Some people wonder why I am so strongly encourage people to read God’s Word in an essentially literal translation and think about what they read. The answer is really quite simple. Since God is perfect, His Words, like all His works, are perfect. There is no higher authority for the Christian believer. Yet so many treat the Bible as optional and relative rather than essential and absolute.
“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Psalm 19:7 ESV). “This God–his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true” (Psalm 18:30). “Every word of God is pure” (Proverbs 30:5 KJV). “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:21).
“We shall not be surprised therefore to find literary perfection as well as spiritual perfection” (E.W. Bullinger). God has to be the ultimate grammarian and linguist. Since we believe what the Bible itself declares, that it is “God-breathed” (II Timothy 3:16 AMP), then the order and structure will reflect this within the limits of the language to whom it was given and the limits of our own language.
Again we get back to how the original manuscripts looked: just large paragraphs in Hebrew and in the Greek a string of characters with no spaces between words, and no numbered lists or bulleted lists or indents or any type of punctuation. So the structure has to be evident by the choice of words used and the order in which they were used. For example, Isaiah 55:6 shows a correspondence,
“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
Call upon him while he is near“;
the same thought but given in different terms. Proverbs 27:6 shows a contrast,
“Faithful are the wounds of a friend,
But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy“ (NASB).
When you see these, mark them in your Bible. There are only two ways in which a subject is repeated: by alternation or introversion, to use the technical terms. Another way of showing it is A, B, A, B for alternation and A, B, B, A for introversion. An example of introversion is Isaiah 6:10,
“Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
A repetition of a word is another good indication of structure. We covered this earlier in this series on enjoying your Bible. “… that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe…” (Ephesians 1:18-19). If you underline each “what” you will always see the structure of a list.
So structure helps us to discover what a passage is about, its scope or subject, and the key to its meaning. “The works of the Lord are great, Studied by all who have pleasure in them” (Psalm 111:2 NKJV). “God’s works are so great, worth a lifetime of study–endless enjoyment!” (MSG). You, too, can enjoy your Bible!
Brother Peter:
Sure like what you wrote that has perfect LIFE and PEACE in it and BLESSINGS your way and keep speaking the TRUTH!!
Great article, Peter! Exploring God’s word is such a pleasure, and with some insight like this it adds to the great emphasis that the Author intended.