Grammar | Knowable Word

Paying Attention to the Bible’s Y’all

June 3, 2024 By Ryan Higginbottom

When we observe the text of Scripture, we must take notice of the grammar. Grammar is not popular, nor is it something we think about often. But it is important, as the different grammatical number (singular vs plural) of pronouns and verbs can make a big difference in our interpretation of a passage.

A Brief Grammar Lesson

In many languages, the difference between singular and plural pronouns and verb agreement is obvious. And in English, this is clear almost everywhere. We can easily recognize the difference between the first person singular (“I”) and plural (“we”) and between the third person singular (“he/she”) and plural (“they”). However, since “you” is used for both the second person singular and plural, we usually need more context to make the same distinction.

This wasn’t an issue when the 1611 King James version of the Bible was published. In the second person, “thou”/”thee”/”thy” was used for the singular and “ye”/”you”/”your” was used for the plural. Easy enough.

As English has changed over time, however, we have run into the you/you problem described above. This is compounded in our individualistic modern Western cultures, where we tend to think everything applies to me (singular) instead of to us (plural). So, even when the Scriptural context makes a plural “you” clear, we are biased toward reading in a singular fashion.

Why This Matters

Imagine a father eating breakfast with his four children. His oldest son asks if there will be time for baseball today, and the father responds, “Remember, you need to wash all the windows first.”

If all of the children are gathered at the table and engaged in the conversation, this statement is ambiguous. Is it up to just the oldest son to wash all the windows? Or, are all the children on the hook for a day of window-washing? The father might indicate this through his facial expressions or gestures, but if we only have the words, we cannot be sure.

To bring this to the Bible, consider the following two examples.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1 Cor 3:16)

…since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16)

Whether Paul and Peter have individual Christians or groups of Christians in mind for these statements really matters!

How to Make These Observations

Most of us are not readers of the original Biblical languages, so we need some help to make these observations. Fortunately, there are many places on the internet to which we can turn!

Here is a list of resources for the New Testament Greek. There are options here for those who know Greek well and for those who don’t know it at all. Here is an interlinear Bible for both the Old and New Testaments. It takes a little bit of figuring out, but when you hover over the correct symbols, the site will parse the word in question.

The most amusing resource I can suggest is the Y’ALL version of the Bible. This is a site in English with plural pronouns replaced with—you guessed it—”y’all” (and the appropriate variants). I encourage interested readers to visit the site’s About page for more information.

Is this Really Necessary?

I’m not suggesting that every student of the Bible needs to consult an interlinear Hebrew or Greek resource every time they sit down with the Scriptures. My point is this: most of the Bible was written to groups of believers and not individuals, and that should affect the way we interpret and apply the text.

Of course, commands to or statements about groups of Christians always have implications for individuals. (The oldest son in my earlier example is going to be washing windows even if his father’s use of “you” was directed toward all the children.) However, understanding when the collective/group is in view provides valuable context, and when we neglect this context we might be straying from faithfulness to God’s word.

Consider the example from 1 Peter 1:16 cited above. The “you” in this verse is plural, as Peter is quoting Leviticus 11:44. In addition to paying attention to the context in 1 Peter 1, we need to know that Peter is commanding the group of Christians to be holy as God is holy. That certainly should influence what individuals are to believe, think, say, do, and love, but because the command is collective it goes beyond that. It is not enough for each individual to seek individual holiness; the community must also reflect God’s design as a group.

Sometimes the structure of a book of the Bible makes the audience clear. Most New Testament epistles are addressed to churches or groups, while 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are addressed to individuals. So reaching for an extra resource is not always necessary.

However, for most of us the singular/plural distinction is not on our radar screens. But if we would seek to honor the Lord in the way we read the Scriptures, we should pay attention to this subtle piece of grammar.

Grammar Crash Course: Clauses

December 2, 2022 By Peter Krol

What makes this paragraph so strange?

