today. It means to stand. Pro means “before,” either in terms of time or before a crowd, it means before an event happens or in front of people. So, to stand before in this context means to stand in front of people. So the gift of leadership is a correct one if you mean a person who is motivating people.

Syntax – understanding how the various clauses and phrases are connected together

In syntax, we’re back to conjunctions and adverbs. One of the rules of syntax is that when you have two nouns connected by and, and the definite article the, is in front of the first noun only, this means it connect equals. Titus 2:13, “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God [great is an adjective, God the noun – the great God] and our Saviour Jesus Christ”. It means God and Savior are connected as being equals. In other words, Jesus is called God, the great God. This is the result of syntax; seeing how phrases and words and clauses are connected together and the grammatical laws that affect that.

Finding the grammatical form of words

The first thing to note is what person is it? is it first person or second person or third person? The grammatical form tells you this. You can’t interpret passage properly unless you know that. Second, is it singular or plural? Is he talking to one person or to two or more people? Is it he? Or is it them? Is it thee or ye? Is it I or us?

When the author of Hebrew wrote “It’s impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift and been partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have fallen away to renew them again to repentance” (cf. Heb. 6:4). But then the verse following, verse 9 says, “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, things that accompany salvation.” We see here that the “them” and the “you” are not the same. So the “they” of the warning passage are unbelievers.

Just by seeing the grammatical form of the word, as to whether something is in aorist tense or not, we could avoid long arguments over the interpretation of God’s word.

Aorist: A form of a verb in some languages, such as Classical Greek, that expresses action without indicating its completion or continuation.
Tense means time, class. Was it past, present, or future? 

#11: Culture

When we say culture, we’re talking about the culture at the time around the books of the Bible was written. For instance, having knowledge about the Sumerian culture would give us a better understanding of the book of Genesis. The Sumerian culture is the one out of which Abraham came. And so learning about that gives us a lot of insights into the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Sometimes, people say that the Bible is not culturally relevant today. But then its principles never change – so you’ve got to substitute that which is cultural (i.e., from the historical point in which it was written) from that which is a moral principle that applies to every generation.

What is culture? It’s the ways, methods, the manners, the tools, the literary productions and institutions of any people. Therefore, we can say that there is a Hittite culture, a Philistine culture, Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and most important of all Jewish culture.

Culture is best understood, in terms of accuracy, by archaeology – the study of ancient cultures. It used to be said that the primary language in Jesus’ day was Aramaic. It was argued that Jesus and His disciples spoke Aramaic and that the Hellenists are those who have adapted the Greek culture imposed upon Israel by Rome.

Now however, new archaeological evidence suggest that Hebrew was probably the language of the Jewish people, even though they might have also spoken Greek and had knowledge of Aramaic too. They were also deliberately trying to restore their own culture in the midst of this pressure from Rome to do otherwise. It’s probable then that Jesus and His disciples spoke Hebrew rather than Aramaic.

Here’s an example of what this new understanding of the Jewish culture means to our understanding of the bible. When Jesus said Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani, the people said: “He’s calling for Elijah.” If it was Aramaic, no one would have suspected He was calling for Elijah. But if it was Hebrew, they would suspect that because the Hebrew would be Eli, Eli. Elohim is God—El, the shortened form. The little i on the end is the possessive for my. My God, My God. Eli is also the Jewish abbreviation of Elijah. So if it were said in Hebrew that could explain something in the text that you can’t explain any other way — why they thought He was calling for Elijah.

4 basic factors of cultural understanding

1. Geography – location, elevation, travel, wars, etc.
2. Politics – kings, rulers, governments, taxation, etc.
3. Customs – traditions, foods, clothing, coinage, etc.
4. Religion – Judaism, Christianity, Pantheism, Paganism

Cultural Interpretation

• Don’t treat cultural factors as moral absolutes! They are helpful to our understanding, but it doesn’t mean that they are a moral absolute.
• Don’t allow cultural factors alone to determine the interpretation, because it may or may not be a factor! It may be helpful to your understanding, but it may not be the point of what Jesus was saying.
• Don’t confuse cultural factors with the application of biblical principles! You need to know what the difference is between the symbol / symbolic language and the truth that we are to apply; otherwise, you are applying the wrong thing.
• Don’t ignore cultural factors in your understanding!

