1. Free to Change
2. Freedom and Responsibility
3. My Kind of People
4. "Come Out And Be Separate"
5. Private Intepretation
6. A "Monkey-Wrench" Scripture
7. The Truth That Frees
8. Literary Devices
9. Fear of God
10. A Love Story
11. The Three Trees In Eden
12. Imputed Righteousness
13. Different Essentials For Different People
14. God's Sons In All Ages
15. Looking To Lust
16. Divorce Her!
17. "While Her Husband Is Alive"
18. "They Won't Let Me Preach!"
19. God's Perplexing Prophets
20. Religous Titles
21. Who Sinned?
22. "I'll Join Your Church"
23. The Church As The Route To Heaven
24. One Hundred Years Old
25. Can Our Churches Unite?
26. Can The Cause Of Sickness Be The Cure?
27. When Life Begins
28. Abortion: Law Or Principle?
29. Human Chattel
30. The Hope of Israel
31. The Great Temptation of Jesus
32. The Rich Man And Lazarus
33. My Hermeneutic
34. Is Immersion Proved By Example?
35. Who Gets The Credit?
36. Hook's Points
37. Heresy
38. I Am A Debtor

Other Books at Freedom's Ring

Language is a means of communication by symbolic sounds and graphics. The meaning of these symbols is affected by the use of literary devices which further enhance, illuminate, and embellish them. Effective speakers and writers have always made good use of literary devices and accommodative language. Jesus and other spokesmen for God filled their language with figures of speech.

Many of the literary devices in the Scriptures are easy to recognize; yet some may be too subtle for us unless we are more familiar with the language style and idiom of the time of the writers. To illustrate this, we may think of the student two thousand years from now trying to understand our expressions. He may not be able to comprehend what we meant by a backup forward on a basketball team, plastic glasses, an iron curtain, a third world country, or an airplane that lands on water. He may be puzzled that we park in a driveway and drive in a parkway or that we pay a toll on a freeway. He may conclude that two planes involved in a near miss collided. He might not comprehend how a house could burn up and burn down at the same time.

Trying to avoid the negative feelings that you might have had toward your high school English classes, let us take note of some literary devices in the Scriptures which may add surprising illumination to certain texts. A full exploration of this field would fill a book; we shall look at only a few selected passages some of which have been misunderstood due to more literal interpretation.

Ellipsis

Persons who downplay the importance of baptism have often quoted "For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel" (1 Cor. 1:17) to teach that Paul did not consider baptism as either being important or a part of the gospel. While we could show from other references that Paul did emphasize the importance of baptism, we have seldom recognized the literary devil that Paul used here.

An ellipsis is an abridging, shortening, or omitting by leaving out words that are understood to be in the sentence. We say, "I know (that) you are leaving," or "(You) come here." So, in view of this device, Paul is saying, "Christ sent me not (only) to baptize, but (also) to preach the gospel."

Of the numerous other illustrations of this, I shall list a few here. "You have not lied to men (only) but (also) to God" (Acts 5:4). "Little children, let us not love in word or speech (only) but (also) in deed and in truth" (l John 3:18). "Do not labor (only) for the food which perishes, but (also, or more importantly) for the food which endures to eternal life" (John 6:27). "For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will (only), but (also, or more importantly) the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38).

In these elliptical statements, the negative clause is minimized and the positive clause is emphasized. Paul did recognize that preaching the gospel was more important in his mission than merely baptizing people.

Sarcasm

Sarcasm involves a cutting humor in which the user may actually say the opposite of what he means. After a series of disastrous football games, one may remark, "What a super team we have! They are headed for the Superbowl!"

In the Corinthian church, some Spiritually endowed persons were distressing the congregation by subjecting it to speeches in foreign languages. God might know what the speaker was saying but none in his audience had any idea of it; so Paul quipped, "For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not unto men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit" (1 Cor. 14:2). The man was building up himself like the Pharisee praying on the street corner instead of building up the church by language that they could understand. So Paul cuts deeper in verse four: "He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church." (Also a pun on edifies!)

Feel Paul's incisive humor as he undercuts Jewish bigotry, "We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners" (Gal 2:15). Also, "I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves!" (5:12). Slashing at the Judiastic fondness of their distinctive mark of circumcision, a cutting of the male parts, Paul is sneering, "Why don't you go ahead and emasculate yourselves?"