Unsteadily wobbling toward me, when my son’s arms stretch out. In my heart of hearts like a flame. Speaking my name—”Papa”—for the first time, but sounding like too many margaritas: “Baba.” Joy to explode in here. Happiness over there. Resounding exultation on all sides. Not a toddler but a teenager-in-training. Flos floridus.

If I treated it like a poem and gave each unit of thought a separate line, there would be no big deal. You could probably follow along.

But as a standard prose paragraph, it doesn’t quite work. Despite hints of comprehensibility, there remains something sorely lacking. The paragraph’s citizens include not a single independent clause.

Distinguishing Dependency

In English, there are two main types of clause: independent and dependent.

Independent clauses contain a complete thought that could function as a complete sentence.
Dependent clauses don’t contain a complete thought and can’t function as a complete sentence.

In the paragraph above, “unsteadily wobbling toward me” is not a complete thought because it has no subject, and -ing verbs cannot stand on their own as main verbs. To make the clause independent, I could add to it (He is unsteadily wobbling toward me) or revise it (He unsteadily wobbles toward me).

The grammatical rules and explanation of dependency can get far more complex than this, but the most important thing to know is this idea of a “complete” thought. Take any phrase or clause and say it out loud. Ask yourself: Could this stand by itself in a conversation? If so, it’s probably an independent clause. If not, it’s probably a dependent clause.

“When my son’s arms stretch out.” That could not stand alone; it must be dependent. “My sons arms stretch out”—that minor omission transforms the dependent clause into an independent one.

Why It Matters

Distinguishing dependent clauses from independent clauses may seem like an obscure and academic thing to do. Not the most thrilling way to occupy one’s morning. But this is perhaps the most important grammatical skill to master for your Bible study to go anywhere. Especially when you study epistles.

One of the greatest challenges of studying an epistle is that the sentences are often so loooooooong. We must have a way to identify which part of the sentence carries the most weight. Or how the parts relate to one another. Without that skill, all we’ve got is gut instinct. So we just camp out on a single word or phrase that strikes our fancy, and we reflect ponderously on the deep things of the universe contained in that word or phrase. And the apostles’ harps pop a string every time someone on earth reads their magnificent works of literature in such a demeaning manner.

When facing those long sentences, the best thing you can do is label the clauses as either independent or dependent. Then, set aside all the dependent clauses for a time to focus your attention on the independent clauses. The dependent clauses are dependent because they are depending on something. That something is going to be the more important part of the sentence. In other words, the independent clauses in a sentence contain the main idea(s) of the sentence. The dependent clauses are either window dressing or evidence for those main ideas. So to grasp the main ideas we must recognize the independent clauses.

If you fail to recognize independent clauses, you will fail to grasp the main point of a sentence. If you fail to grasp the main point of a sentence, you’ll fail to grasp the main point of the paragraph. Fail to do that, and… Well, let’s just say you might as well be looking at the Greek original (or if know Greek, let’s say you might as well be looking at an Urdu translation) for all the good it will do you.

Examples

In the ESV, Ephesians 1:3-4 is one long sentence. “Who has blessed us in Christ” and “even as he chose us in him” and “that we should be holy and blameless” are all dependent clauses. None of them carries the sentence’s main idea. “Blessed be the God and Father”—now we’re talking! That’s independent, containing a complete thought. So the main idea of the sentence is that God is blessed. The rest of the sentence expands on that idea and gives it more detail. But let’s make sure not to focus on the hows and whys of what God did to the point of forgetting Paul’s emphasis on who this God is. How blessed he is.

Or take Philippians 4:8. Every clause that starts with “whatever is” is dependent. The independent clause is “brothers…think about these things.” Now it is crucial to understand the nature of those things we ought to think about (true, honorable, etc.). But a word study on “true,” another on “honorable,” and another on “just” will prevent you from interpreting the sentence. Paul’s point is not to define a whole set of virtues. His purpose is to command his people to think about the right set of virtues.

