1. Discuss grammatical interpretation. The case study for this class was to fill in the blank in the following sentence: "When I ...(blank word)... thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watch." This lesson is still part of General Introduction but no longer in preinterpretation. Hermeneutics consists of grammatical (looks at the level of words in a sentence), historical (looks at the world outside the Bible), and literary (looks at the whole thought or concept) interpretation. It is involved with exegesis (going back in time to draw out the meaning of the text) and application (coming forward in time to use the meaning).

Word studies are part of grammatical interpretation, which involves studying words in isolation (verb tense, singular, or plural) and looking at syntax (how the word relates to words around it). Word studies are an important part of grammatical interpretation.

2. Discuss Lexical Semantics. Some key concepts of lexical semantics are: (1) the rule of maximal redundancy (which says that over 50% of any given language is redundant (over half of language has a lot of overlap or middle ground). We can often predict the word that will appear based on the rest of the sentence. The fuller the context, the greater the ability to predict), (2) parallelism (which occurs in Hebrew poetry a lot (a counterbalance of ideas from one line to the next - synonymous means that lines "a" and "b" are saying basically the same thing ("God loves Israel, The Lord cares for the sons of Jacob"), antithetical which means that lines "a" and "b" are expressing contrasting truths, and synthetical which means that lines "a", "b", and "c" complement each other to convey a central thought)), and (3) building a field of words where we put the two phrases together and try to predict the missing word (in the case study for this class, "in the night watch" goes with "upon my bed" and the blank word goes with "meditate").

3. Discuss the mistakes that are made in word studies. Some of the mistakes often made are: (1) etymological (a study of the history of words) fallacies where the meaning of some words may not remain the same over time (assume that someone uncovers a Liberty University calendar 2,000 years from now where someone had marked Thursday as the day to do something. If Thursday is no longer recognized in the new culture but someone knows that it was once the day for worshipping the god of Thor, then the people of that culture could think that Liberty University were polytheists.), (2) noun-verb analogy (for the word "memorial", 2,000 years from now, people do not know the word "remember" but they know the word "memorial". So, they decide that the word "remember" means to build a memorial. A word does not necessarily mean what its counterpart means, (3) viewing biblical words as emphatic or intense (seeing all Bible words as mystical and bigger than life {"declare" in Psalm 19:1 is often uttered with intensity, but it is not really an emphatic word. It simply means to declare.) The Greek words for love are often treated very special, but English has ways to express the same types of love.), (4) illegimate identity transfer (define word in one context and import that meaning into all contexts ("minority" can be used in different contexts). In Hebrew, "to sin" was once used to describe an arrow that falls short of its target, and "leaven" does not always mean "sin" and is not always bad. In one parable, Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven. It is dangerous to always assume the same meaning.), (5) logical fallacies (In Psalm 63:6, David is praying at night, but that does not mean that we are supposed to pray only at night.), and (6) "x" like "y" in some ways does not mean that they are alike in all ways.

4. Discuss some positive things to do in word studies. The positive things to do relate to context, which is a good thing to establish and relatively easy to do. Looking at before and after verses will usually work 90% of the time. There are: (1) immediate context (Psalm 63:6 blank word is "remember". The three parts of immediate context are: (a) parallelism in poetry, (b) syntax (looking for a verb in blank space of class case study), and (c) the use of translations (reading KJV and NIV to see what they use for the blank word)), (2) the context of the passage (look at all of Psalm 63 to identify the blank word in verse 6), and (3) look at the distant context (the context outside the passage. In Genesis 30:22, God "remembered" Rachel. Is this the same context as Psalm 63:6? Not exactly. God had not completely forgotten Rachel.)

5. Discuss the application of the class case study. The second part of hermeneutics is application. In this case study, the Hebrew word for "remember" means to ponder and can actually flow over into action ("Remember the poor" (Galatians 2:10)). The first application is towards prayer and focusing on God. The second application is towards action.

6. Name some related books. Some related books are: (1) Exegetical Fallacies, by Carson (deals with word studies), (2) Biblical Words and Their Meaning, by Moises Silva (a technically challenging book), and (3) God, Language and Scripture (less difficult but good first book).

7. What is the case study for Lesson 7? Identify some figures of speech in Psalm 18 and Lamentations 1.

				Tom of Bethany

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Lesson 7. Figures of Speech

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