Rebuking the Corinthian disciples for following divisive leaders who evidently claimed to be apostles, Paul cuts them with, "For if some one comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough. I think that I am not in the least inferior to these superlative apostles" (2 Cor. 11:4). He continues in verse 19, "For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! For you bear it if a man makes slaves of you, or preys upon you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!"

In each of the cases mentioned here, Paul's sarcasm probably brought some embarrassed laughter.

Satire

The nature of satire overlaps with sarcasm and hyperbole. Satire is a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.

To appreciate Jesus' wit in the use of satire, one has only to read Matthew 23. His denunciation of the Pharisees is caustic, cutting, and humorous. Hear him: "Observe what they tell you, but not what they do!" "They lift heavy burdens to put on others then won't lift their finger to relieve them." He sneered at their love for titles and status. They searched to make proselytes only to make them twice as much children of hell as they themselves were. Blind guides! Silly oaths. In their inconsistency, they strained out the gnats while swallowing camels. They washed the outside of the cup instead of the inside. They whitewashed tombs of decay to hide reality. They honored prophets while killing them! No doubt, this caustic ridicule of their follies brought both embarrassed laughter and steaming anger from the listeners. Talk about Aggie jokes; Jesus was full of Pharisee jokes! However, Jesus limited such caustic satire to the hypocritical leaders instead of using it to embarrass humble truth seekers.

Hyperbole

A hyperbole is an evident exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. It might be witty also. These are common in our conversations like when we say, "The room was so cold that I froze to death," or "He turned as white as a sheet."

We might well visualize Jesus talking to his disciples about wealth where a tentmaker was working and a rich man was passing by on a camel when he declared in exaggerated terms, "For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God!" (Luke 18:25).

John, in impressing us that he covered Jesus' life story so inadequately, declared, "But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." (John 21:25).

In an overstatement to make his point, Paul wrote, "I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you." (2 Cor. 11:8)

Perhaps we can better interpret Jesus' statement as a hyperbole: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 4:27).

Jesus' suggestion that a person might try to pick the speck out of someone's eye when he had a beam in his own would combine the wit and ridicule of both satire, sarcasm, and hyperbole.

Play on Words - The Pun

A pun is a humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest different meanings and applications such as when Jesus told the disciples, "Let the dead bury the dead" (Matt. 8:22).

Jesus used this device when he declared, "You are Peter (which means rock), and on this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18).

Paul used a word four times for effect. "I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus (useful, beneficial), whose father I have become in my imprisonment. (Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and me.)" (Philemon 10f; 20). "Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord."

Notice Peter's play on word: "Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word (from the wife!)" (1 Peter 3:1).

Paradox

A paradox consists of two statements expressing an apparent contradiction, such as "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 10:39). Again, "So the last will be first, and the first last." (Matt. 10:16). And another, "For to him who has will more be given; and from who has not, even what he has will be taken away." (Mark 4:25). A paradox challenges deeper thought on the matter.

Allusion

An allusion is an indirect reference in passing to something familiar in history. Our songs, employ many of them. For instance, "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah," makes many allusions to the wilderness expreriences of Israel.

When we read, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (Heb. 13:2), our thoughts are directed back to the time when Abraham entertained the angels. Also consider "Remember Lot's wife."

When Jesus said, "The slave does not continue in the house forever; the son continues forever" (John 8:35), he was referring back to the incident when Sarah drove Ishmael out.

Paul was pointing back to the Tabernacle and the Temple when he spoke of his body as a decaying tent which would be replaced by a permanent house (2 Cor. 5:1f).

In allusion, Jesus was the bread from heaven (manna), living water (which Moses brought from the rock), the lamb of God (sacrificial offering), the uplifted brazen serpent, our passover, and many other figures which pointed to something familiar. Thus, allusions open the way for many typical comparisons and richer meanings. They invite historical study.

Metonymy

A metonymy is a figure of associated ideas in which the whole is put for the part, the part for the whole, the container for the thing contained, a substance for the thing made of it, or one thing is put for another closely associated with it. Let us note these separately.

1. The whole for the part. "Every creature/whole creation" is used for the human race. "All the world" may mean only a known area. "For all have sinned" surely would not include little children and mentally deficient persons. "He came to his own and they that were his own received him not" must be limited to a part for all did not reject him. "All flesh" may only mean some persons of differing races.