Though it’s not from an epistle, John 3:16 gives another great case study. “That he gave his only Son” and “that whoever believes in him should not perish” are both dependent. The main, independent clause is “God so loved the world.” The dependent clauses explain how God loved the world (he gave his Son) and why God loved the world (so people could not perish but have life). But those ideas support the main idea that God loved the world. If we shift the emphasis from that main clause, we will struggle to make sense of what else Jesus says to Nicodemus in this passage.

Grammar Crash Course: Inflection and Tense

November 25, 2022 By Peter Krol

When we observe the Bible, one fundamental thing to take notice of is the grammar. Grammar always matters, as language cannot function without it. But in instructional literature such as epistles, grammar’s importance is elevated to the point where grammar always wins.

But what is it, precisely, students of the Bible ought to know about grammar? I’ve already written about the parts of speech. This post will now explain the concepts of inflection and tense, which function like personality traits for words.

Definitions

Inflection refers to the minor changes in words to signal their functions or attributes. For example, the word “run” can change to runs, ran, or running to signal how the word functions in a sentence. Those differences are called the inflection.Words can change inflection based on many factors, including:

Number. Singular or plural.
Gender. Masculine, feminine, or neuter. In English, it is typically only pronouns that have gender built into them (he, she, it).
Person. First person (talking about oneself: I, me, we, us), second person (talking to someone: you), or third person (talking about someone: he, she, it, they).
Case. Subject (I, we, he, she, they), or object (me, us, him, her, them).

Tense refers to different verb forms and functions. In English tense almost always has to do with time (past, present, or future), though the original languages of the Bible use tenses in ways other than with respect to time.

Past tense refers something that completely in the past. I ran. He swam. They believed.
Present tenses refers, believe it or not, to something taking place in the present. I run. He swims. They believe.
Future tense refers to actions completely in the future. I will run. He will swim. They will believe.

Some tenses add more nuance to this simple sense of time:

Present perfect tense refers to something that happened the past that has ongoing ramifications in the present. I have run. He has swum. They have believed.
Past perfect tense refers to something that happened in the distant past that had ongoing ramifications until the near past. I had run. He had swum. They had believed.
Past progressive tense refers to something in the past that was continuing for a time or was incomplete. I was running. He was swimming. They were believing.

English has 6 more tenses that are much less common, especially when it comes to Bible study. So I will spare you further detail.

Why It Matters

Inflection and tense are some things we ought to observe of the words in a passage to help us follow an author’s train of thought. For example, notice how Paul shifts between second person (“you”) and first person (“we”) in Ephesians 2:1-10. Many people read right through the paragraph without noticing the shifts, but some have suggested that the shifts carry interpretive weight. Could it be that “we” refers to Jewish believers and “you” refers to Gentile believers among Paul’s audience? Eph 2:11, 14 suggests that there may be something to this. But we must observe closely in order to be able to evaluate the argument being made.

The verb tenses in a passage such as 1 Peter 5:1-5 highlight the passage’s argument. The brackets of what happened in the past (1 Pet 5:1) and what will happen in the future (1 Pet 5:1b, 4) ought to motivate a certain set of behaviors in the present (1 Pet 5:2-3). Paul uses a similar past-present-future approach to craft his argument in 2 Timothy 1:8-18. Know how the grammar works, and you’ll be better equipped to come along for the ride.

Grammar Crash Course: Parts of Speech

November 11, 2022 By Peter Krol

But what is it, precisely, students of the Bible ought to know about grammar? The first thing to learn is the parts of speech, which function in a sentence like tiles in a mosaic.

Definitions

A noun is a person, place, or thing. Examples: God, Jesus, disciple, house, Israel, field, covenant, bread, water, faith.

A pronoun replaces a noun so the writer doesn’t have to keep repeating the noun. Examples: I, me, you, he, him, she, her, it, we, they, them, yourself, myself, themselves. Pronouns can also be possessive: my, your, his, her, their, our. An antecedent is the noun that came earlier, which the pronoun now replaces. For example, in the sentence “Peter wrote his blog post,” the pronoun “his” refers to the antecedent “Peter.”

