I was thrilled this week when I read that someone elese shares my concerns about word studies. William Barrack writes about his concerns in The Word Study Fallacy. It used to be that the primary concern for Word study failures was with first semester Greek or Hebrew students who had suddenly discovered a brand new interpretation of a passage of scripture based on their new found supposedly in-depth understanding of the orginal language.
With the advent of the internet and great tools like Blue Letter Bible language tools and word studies are readily available at the touch of a button. But, with knowledge comes responsibility.
Barrack points out:
Word studies are a great tool to help us understand God’s word, but alone they cannot replace the value of reading those words within their proper context. Just because a word can mean something does not mean that it does mean something. We can become so arrogant in our understanding based on Strong’s Concordance or any variety of Lexicon’s that we can re-interpret a word to a meaning that has never been assigned to it in any historical Bible translation. Barrack goes on to write
I’ve been there. Anyone who has spent much time digging in God’s word has grown over-confident in their own abilities or understanding at least once or twice. But, just because we have been there or may even be there now, does not mean we have to continue to cling to our misinterpretations. We can repent of our error and arrogance and remember that systematically understanding God’s word requires interpreting scripture in light of scripture and constantly seeking to understand and emphasize the author’s intent rather than our novel understanding.
