One of my favorite things to do when studying the Bible is word studies. I may be partial to them because I like words and word etymologies. I do, however, find them to be really helpful in broadening my understanding of many passages. Here are a couple of examples. In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” In doing a word study I saw that the word “deny” could also be translated “disown”. I really like using “disown”. God created us for a purpose. It is reasonable to assume that there will be things he calls us to do that we will enjoy; that we will experience as fulfilling. Disowning my life means that I give God the choice of what I do with my life, but it doesn’t necessarily imply that I will dislike his choice. Denying myself, on the other hand, to me does imply that if I follow Jesus I will have to do what I don’t want to do or not do what I want to do. Sometimes God’s call on my life is hard, but sometimes he asks me to do something he has already given me a desire to do. To follow Jesus, I no longer choose the path; he does—and it can be to some places I really like. The second example is from 1 Peter 5:7, where we are told to cast our concerns on God because he cares for us. That word “for” is the Greek word “peri”. While “for” is a perfectly acceptable translation of the word, a key way it gets used is to mean “around”. I find that it gives me a greater sense of God’s personal care for me to know everything around me is something he takes an interest in.
Sometimes when I want to study a topic, I read through the Bible to find everything I can on that subject. It makes for a long project! But when I want to do something that is quicker, a concordance or searching a digital Bible is very helpful. It is easy to search for a word using these kinds of tools, although to do a thorough search, it’s good to keep synonyms in mind. A topical Bible can help if it covers the specific topic one is interested in. That’s because it will not be tied to a specific word, like a word search is. For example, I am currently doing a topical study on joy. I chose to do it by reading through the Bible, but if I were to do it as a word search, I would also want to look up words like joyful, rejoice, glad, or delight. The more synonyms looked up, the more thorough the search is.
For both word studies and searching digital Bibles my favorite resource is called e-Sword. Advantages:
- It’s a free download—available even if I don’t have internet access
- it has many translations to choose from
- it helps with word studies by showing numbers linked to definitions of original language words (shown as tooltips and clickable for other uses)
- it has a search button
- it has its own note-taking feature.
Disadvantages:
- some translations have to be purchased (due to publisher requirements)
- the word studies are only available in a King James version, which uses a different Greek text than most modern versions.
I also have a New Testament study Bible (called The Complete Word study New Testament—also a King James version) that shows the parts of speech for all the Greek words. My favorite way of using it is to find out if a verb form designates a one time action or if it is a continuous or a repetitive action. I am fine with being told that we are to keep asking, seeking, and knocking in Matthew 7:7-8, but very grateful that when it says in James 4:9, “Be wretched, and mourn, and weep,” it’s not meant to be ongoing!
I’ve never done a Bible study that only uses the things talked about in this post. While these are helpful tools, they do not replace paying attention to context, comparisons, contrasts, or other relationships. The concepts I wrote about in studying the Bible with only the Bible as a resource are, to me, the backbone of Bible study. These tools help flesh out that study.
Cross-references, commentaries, Bible encyclopedias and dictionaries, and books about particular scriptures can all add to our understanding of the Bible. My personal preference is to study a passage for myself before looking at outside resources. I value the pleasure of gaining insight directly from God’s word over reading about someone else’s discovery from God’s word.
I am asking my husband do a guest post on reference material, while my next post will be about what I do after I’ve studied a Bible text.