A verb shows what something is or does. Examples of being verbs: am, is, was, were, are, be, being, been, become. Examples of action verbs: sit, eat, run, said, believe, fight, went, worshiped.

An adjective modifies (describes) a noun in some way. Examples: green, beautiful, holy, wise, tall, foolish, slow, high, great, all.

An adverb modifies something other than a noun (usually a verb or adjective) in some way. Examples: very, nearly, slowly, inside, soon, completely, never.

A conjunction connects words, phrases, or clauses in some way. Examples: and, but, or, therefore, because, since, when, if, however.

A preposition describes the location of something in time or space. Examples: to, in, with, behind, before, around, under, above, by, near, after, along.

Some words can occur as more than one part of speech. The context and syntax must determine the word’s use in the sentence. For example, consider the word “for.” In Eph 1:20 it serves as both a conjunction (“For by grace”) and a preposition (“for good works”).

Why it Matters

Why should students of the Bible be able to observe and recognize the parts of speech? Because these parts of speech are the building blocks of communication. If the goal of interpretation is to determine the author’s main point in a passage, we need to have some objective way for figuring that out. The parts of speech are not sufficient in themselves to signal the author’s main point, but it is not possible recognize that main point without first recognizing the functions of the most pertinent parts of speech in the discourse.

For example, in 1 Corinthians 14:4-7, Paul describes love in lavish terms. “Love” is a noun (the thing under scrutiny). He stacks up a pile of adjectives (describing the noun): patient, kind, arrogant, rude, irritable, resentful—describing what love is or is not. He also stacks a pile of verbs, describing what love does or doesn’t do: envy, boast, insist, rejoice, bears, believes, hopes, endures. The idea of this brief paragraph is to paint a word picture of what love is and does.* That is a good start toward following the train of thought in the entire letter, which is all about how the Corinthian church is currently not any of the things that love is, and they need to grow up.

For another example, Ephesians 1:7-10 uses the pronouns he, him, and his many times. In each case, we need to figure out who is the proper antecedent: God the Father, or the Lord Jesus Christ? In Eph 1:7, “in him” and “his blood” certainly refer to Christ. But what about “his grace” in Eph 1:7 or “he lavished” in Eph 1:8? They could still be referring to Christ, but are you sure? And then what about “his will” and “his purpose” in Eph 1:9? Is that still Christ, or is it back to the Father? Because the “he” of “he set forth in Christ” must have the Father as the antecedent. So the details of the parts of speech make a real difference on what exactly you conclude is happening in this extended blessing of the Triune God!

More crash courses in grammar and syntax are on their way.

*With this example, I am helping English-speaking students of the English Bible learn to observe their English grammar. Greek scholars will point out that, in the original text, the words I’ve listed are all verbs; none of them are adjectives. That doesn’t change the point, however, that some of the verbs describe what love is, and other verbs describe what love does.

In Epistles, Grammar Always Wins

October 28, 2022 By Peter Krol

At a recent Simeon Trust preaching workshop, I was reminded by instructor David Helm that “in epistles, grammar always wins.” By this, he meant that, when we’re studying biblical discourse (as opposed to narrative or poetry), the most important interpretive questions and conclusions must rely heavily on the text’s basic grammar.

A Probing Question

That raises a probing question for students of the Bible: Do you know basic grammar?

For example, perhaps you’re fond of turning to Ephesians 1 when arguing for the doctrine of predestination (since God “chose us” and “predestined us for adoption”). But do you know what Paul’s main point was in Eph 1:3-14? That’s not a difficult question—at least, if you can identify the main clause (the subject and main verb) of that one, lengthy sentence. I encourage you to comment below if you can identify that main clause (and bonus points if you can do it in three words!).

Or perhaps you prefer to argue in favor of the doctrine of universal atonement from 1 Timothy 2:4 (since God “desires all people to be saved”). But what is Paul getting at by divulging God’s salvific desire for all people? A grade-schooler could answer this question, since grammatically, there is nothing obscure about either the main clause of that sentence or the antecedent to which the demonstrative pronoun refers. Gold stars will be given to anyone who comments below with that sentence’s main clause and antecedent.