#12: Symbolic Language

This means making a literal fact or truth more graphic or visual. Before we go into the types, a little background first.

In Jewish homes, they like to illustrate what they say to give you the chance to think about it and come to your own conclusion rather than plainly saying it. Telling a story and using symbolic language to get a point across is very Jewish. Can you now see why Jesus use a lot of parables when He teaches?

Symbolic language is found throughout the Bible. If you’re not paying attention you might draw a wrong conclusion. For example, in the book of Revelation when John says something like “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire” or “… And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea…” he did not meant them literally, it’s all symbolic.

There are 8 major examples of symbolic language. There are more but these are the main ones.

Simile – a comparison using like or as

A simile is a very brief sentence that compares two unlike things, always with a connecting word. The key here is such as, like, or as. It always has a connecting word. A parable is simply an extended simile.

There are many similes in Revelation alone. “He had eyes as a flame of fire.” It’s like a flame of fire, it’s not real fire. You then have to understand and study why the comparison is made to fire. Maybe the penetrating; the burning up the dross of your life; seeing straight through you. We might not know exactly what John is saying so we have to study. “His feet are like brass burned in a furnace” (cf. Revelation 1:15). Does that mean He has solid brass feet? No. It’s like brass and we must study to understand why John is making this comparison.

For most of us, we like to compare two similar things so we understand that this is like this. Jewish people do the opposite and they compare by contrast; the two things they are comparing are talking about something exactly the opposite. But there’s also something about both that’s the same.

Similes are throughout Scripture and sometimes it can be a struggle to identify and interpret them accurately. Before you start to figure out the interpretation, back up a little bit, take a look at symbolic language and ask, “What is the point of symbolic language here?” “Is this a simile? What is being compared?”

Parable – extended simile that reveals truth

The word parable comes from two Greek words. The word ballo means to cast or to throw down and the word para means alongside of. So a parable is to cast something alongside of it or to throw it down alongside of it. What is being cast alongside of is a story, usually an earthly one; one that is very common to human experience. And it’s cast alongside of the spiritual truth to make the spiritual truth clearer.

When the Lord wanted you to know how valuable you are, He cast alongside of that truth that you are very valuable to God, a story of a merchant man who would give up all to just find what He was searching for. He was willing to give up everything just for that one little deal.

Metaphor – comparison without connecting words

A metaphor is a comparison without making any connection between the two. If the connecting word is left out and the two things compared are unlike each other and don’t make sense then this is a metaphor. “Ye are the salt of the earth”. “Ye are the light of the world.” “You are a city set on a hill.”

If a parable is an extended simile, then an allegory is an extended metaphor. There aren’t many of them but there is one in Gal. 4.

Personification – animation of inanimate things

Personification is one that causes liberal critics of the Bible to laugh. It makes an inanimate object animated. Personification can have a tree talking. There’s a great amount of this in the Bible, where an inanimate object takes on personal characteristics. This is simply meant to get the point across… like ‘the pages just leaped out at me’.

Hyperbole – exaggeration used for effect

Hyperbole is actually a word in the original languages of the bible. Again, ballo means to cast and huper is over or above. In this sense it’s like a parable – a parable you cast down to an earthly illustration. But a hyperbole you cast up, in other words, you exaggerate it for effect. It’s not lying; it’s exaggerating to make a point.

“Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

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.

Paradox and Riddles

A paradox is a truth that seems absurd at first glance. A riddle is like a paradox. But there’s a difference. In a paradox you’ve got a truth that seems absurd and it’s done that way so you will really learn the truth. But the riddle is actually a statement designed to puzzle or hide the truth.

But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant (Matt. 23:11)

Anthropomorphism

This is taking on the physical characteristics of man and applying it to God. The hand of the Lord, the eyes of God etc.

PRINCIPLES OF EXAMINATION

1. Accept the literal meaning if it makes sense.
2. Always examine the context carefully because what went before or after may help you understand what the meaning is of it.
3. Distinguish carefully between the literal and the figurative.
4. Accurately discern the spiritual truth by inductive study and ask three basic questions – (i) Are there parallel passages to consider? (ii) Does the truth conflict with any details of the passage? (iii) Does it agree with other Scriptures?