Jon Nielson writes about the benefits of what he calls the “construction tool,” or finding the structure of a biblical passage.
Finding the structure helps you to avoid a misplaced emphasis, wandering thoughts, and literary abuse. Discerning the structure helps you to find the author’s outline and emphasis, and to discover the right application.
Far too often, as we read and study the Bible, we place a lot of emphasis on things that just happen to jump out at us as we read. Perhaps a certain word strikes us from a passage; all of a sudden, we become very focused on that word and begin to think about it as the most important part of the passage. That can often be very dangerous. It is the structure of a passage that actually shows us what the author is emphasizing—not just what happens to jump out at us as we read. Careful work with the construction tool to discover the structure of a passage is key to seeing what the author is building toward—the key point that he wants us, the readers, to focus on.
Nielson’s advice is quite helpful, which is why we’ve written much about structure on this blog.
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