Principles of Bible Interpre¬tation

My knowledge of the Bible has been the result of lessons learned from men wiser than myself or from lessons learned from the guidance of the Holy Spirit (just like everyone else). Robert A. Sabin taught me, and thousands of others two prin­ciples to facilitate Bible interpretation.

Principle One.

No sin­gle text can contradict the general truth of the Bible.

What is the general truth of the Bible?  There is one God, alone in creation, there is no other deity beside Him. There are over 10,000 Bible texts that either implicitly or explicitly declare the absolute, solitary nature of God.

Implicit texts imply that God is a solitary one by the use of singular pronouns, verbs, and adjectives when referring to God Almighty. Examples: Genesis1:27, So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Exodus 20:2-3: I am the lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. The pronouns his, he, I and me are singular pronouns describing the “aloneness” of God. If God would have declared We are YHWH, your gods who brought you out of Egypt…You shall no other gods before us, it would be reasonable to consider multiple persons in the godhead. But He did not say that. He used singular pronouns to express the fact that He was alone. It makes no sense to understand His nature any other way.

Explicit texts clearly state that God is one and alone in His reign.

Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The lord our God is one lord (cf. Mk 12:29).  Isaiah 44:24, “I am the lord, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.” These texts explicitly establish that there was no other God, or being, with him. 

Principle Two.

Verses that are difficult to understand must be inter­preted in the light of those verses more easily under­stood. 

If a verse, text, or topic of the Bible is difficult to understand, the proper and logical response is to use other, more easily understood verses to understand the difficult verse. There are less than 10 verses in the Bible that are misunderstood because they are not properly interpreted (See illustration below).

The “US” verses:

Ge 1:26     Let us make man in our image.

Ge 3:22     And the lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:  and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.

Ge 11:7     Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

Is 6:8         Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?  Then said I, Here am I; send me.