Why Interpret the Bible?

🎯 Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• explain why every reader of the Bible interprets it, even without realizing it;
• distinguish the two steps of interpretation: what the text meant and what it means;
• recognize in the believers of Berea the model of reading we will follow throughout the course.

📖 Receive

Read these two passages slowly, aloud if possible:

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” — Acts 17:11 (KJV)

“And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” — Luke 24:27 (KJV)

Then read the story of Philip and the Ethiopian official in Acts 8:26-40. Pause on Philip’s question and the man’s answer: it is the question this course starts from.

🔍 Examine

A question we have all asked

The Ethiopian official was an educated man. He held the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and was reading it carefully. Yet when Philip asks him whether he understands what he is reading, he answers honestly that he cannot understand it unless someone guides him (Acts 8:30-31).

Perhaps you have felt the same way. You read a chapter of Leviticus, a vision of Daniel or a parable of Jesus, and you notice that the words are clear but the meaning escapes you. That is not a sign of weak faith. It is a sign that you are doing the right thing: you are taking the text seriously.

Written for us, but not to us

The Bible is God’s Word for every generation, and therefore for you too. But its books were written first of all for other readers: Israelites in the desert, exiles in Babylon, believers in Corinth or Rome. We can put it this way: the Bible was written for us, but not to us.

Between us and its first readers there are at least four distances:

• language: the Old Testament is written in Hebrew (with some parts in Aramaic), the New in Greek. Every translation is already a first interpretation;
• culture: customs, expressions, family and social relationships very different from ours;
• history: empires, wars, feasts and places that the first readers knew well and we do not;
• literary genre: a psalm is not read like a letter, and a prophecy is not read like a narrative.

Let’s take an example. Paul asks the believers in Rome to greet one another with a holy kiss (Romans 16:16). Should we introduce a kiss at the entrance of every church service? Or is Paul teaching us something deeper: sincere, holy brotherly affection, expressed in the form a culture recognizes? To answer, reading is not enough: we have to interpret.

We all interpret

Sometimes people say: “I don’t interpret the Bible, I just read it.” In reality that is impossible. As soon as you read, your mind gives meaning to the words, links the sentences and applies them to your life. We do this constantly in everyday life too: with a message, a glance, a piece of news.

So the real question is not whether we interpret, but whether we interpret well. Reading without a method does not make us more faithful. It only makes us more likely to see in the text what we want to see.

What hermeneutics is

The word we will use for this work is hermeneutics. It comes from the Greek hermēneia, which means the act of explaining, translating, making a message understandable. In the New Testament a term from the same family appears precisely in Luke 24:27, where Jesus explains the Scriptures to the disciples.

Applied to the Bible, hermeneutics involves two steps:

📌 The two steps of interpretation

1. Exegesis (from the Greek “to lead out”): discovering what the text meant to the author and to its first readers. There and then.
2. Application: understanding what that meaning means for us today. Here and now.

The order matters: first we listen to what God said, then we ask what he is saying to us.

The diagram shows the whole path: we start from the text, discover what it meant then, and only afterwards arrive at life today.

flowchart LR
  T["📖 The text"] --> E["🔍 Exegesis: there and then"]
  E --> P["💡 God's message"]
  P --> A["🙏 Application: here and now"]
  T -. "shortcut to avoid" .-> A

The dotted arrow is the most common temptation: jumping from the verse to our situation without passing through its original meaning.

Skipping the first step is the most common way to go wrong. If we apply a verse without having understood it in its context, we risk making it say what it never said.

Think of Philippians 4:13, where Paul says he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him. It is often quoted before a race or an exam, as a promise of success. But if you read the previous verses, you discover that Paul is talking about how he has learned to be content both in plenty and in poverty. His message is even stronger: in Christ we can face any situation, including the one in which we do not win.

More than a technique: an attitude

Rules and tools are important, and we will learn them. But interpreting the Bible is not just applying a formula. Above all it is a way of standing before the text:

• listening before speaking: James invites us to be swift to hear and slow to speak (James 1:19);
• letting ourselves be questioned: before we examine the text, the text examines us;
• putting ourselves in the shoes of the first readers, with respect and empathy;
• being patient: understanding grows over time, like the light of dawn that shines brighter until the full day (Proverbs 4:18);
• staying humble: Scripture is without error, our interpretation is not.

The Berean model

This is where the believers of Berea come in. When Paul and Silas arrive in their city, they listen to them eagerly: they are neither skeptical nor suspicious. But they don’t stop there. Every day they open the Scriptures to check whether what they have heard is true. And Luke, guided by the Spirit, praises them for it.

From them we take the three steps of the BereaWay Method, which we will develop in the second module:

1. Receive: welcome the Word with an open heart and place it in its world.
2. Examine: study carefully what the text says and how it says it.
3. Connect: read each part in the light of the whole of Scripture, which bears witness to Christ, and bring it into your life.

🔗 Connect

Interpretation is not a modern invention: it runs through the whole Bible.

• Nehemiah 8:8: after the return from exile, the Levites read the Law to the people, explained its meaning and helped everyone understand what was being read.
• Luke 24:27: Jesus himself explains the Scriptures, from Moses to the prophets, and shows that they speak of him.
• Acts 8:30-35: Philip starts from the passage of Isaiah the official is reading and proclaims Jesus to him.
• 2 Timothy 2:15: Paul asks Timothy to be a workman who need not be ashamed, because he handles the word of truth accurately.
• 2 Peter 3:16: Peter admits that Paul’s letters contain things hard to understand, which some people twist.

The common thread is clear: God chose to speak through a text, and he called his people to read it, understand it and explain it faithfully. At the center of this journey is Christ, the Word made flesh.

🙏 Apply

Take a few minutes, on your own or with your study group:

1. Think back to a verse that seemed difficult to you or that you have heard explained in different ways. Which of the four distances (language, culture, history, genre) might explain the difficulty?
2. When you read the Bible, do you tend to jump straight to application (“what does it say to me?”)? What would change if you first asked “what did it say to them?”
3. Which attitude of the Bereans feels furthest from you: eagerness in receiving or perseverance in examining?
4. Ask the Lord, in your own words, for a heart ready to listen to his Word and humble enough to be corrected.

📚 Go Deeper

• Read all of Acts 17:1-15 and compare how the Gospel was received in Thessalonica and in Berea.
• Read Nehemiah 8:1-12 and notice what understanding the Word produces in the people.
• For those who want further reading: Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Zondervan), an accessible classic on interpreting the biblical genres.

In the next lesson we will face a decisive question: who holds the key to meaning? The author, the text or the reader?