Page 102 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised

Chapter 14: Interpreting Figurative Passages

Connect…

When my children were small, they liked for me to read them “fairy tales.” Of particular interest was
the story of Jack and the Bean Stock. A little boy named Jack found a special bean that grew a huge
bean stock that seemed to go up to heaven. He climbed the stalk and found another world at its top,
including a golden egg and a large giant. But the story was not real. It was a tale.

Some Bible interpreters try to say that some stories in the Bible are not real, but “fairy tales.” “How can
a man live in the belly of a great fish for several days,” they ask? So, they say the Bible is an allegory or
stories, while not real, represent a nice thought.

There are passages in the Bible that don’t seem to make sense. There are verses that definitely describe
figurative rather than literal figures. So how do we manage these verses without throwing out the literal
interpretation of the Bible? That is the challenging question we plan to embark upon today.

Objectives…

1. The student should be able to describe how to interpret figurative words or phrases in the Bible.

2. The student should be able to explain how to understand some difficult and problematic portions of
the Bible that are not really clear to us.

3. The student should be able to discuss why we may never be able to understand 100% of the Bible, but
we will learn to trust the One who wrote it without error.

The Lesson ...

Dealing with Figurative Passages

Some passages of Scripture are figurative because they simply cannot be understood literally.
Sometimes a symbol is described which has no connection to reality. In some cases, the passage itself
gives you the meaning of that which is figurative. In other cases, it appears that God leaves that up to a
future date to reveal the meaning of a passage.

Here are a couple examples of figurative verses:

John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears

much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

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