Parts of Speech

Now maybe my use of technical grammar language (clause? antecedent? huh?) is distracting for you. Do you really have to know all that lingo in order to study the Bible?

No, you don’t have to know the lingo. You can study the Bible just fine without being an expert in the terminology. But you must still understand what the concepts mean. At least, if you would like to study an epistle or speech properly.

In particular, any student of the Bible would be greatly helped by grasping the parts of speech and knowing how they function in sentences. Can you define the following?

noun
pronoun
verb
adjective
adverb
preposition
conjunction

That list doesn’t contain all parts of speech, but they are the ones you frequently bump into. In fact, the previous sentence contains every part of speech on the list; can you find each one?

Syntax

Syntax is the label for how the words in the sentence fit together. And the most important aspects of syntax to master for Bible study are:

Subject and main verb (predicate) = main clause
Distinction between independent clauses and dependent clauses.

Finding and labeling such clauses for what they are, you will grow to interpret the epistles clearly and accurately. In the previous sentence, “finding and labeling such clauses” is dependent; that’s not the sentence’s main idea. The main idea is found in the main (independent) clause: “you will grow.” That’s what I’m after in not only this paragraph but this post!

Where Can I Get Help?

I hope to post a few crash courses in grammar and syntax in future weeks, but I can go only so far. Yet you are not on your own to figure this out. Many resources are available to help English speakers learn basic grammar.

Here is a free, brief online course for those learning English as a second language. Native speakers know these grammar rules intuitively but will profit immensely from learning why the language works the way it does.

The classic Schoolhouse Rock has a series of entertaining shorts, with fantastic music, about grammar and syntax. “The Tale of Mr. Morton”—teaching subjects and predicates—is my family’s favorite.

As for books, here is a list of the best English grammar books on the market. I typically recommend The Elements of Style (#16 on the list), as I’ve read and benefitted from it myself. But #17 (English Grammar to Ace New Testament Greek) also looks promising, even for those who don’t plan to learn Greek. I’m sure anything on the list would be useful, so find whatever looks appealing and give it a try.

In epistles, grammar always wins. So when you study epistles, you won’t want to be on the losing side.

Amazon links are affiliate links. Clicking (verb) them (pronoun, antecedent = “links”) [SUBJECT] will support (verb) [PREDICATE] this (demonstrative pronoun) blog (noun) at (preposition) no (adverb) extra (adjective) cost (noun) to (preposition) yourself (pronoun).

The Glories of Grammar

April 22, 2022 By Peter Krol

Eight years ago, I attended the Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference for the first time. Afterward, I shared my reflections on the best and worst parts of it, which mostly had to do with how imitable the various speakers were in their presentations. This past week, I attended the final T4G and wanted to share with you my favorite moment of the event.

This pastor’s conference has had many highlights over the years of its existence. One of the most talked-about benefits of attending is all the free books attendees receive (this year I got more than 20). But free books are not enough to justify the cost of traveling to Louisville, Kentucky, renting a hotel room, and being apart from family for a few days. No, the primary draw for me, as for many others, is the extravagant time spent in God’s Word under the the instruction of world-class teachers and preachers.

And my favorite moment of the event came during John Piper’s talk on the connection between Christ’s grace to forgive our sin and Christ’s grace to help us kill our sin. Piper’s talk was masterful, and I commend to you the entire thing. He set out to explain why it is a failure to understand and preach grace if we understand or preach only the forgiveness of sins and not also the holiness that results in the Christian’s life. This is like reminding people constantly of what they have been saved from without giving them something else to live for. It neglects the fact that Christ’s precious blood paid not only for our sins but also for our holiness. Piper demonstrates the idea from the text of 1 Peter 1 and 2.