2. A part for the whole. Jesus explained that his Golden Rule "is the law and the prophets." It only epitomized the message and intent of the law and the prophets. When James defines pure religion as visiting the needy and living morally clean lives, he was abridging the definition by putting a part for the whole.

Our salvation is attributed to numerous individual things like God, Christ, grace, the gospel, faith, works, confession, repentance, baptism, and faithfulness. When our salvation is attributed to any one of these, the other factors are not meant to be excluded, but the part is put for the whole in that instance in order to impress a certain factor being considered.

3. The container for what it contains. A cup is mentioned to indicate its contents. To pray to heaven is to pray to God who is in heaven. A family is spoken of as a house, which is a dwelling place for a family.

4. A substance for the thing made of it. "By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Here flesh stands for the people of fleshly substance. We are dust, etc.

5. One word for another closely associated with it in meaning. "We walk (live) by faith, and not by sight (knowledge)." "Moses (the Law of Moses) is read in every synagogue." "Breaking bread (eating food)."

Prolepsis

Sometimes two events separated by time are connected for explanatory purpose in such a way as to give the impression that they occurred at the same time. This is called a prolepsis.

Genesis 2:2-3 would indicate that the sabbath was sanctified at that early time; however, it was not sanctified until centuries later (Exo. 20:8; Deut. 5:15).

In listing the apostles in Matthew 10:2-4, Matthew lists "Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him," but it was three years later that the betrayal took place.

Abraham is said to have built an altar at Bethel (Gen. 12:8), but Bethel was not so named until Jacob named it much later (Gen. 28:10-19). These details were written after the fact and the later piece of information was included for further explanation. Other information known by a later writer may be written into a historical account. Of Israel in their wilderness journey, it is written centuries later, "For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:4). Also notice that Moses "considered abuse suffered for Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt" (Heb. 11:26). Those happenings preceded Christ by centuries.

During the intense excitement on Pentecost, it is unlikely that persons turned their attention away from the speakers long enough to make a survey to see how many nations were represented there at the time (Acts 2:5-11). It is more likely that someone gathered this information later and Luke injected it into his narrative as though the count was made at the time.

Simile

This is the simplest and most commonly used literary device. By use of the words as or like a similarity of one thing to another is expressed. "All flesh is as grass." "He shall be like a tree."

Only one example will be given special attention here. In Luke 22:44, it is recorded, "And his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground." The simple comparison is that his sweat was so profuse that it flowed down in great drops as blood would do from a wounded person. But a mysticism seems to have attached itself to this expression so that it has been commonly interpreted that the sweat was like blood in color or nature. Bible students have gone to great lengths to give medical explanations of how sweat could absorb blood from the capillaries in time of trauma so as to fit this misinterpretation.

Didactic Simile or Parable

Extending the simile beyond a simple comparison, Jesus taught many parables. Most of his parables were about the nature of his kingdom and they carried one main point. Our misguided tendency has been to make some application of each thing mentioned in the extended comparison.

While we generally look upon parables as being given to illuminate the truth, that is not the purpose that Jesus gave for using them. When asked why he taught in parables, he explained, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand" (Luke 8:10). Parables veiled the truth that Jesus could have spoken more plainly.

Metaphor

A metaphor is an abridged simile. It is a comparison omitting comparative words like as or like. In a metaphor one person or thing is said to be another person or thing, like "all flesh is grass." There is wide usage of metaphors.

God is said to be a shield, a rock, a fortress, a builder, a dwelling-place, etc.

Jesus is said to be a lamb, a shepherd, a door, a vine, a cornerstone, etc.

The saved are said to be a temple, a body, a household, a bride, a kingdom, etc.

We have no trouble with metaphors except where mysticism has warped our thinking as in the case where Jesus said of the bread they were eating and the wine they were drinking, "This is my body" and "This is my blood." He just failed to use a comparative word which would have made similes instead of metaphors.

Allegory

An allegory is a sustained analogy, a prolonged metaphor in which mention of the principal subject or lesson is suppressed. Nathan's story about the sheep told to David is a classic allegory of the Old Testament (2 Sam. 12:1-6). In the New Testament, Paul describes his analogy of the two women as an allegory (Gal. 4:21-31).

