You sit down with your Bible, and you’re ready to study it. You pray and open the page to the right spot. Then…what? You see lots of ink and paper. You’ve heard these verses before.
You’d like to go deeper, and you don’t want to let familiarity get in the way. But what exactly can you do? What should you begin to observe?
Derek Bridges (2006), Creative Commons
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- WORDS: Pay attention to the words. Count up how many times different words are repeated. Notice how different things are described or labeled.
- GRAMMAR: Identify the subject, verb, and object of a sentence. What are the main verbs? Who is doing what, and where and how are they doing it?
- STRUCTURE: How does the passage fit together? Break it into paragraphs. Pay attention to transitions.
- GENRE: Is this poetry or prose? A letter or a narrative? Who is the author? Who is the original audience?
- MOOD: What tone of “voice” is the author writing with? Does the passage inspire action, invoke emotion, or challenge assumptions?
Here’s an exercise for you to consider. Let’s just take one verse: John 3:16.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (ESV).
Use the five categories above to help you get started, and try to write 50 observations on that one verse.
Mention one of your observations in the comments below, and let’s see how many we can come up with!
Here are several!
– God is the active party here (as opposed to the world)
– God gave His ONLY Son. Jesus was truly precious.
– God gave His only Son for a selfless purpose. The "[so] that" clause benefits us entirely – not God Himself.
– The mood seems to be passionate, like one pleading. John could have written simply that whoever believes in Jesus would have eternal life, but he chooses to include "should not perish." That's compelling!
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (ESV).
WORDS: The phrase ONLY Son stands out to myself. He gave his most prized thing He has. His only Son. To die for us. Amazing.
GRAMMAR: God is doing the work. He is loving and giving! Man just responds.
STRUCTURE: Causation. God loves and gives. So that people may respond.
GENRE: Narrative (personal)
MOOD: Generally hopeful and optimistic.
Thanks for the lesson in Bible study Peter!
1. For: this word is connecting this sentence to the previous passage.
2. All the world is destined to perish, despite God’s love for it
3. although the world is condemned, God sent a Savior
4. this savior was his only son,
5. Whoever: no one who truly believes will be denied salvation from the coming condemnation, which as we see later, is already upon those who do not believe
6. loved and gave are past tense verbs. this was decided before these words were spoken by jesus to nicodemus.
7. The World: if God so loves the world, why is it that the people within it, are in danger of perishing? (discussion question)
Eternal life is given to whoever believes, there is no restriction.
Here’s my take on John 3:16…
WORD –
loved, gave, believes, not perish, have these verbs are striking to me.
GRAMNAR & STRUCTURE –
past action to present tense
God & Jesus – subject
world (people) – object
GENRE –
narrative, written by John as testimony.
Audience – people who would believe in Jesus.
MOOD – conditional.