At the end of the talk, Piper gave five reasons why preachers often fail to preach this message today. Why so many tend to stop at the grace of forgiveness without the accompanying grace of transformation. And his first reason is simply that we might not even be aware of the connection between these two aspects of grace. We may have failed to see it in the scripture because we haven’t yet paid close enough attention to it.

Then my favorite line comes around 38:30 in the video: “Nobody ever showed you how to read the Bible by looking for in-order-thats and becauses and therefores and participles, and you missed GLORIES because you missed grammar!”

And Piper is spot on. There is unbelievable glory here, if we would only have someone to teach us how to look for it.

I am deeply grateful to Dr. Piper for helping me to see this particular point, which was my highlight of the conference. May it encourage you to continue seeking Christ’s glory through observing even the fundamentals of grammar.

Grammar and the Good Samaritan

October 1, 2018 By Ryan Higginbottom

Joshua Hanks (2018), public domain

What shall I do to inherit eternal life?

There’s hardly a more important question. However, as we find this question addressed to Jesus by a lawyer in Luke 10:25, it wasn’t an honest question. It was a test.

After Jesus turned the question around and the lawyer gave the textbook answer, Jesus affirmed the lawyer: “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live” (Luke 10:27–28).

But the lawyer couldn’t stop there. He wanted to justify himself, so he followed up with this: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

The Basics of the Parable

In response, Jesus told the now-famous parable of the Good Samaritan.

You’ve probably heard the basics. A man is robbed, beaten, and left half dead on the side of the road. Both a priest and a Levite, two representatives of the devoted members of the Jewish religion, avoid the man by passing on the opposite side of the road. A Samaritan approaches, has compassion on the man, and cares for him at great cost to himself. Those are the basics.

As students of the Bible, we must read the Scriptures carefully. We observe the text before we move on to interpret and apply it. Given this commitment, we need to consider an important question: Did Jesus answer the man’s question?

Jesus Flips the Question

The lawyer wanted a neighbor list. Who’s in, and who’s out? If Jesus engaged the lawyer on the lawyer’s terms, he might tell a story with several characters, some of whom would qualify as neighbors.

But Jesus turns this question around. His story has a single person in need, one person who needs the neighbor-love God’s law commands.

When we study the Bible, our observations must include the grammar of the passage. We should notice the subjects, verbs, objects, and so on. And in this passage, Jesus is not concerned with the word “neighbor” as a noun, but as a verb.

Okay, I know—the word “neighbor” isn’t a verb. But at the end of the parable, Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36) Instead of telling the lawyer who his neighbors are, Jesus wants the lawyer to understand how to be a neighbor.

Pay Attention to Jesus’s Words

There are important ethnic, religious, and cultural aspects to the Good Samaritan story that are beyond the scope of this post. But we only get to those larger issues through careful observation of the passage.

The lawyer was concerned about himself—his eternal life, his neighbors. But Jesus had much more in mind. The command to love one’s neighbor is not about checking a box to get closer to heaven. We are called to love our neighbors by seeing and meeting their needs. In obedience to our heavenly Father, we can love others because we have known abundant love ourselves.

Jesus often asks and answers questions in surprising ways. If we don’t observe the grammar of the text carefully, we might miss what he’s really up to.

Blessed be God – In Praise of Grammar Awareness

July 3, 2015 By Peter Krol

The Apostle Paul sometimes gets a bad rap for his grammar skillz, especially when he gets excited about something. Ephesians 1 happens to be one of those places.

Many remark on the fact that Ephesians 1:3-14 is a single run-on sentence in the original Greek. And the finest English translations do little to make the passage any easier for us. Paul piles on clause after clause after clause, traipsing his way through a maze of ideas, tying history and eternity up in knots, modifying, subordinating, and prepositioning his way to glory. “My high school English teacher would never let me get away with a sentence like that,” says one preacher. And eyewitnesses of Paul’s rhetoric have long been known to suggest that his letters have “some things in them that are hard to understand” (2 Pet 3:16).

Molly Steenson (2008), Creative Commons

But please let’s be fair. Sure, Paul is excited. Of course he goes too long between one inhale and the next. But he couldn’t have been any more clear about his sentence’s main idea.

