How to Interpret Difficult Bible Verses
There’s nothing like grabbing a cup of coffee, sitting down to read your Bible, only to be confronted with a verse like Judges 21:20, 21:
Then they commanded the Benjamites: Go and hide in the vineyards. Watch, and when you
see the young women of Shiloh come out to perform the dances, each of you leave the
vineyard and catch a wife for yourself from the young women of Shiloh, and go to the land of
Benjamin.
Excuse me. What? In the Bible, men were told to catch wives for themselves?
Understanding verses like this can be confusing, especially when skeptics cherry pick them to accuse God of misogyny or other moral evils. Here are 5 things to consider when trying to wade through the murky waters of difficult passages of Scripture. I’ll apply each point with the verse written above.
1. Pray.Before I read my Bible, I pray and ask God to help me. It may sound simple, but having the humility to acknowledge God and ask for His help before, during, and after reading the Bible will help enlighten our understanding of His Word.
Application to Judges 21:20, 21:
“God, this verse doesn’t make sense to me. Please open my eyes and help me to understand what it means and how it applies to my life.”
2. Consider the genre. The Bible is not a book. It’s a collection of books, by 40 different authors, written over a period of about 1,500 years. Just like the different types of books we read today, the different books of the Bible have different genres. Some books are poetry, and some are historical narrative. Other biblical genres are wisdom literature, biography, and prophecy, to name a few. In order to understand what the passage is saying, we must understand its genre.
Application to Judges 21:20, 21:
The genre of the book of Judges is history, part of a larger work called Deuteronomistic History, which includes Deuteronomy, Joshua, Samuel, and Kings. Not everything recorded in history is something God approves of. Some passages of Scripture are prescriptive, in that they prescribe or advocate a certain behavior, and others are descriptive, in that they simply describe what happened. This passage from Judges is describing an event, not necessarily prescribing behavior.
3. Compare Scripture with Scripture.One of the best pieces of advice I ever received about interpreting Scripture was that if one verse is unclear about a particular issue, interpret it in light of the clear verses. Also, examine the difficult verse in light of the general teaching of all of Scripture, and what has been revealed about the nature and character of God. In other words, it’s important that we read Scripture through God’s eyes, not through the lens of our own contemporary culture.
Application to Judges 21:20, 21:
We know from Genesis 2:22-24 that marriage was originally given by God to be a uniting of man and woman into “one flesh.” In Ephesians 5:25, husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loves the church. In Deuteronomy 24:5, the woman’s happiness in marriage was valued. Exodus 21:16 forbids kidnapping, and many times in Scripture, our relationship with Christ is compared to a marital relationship. The general testimony of Scripture is that marriage was created as a loyal, intimate and sacred partnership. In the light of the whole of Scripture, it’s fair to conclude that there may be more to Judges 21 than initially meets the eye.
4. Consider the Context.
Never read just one verse of the Bible. Always
consider the overarching view of where the particular passage fits into the book’s structure and the historical context within which the particular passage is written. Also, consider the surrounding context,
which is what comes before and after whichever passage you are struggling with. Sometimes this means reading the whole chapter before and after, to get a firm grasp of what the verse is actually communicating.
Application to Judges 21:20, 21:
Overarching view: This passage is found in the very last chapter of the book of Judges, in a cluster of chapters that are considered to be the most lawless and dark periods of Israel’s history. This was an age of anarchy, and these chapters illustrate Israel’s failure to live in covenant relationship with God.
Surrounding context: In the beginning of the chapter, the men of Israel swore an oath to not give their daughters to the Benjamites in marriage. Why? It turns out that this whole conflict began somewhere around Judges 19, where a man’s wife was abused, raped and killed, starting a war between Benjamin and Israel. Multiple thousands of people were killed on both sides of this brutal and bloody battle. There weren’t many Benjamite men left when it was over, and there were no women left for them to marry. Even though they were bitter rivals in this war, Israel and Benjamin were both from the twelve tribes of Israel, and Israel didn’t want to lose the Benjamite bloodline. They took matters into their own hands and suggested the Benjamites “catch wives” for themselves from the young women of Shiloh, so they wouldn’t technically break their vow by actually “giving” them wives.
