Three critical principles are necessary in the interpretation of narrative. The Bible is actually one grand narrative story about God's redemptive plan for humanity comprising hundreds of individual narratives from Genesis to Revelation. The narratives of the Bible are historical, not mythological. More than 40 percent of the Old Testament and almost 60 percent of the New Testament is narrative. The Bible has more in the narrative genre than any other literary type. They generally require more illustrations and examples than other texts. They don't require much exegesis or explanation. There is also the fact that proverbs are so obvious. Thus sermons on them can sound like a motivational talk at a civic club rather than a sermon. Preaching the Proverbs is a challenge, first because many verses don't refer explicitly to the Lord. They should be interpreted in connection with other proverbs and the rest of Scripture. In addition, the abundant use of figurative language indicates that many proverbs express things more suggestively than directly and universally. Proverbs like these are not meant to present an inviolable guarantee, like a law or a promise rather they present a principle for living. The fact that godly parents sometimes have ungodly children doesn't refute the general principle of Proverbs 22:6. Consider, for example, Proverbs 22:6: Train up a child in the way he should go,Īnd when he is old, he will not depart from it. One of the important interpretative principles regarding Proverbs is understanding the difference between a promise and a general principle. Several literary devices are found in Proverbs, including parallelism, alliteration, acrostics, and numeric sequences. Proverbs deliver God-centered principles for successful living in catchy phrases that make the principles memorable. The application of truth to one's life in the light of experience is what Proverbs calls wisdom.
The Book of Proverbs is so named because it contains a collection of pithy, practical, "general rule" wisdom. Others have poetic patterns, such as a-b-b-a.Īnother feature of biblical poetry is the use of metaphorical language and symbolism, like in the verses above where the sky is said to "speak." The contemporary preacher sometimes needs to explain a metaphor unfamiliar to our culture, but we rob a metaphor of power and life when we take it apart rather than using it.Ī common genre error is to press the poetic language of emotion and symbol too far and use them literally as the basis for doctrine, for example asserting from Psalm 19:1 that God, who is spirit, has "hands." The guarding principle is to allow more concrete teachings of Scripture to interpret Scriptural poetry. Hebrew poetry sometimes "rhymes" opposite ideas, or uses a lesser-greater pattern. Sometimes the meanings are identical sometimes there is a nuanced similarity. In synonymous parallelism, the second line does not add significant new meaning to the first. Night after night they display knowledge. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. For example, Psalm 19:1 says: The heavens declare the glory of God One crucial facet of Hebrew poetry is the use of parallelism.
Psalms are almost always directed to God, though other forms of biblical poetry may not be. They speak to the mind and the heart, expressing a broad range of emotions: fear, anger, comfort, encouragement. They are one example of the poetic genre. Psalms are at one and the same time both prayers and hymns. In this article we will look at the guiding principles for interpreting and applying five genres in Scripture-Psalms, Proverbs, Narratives, Parables of Jesus, and Epistles-as well as common errors made with each genre. Each literary category has rules that guide us in its interpretation. God chose to give the Bible to us in a diverse collection of literary forms called genres.
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