Blessed be (the) God.

If we take a deep breath and condense the run-on sentence down to its essential components—subject and verb—we’ll have no trouble seeing what we should get out of it. Blessed be God.

The main verb of the entire sentence is the verb “be.” The subject of the verb is “God.” And since “be” is a verb of being (not a verb of action), it functions like an equals sign. It does no good without the other side of the equation. God = blessed. God is blessed. Or with more artistry, “Blessed be God.”

Paul’s main idea here is not what God does but who God is. God is a blessed God. Not like Artemis of the Ephesians, whose “greatness” drove her fan boys to bellow insanely for hours on end (Acts 19:34). The truly blessed God is not just any god; he is “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:3). Blessed be this God.

Of course, this God is blessed because of what he does. The loping clauses that follow unravel the deep mysteries of this blessed God who lavishly blesses. Blessed be the God who has blessed us in Christ.

But please don’t lose focus. Paul’s main idea is not how blessed we are for knowing God. His driving point is not that we are so well off (though, of course, we are—if we believe). Paul’s main idea is that this God who blesses is himself blessed. He is worth knowing. He is worthy of adoration. He deserves to be spoken of highly. Blessed be God.

Paul’s syntax may be more convoluted than that found in a Supreme Court ruling, but the Apostle keeps our focus on his main idea with periodic reminders: “to the praise of his glorious grace…to the praise of his glory…to the praise of his glory.” Blessed be God.

If your Bible study starts sinking in a swamp of words, grab this rope and don’t let go: Observe the grammar. Blessed be God.

What to Observe: Grammar

September 5, 2012 By Peter Krol

The philosopher Wittgenstein wrote, “Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.” My high school English teacher would say he was on to something.

Without grammar, it would be difficult to communicate. For example, we wouldn’t have verbs. Just subjects. All the time. No action. Maybe objects. Short sentences, though. Loads of confusion. Mass hysteria. Need for clarity. Little talking. Aw, shoot; I couldn’t do it.

So once you’ve observed the words of a Bible text, you can move on to observing how the author put those words together into sentences. This means observing the grammar.

“Grammar” can be a scary word, invoking memories of pimples, bullies, and parental pressure as we look back (sometimes unfondly) on what used to be known as “The Wonder Years.” I’m here to tell you, however, that grammar can be fun. Grammar can be exciting. Grammar can, in fact, be the gateway into fruitful observation of the Bible.

Let’s take Luke 2:1-21, NET as our text again. Let’s observe just the subject and main verb of each sentence (in other words, let’s do some simple grammar). Look at what you get:

A decree went out
This was the first
Everyone went
Joseph also went
He went
The time came
She gave birth…and wrapped…and laid
There were shepherds
An angel appeared…and the glory shone…and they were
The angel said
- Don’t be afraid
- Listen
- Your Savior is born
- He is Christ
- This will be a sign: you will find
An army appeared
The shepherds said
- Let us go and see
They hurried off and located…and found
They related
All were astonished
Mary treasured up
The shepherds returned
Everything was just
He was named

What is the point of this exercise? Simply that, by stripping away the detail and observing the basic sentence structure (subject and verb), we end up with a pretty good outline of the story in Luke 2. Before we can move to interpretation (figuring out what the text means), we must observe what it says. One way to identify what the author says is to observe the grammar. This skill is important as we learn how to study the Bible.

Observing the grammar isn’t just for narrative, like that in Luke. It helps in other genres as well.

For example, look at Philippians 2:5-11. Boiling it down to the basic grammar gives us:

You should have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had
- Who did not regard equality with God as somethingto be grasped
  - but emptied himself…
  - [and] humbled himself…
- As a result, God exalted him

What does Paul want us to do here? Be like Jesus. When we give up what we deserve (empty ourselves) and take on what we don’t deserve (humble ourselves), there’s no telling what God might do in our community.

Five Things to Observe

August 31, 2012 By Peter Krol

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?