Knowing who is giving the instruction in this verse is key to understanding how to interpret it. In this case, neither God nor one of His prophets is giving the command.
The puzzle of this passage is solved by recognizing what is explained at the end of the chapter in verse 25: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever he wanted.” In other words, God did not tell them to “catch wives” for themselves. They did that on their own, and there is no indication that God approved of it.
5. Don’t skip the hard stuff. When confronted with a difficult verse, it can be tempting to just set it aside and ignore it. This can lead to a misunderstanding of what is being communicated and can feed unnecessary doubts. If you don’t understand the passage even after considering the suggestions above, submit it to God, and apply what you do understand. 1 John 1:7 tells us to “walk in the light.” In his Basic Theology, Charles Ryrie communicates that as believers respond to the light God gives us, He will give us more. So respond to the light you have been given, and trust God with what you don’t yet understand.
Application to Judges 21:20, 21:
“God, I understand that many things in this historical story and the events that led up to verse 21 happened because your people weren’t obedient to You and Your ways. Please help me to always submit my will to Yours, and to know that Your ways are better than mine, even if the situation seems hopeless.”
Is there a difficult verse you have been struggling with? Some things in Scripture are challenging to comprehend, but they are worth the time and energy it takes to dig deep. I pray these 5 tips will help you grow in your knowledge and understanding of God’s Word!
barry
4/24/2017 03:32:26 pm
How do your interpretation tools help you explain the God of Deuteronomy 28, who not only causes rape (v. 30) and parental cannibalism (v. 53), but “delights” to cause these atrocities to disobedient people no less than he “delights” to prosper those who obey him?
When you pray to God and ask him how he can “delight” to cause women to be raped, what is God’s answer to you?
I can buy that God disciplines his people when they disobey, maybe even to the point of killing them.
What I cannot buy is that there is any purpose to ascribing “goodness” to a God who gets a thrill or joy out of causing women be raped. The need to maintain biblical inerrancy at all costs is the only motive I can see for insisting that God is good no matter what, yet biblical inerrancy, being denied by most Christian scholars, is not worthy of such a high price.
Alisa Childers
4/25/2017 01:00:38 pm
Hi Barry, I can certainly relate to what you’re saying. The passage you’ve brought up is very difficult and isn’t something that can be thoroughly answered with a pithy blog comment—this is something Christians have to wrestle with for sure. It’s important to bear in mind that Deuteronomy 28 is a list of warnings (not actual events) that describe what ultimately happens when humans turn their backs on God—it is the naturally outworking of their fallen character. Some Christians believe that there is some hyperbolic language being used here. Of course some of this did come true—the cannibalism predicted in vs. 53 happened in 2 Kings 6:25-29, and was portrayed for the horror it was.
Regarding rape, when comparing Scripture with Scripture, rape is condemned at every turn. According to Jewish law, it would have violated their sexual morality laws, so it is not condoned.
God’s “delight” in this sense is a delight in justice because He is perfectly just. It’s not a capricious enjoyment of the misery of humans—otherwise He wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to warn them and highlight the many blessings of obeying Him.
I’m curious— when you use the word “good,” what standard of morality are you appealing to in order to use that word?
barry
4/25/2017 05:54:26 pm
“Some Christians believe that there is some hyperbolic language being used here.”
———-Barry: But they only do so by adopting a theory of biblical inspiration that conflicts with 2nd Peter 1:21. It does not make sense to say God cannot lie, but that he “moved” biblical authors to make use of hyperbole. Copan and Flannagan adopt Wolterstorff’s theory of inspiration, but I have good reasons for saying that theory is in conflict with the biblical model.
“Of course some of this did come true—the cannibalism predicted in vs. 53 happened in 2 Kings 6:25-29, and was portrayed for the horror it was.”
——-Barry: And an infinite god surely could have achieved whatever holy purpose he wanted with those people, without having to cause or allow famine, especially with his ability and willingness to use force to make people do what he wants (Ezekiel 38:4, metaphor of hook in jaws totally inconsistent with the modern Christian view that God always respects human freewill).