It is my belief that the account of the Rich Man and Lazarus is allegoric. You may read about that in another chapter of this book.

Symbol

A symbol is a representation. It is something that stands for or suggests something else. Consider the cherubim and the flaming sword and the details of the description of heaven. The rainbow is a token of God's covenant with Noah even as circumcision represented God's covenant with Abraham. The cross is a symbol of Christ's atonement and baptism is symbolic of our death and resurrection with Christ. There are many others.

Prophetic language was usually highly symbolic in nature. As with parables, the insiders could understand the message while it would be veiled to the outsiders, for the insiders would know the key of the representations. We have no one to give us the key to the complex figures in prophetic literature like Revelation today; therefore, I am convinced that no one is able to explain them adequately. Surely, Spirit filled men were able to explain the representations to the people in the early church to whom the writing applied particularly. They were sustained through the persecutions depicted in the figurative language by that knowledge, thus Revelation fulfilled its chief purpose in them.

Emblem

An emblem is a tangible object used to represent a moral or spiritual quality, like a crown for royalty, a scepter for sovereignty, a mountain for rule, or a heavenly body for a ruler. Jesus chose bread as a representation of his body and wine as an emblem of his blood.

Type

A type is a shadow whose substance (antitype) is in the future. Both the type and antitype are real persons, things, offices, or events. Here are examples of:

Persons: The first and second Adam (1 Cor. 15:45).

Things: The tabernacle and the true tabernacle (church) (Heb. 8-9).

Offices: Melchizedek and Christ (Heb. 5).

Events: Israel's deliverance and ours (1 Cor. 10:1-11).

Parallelism

By reading the scriptures in more modern versions, we are impressed that much poetry is used, especially in the writings of David, Solomon, and the prophets. Jesus used some poetic lines.

A favorite device among the Jews was the parallelism in which a thought is repeated in meaning in a second line of a couplet. Here are two balanced parallelisms of Jesus:

"For nothing is hid that shall not be made manifest,
Nor anything secret that shall not be known
and come to light" (Luke 8:17).

"What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light;
What you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops."
(Matt. 10:27).

In the inverted parallelism, the first and fourth lines are related while the second and third lines are parallels and supplement the first. See Matt. 11:29-30; Isa. 5:20-21. There are many different arrangements of these parallel thoughts.

Accommodative Language

Some Biblical language is not accurate in a literal, scientific sense. It accommodated the concepts of hearers who lacked in scientific knowledge. So we read of the four corners of the earth, of the sun and rising and going down, of heaven being up, and of hell being down. The center of desire was thought to be the kidneys (reins in KJV) and compassion was thought to be in the bowels (bowels of compassion in KJV). Because ancient people thought that persons with mental disorders were possessed of demons, some students of the Bible suppose that the speaking of casting out evil spirits was an accommodative way of saying that Jesus was healing those mental disorders.

Recognizing Figurative Language

1. Consider the context to see if a literal or figurative interpretation is necessary to make sense. Jesus said that we are the salt of the earth. We need not relate that to Lot's wife, the covenant of salt, sowing a conquered city with salt, or the use of salt as a preservative. Jesus indicated that he was speaking of a flavoring influence.

2. Some literal interpretations would present an impossibility. The dead cannot bury the dead. When Jesus said, "This is my body," he could not have been holding his own body in his hands. A literal snake is not an intelligent, hearing, talking, scheming creature like that depicted in Eden.

3. We should not consider a thing to be literal if it presents a contradiction such as God's being represented as having eyes, ears, face, hands, and finger. These are anthropomorphisms accommodating man's physical concepts. God is spirit and spirit has not flesh and bones (Lk. 24:49).

4. When it is said to be figurative like the parables of Jesus or the allegory of Paul, there is no question about it. However, we have not been inclined to accept Paul's accommodative adaptation to the Corinthians. He rebuked them for divisively following different men like Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or Christ. Then he later explains that he had applied this to himself and Apollos figuratively for a lesson. He was putting the names of uninvolved persons in place of the guilty ones. (Consider 1 Cor. 1:12-13; 4:6; 2 Cor. 11:13).

In Conclusion

I have been selective in my coverage of literary devices used in the Scriptures for the sake of brevity and in order to offer help in understanding certain passages. This is a broad field which I am not qualified to cover fully. I hope that the points touched on will make your reading of the Book more fascinating and understandable.