Interpreting Scripture

By David Hobbs

I was one of a handful of Spirit-filled students attending a “reformed” (non Spirit-filled) seminary back east. The question arose between one of our group and a young, zealous professor about the right way to interpret Scripture. When you don’t have the Holy Spirit to rely on, what’s your next choice? It turned out to be the wisdom of man. They had all these laws of hermeneutics for the proper interpretation of Scripture: things like studying the passage in the original language, placing it in proper context, the law of first mention, looking at parallel passages, considering the culture of the day and what it would mean to them, analyzing if it was a type of speech like poetry, discursive, hyperbole, etc., and many others.

Well naturally, this professor, so full of all this knowledge and also of himself as the super-learned tend to be (like it says in 1 Cor. 8:1—“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”), this professor despised our way of interpreting Scripture, which was to pray about it and ask God for its meaning. He challenged us: “You Charismaniacs go to one corner of the room and pray all you want over a passage and I’ll go to my corner and apply the laws of hermeneutics, and I’ll beat you every time. Plus I’ll have the right interpretation; who knows what cockamamie stuff you’ll come up with!”

Well we were never able to put him to the test, because in a situation like that, who would be the judge to declare the winner? It was God’s word so only He could be the true judge of what He meant. But how could He communicate that to us except through prayer, which the good professor disdained?

But one thing the professor could never adequately explain is this: if he was right, then how did the writers of the New Testament come up with their interpretations of passages in the Old Testament? Like this passage from Matthew’s Gospel about Jesus’ escape to Egypt (Mt.2:14-15):

So he [Joseph] got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

The Old Testament passage Matthew is referring to is in Hosea 11:1--“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”

The very first law of hermeneutics, considering a passage in its context, disqualifies this from being a messianic prophecy. It’s obviously about the nation of Israel, which God called His first-born son, and their escape from Egypt as recorded in the book of Exodus. It has nothing to do with the Messiah, right? So here is Matthew, egregiously mis-interpreting Scripture. The good professor would have flunked him in his class! And yet Matthew’s passage has become New Testament Scripture, which the good professor has sworn to believe and proclaim as infallible. The irony is too delicious!

The next time you read through the New Testament, notice how its writers interpret Old Testament passages, especially as regarding the Messiah. Then ask yourself, “How in the world did they come up with that interpretation?” Like in John 19:36 where he says God didn’t let the soldiers break Jesus’ legs like the two thieves in order to fulfill the Scripture from Psalm 34:20 about not one of His bones being broken. But that passage is about “a righteous man,” not the Messiah. Surely not every time the Old Testament refers to a righteous man it’s a prophecy about Jesus? And surely there have been righteous men down through history who suffered a broken bone or two! So how do we know? Where is the law of hermeneutics that will tell us? There is none! Then how did the New Testament writers infallibly know?

By the Spirit!