“Regarding rape, when comparing Scripture with Scripture,”
——–Barry: I deny that biblical inerrancy is a proper hemeneutic; it has nowhere near the universal acclaim that other interpretation-tools have, such as “grammar” and “context”, and even most Christian scholars deny the reality of biblical inerrancy. Therefore, I am not unreasonable in dismissing the criticism “your interpretation makes the bible contradict itself!” as insufficient to justify looking for another interpretation. It may very well be that the interpretation that creates the contradiction, is the right one.
Would you like to discuss the evidence for and against the reasonableness of viewing bible inerrancy as a tool of Interpretation?
” rape is condemned at every turn.”
———Barry: but because it is caused by God in Deut. 28:30, 63, and said to be an act that God in that context will “delight” to cause, there is a biblical basis for saying those rapes were good and holy even if others weren’t. Otherwise, you’d have a god delighting in sin, and of course, that’s not biblically permissible.
“God’s “delight” in this sense is a delight in justice because He is perfectly just. It’s not a capricious enjoyment of the misery of humans—otherwise He wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to warn them and highlight the many blessings of obeying Him.”
——Barry: But other depictions of God in the bible open the door to the possibility that God is not quite as omnimax or perfect as your classical theist model would say. God is sorry in Genesis 6:6-7 over his prior choice to create man (and the anthropomorphic interpretation has no basis in the immediate context there, nor a basis in the allegedly historically literal genre of Genesis). “Anthropomorphism” is set forth by apologists for no other reason than their concern to uphold the dubious doctrine of inerrancy at all costs.
In Exodus 32:9-14, God tells Moses to get out of the way so He can go down to the people and kill them for sin, but after Moses talks some sense into the divine head, God changes his mind. Again, the context of Exodus 32 would be characterized by most fundamentalist scholars as historical narrative and prose. Again, there is no motive to interpet this story as an anthropomorphism, except one’s prior commitment to biblical inerrancy. That’s just as invalid as interpreting a bible verse to have an error in it, for no other reason than one’s commitment to skepticism.
So I have a biblical basis to say your confident trust in God’s good purposes is not quite as securely founded in the scripture as you would wish.
You should email Frank Turek. Ask him whether rape is absolutely immoral…but don’t tell him about Deut. 28. My guess is he will say that rape is absolutely immoral. When you point out Deut., 28:30, 63 to him, he will probably change his story and say that whether rape is evil depends on who caused it and why (!?).
Or he will make the same mistake Copan and Flannagan did, and suddenly discover that not all descriptions of God in the OT are theologically true, but some are hyperbole, in which case he will be contradicting the sense of scriptural inspiration taught in 2nd Peter 1:21, and only doing so out of motive to continue trying to convince modern audiences that the biblical god is more politically correct than the surface reading of certain biblical texts would imply.
“I’m curious— when you use the word “good,” what standard of morality are you appealing to in order to use that word?”
————Barry: the standard of good that Frank Turek holds to (i.e., that rape is absolutely immoral). That’s a standard that myself and most people agree to. WHY we think rape is absolutely immoral is quite beside the point, however. If rape really is absolutely immoral, then no exceptions can be allowed for it, in which case the only way to maintain confidence in your god’s goodness is to ascribe error/hyperbole to Deut. 28, which I say cannot be done consistent with
Alisa Childers
4/25/2017 08:11:46 pm
The standard of good that Frank Turek holds to is the nature of God—God as lawgiver, which is independent of human opinion. The *why* is the whole point, otherwise it’s just your opinion vs. someone else’s (who might not think rape is wrong.)
Joseph
7/30/2020 12:43:57 am
The Bible is not written to us but for us.
The books in the Bible were written in various literary styles to the various specific audiences with various specific intends within various historical and cultural settings at the time of writing.
To understand the Bible better we need to consider all these factors
The issue is not about the inspiration of the Bible but it is about the interpretation of the messages in the Bible.
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