How to Study the Bible. Lang. II: Grammar and Figures of Speech

Okay, we're, let's see, into, what is this, fourth week? Here is this How to Study the Bible, alright? Now, so that people have things somewhat straight, what we have here is you've got an orange sheet, okay? Behind that orange sheet should only be one piece of paper, okay? Except for the package that you just picked up today, the last page on that. goes behind that because that's the appendix, okay? You have an orange sheet from last week, from last week, you have an orange sheet, okay? And you have one page from last week, and then today another page that goes behind that, that is the last page in today's handout, okay? And that one, The top of that sheet says a constructive caution regarding a few Greek grammar and vocabulary resources.

Okay? So you'll have behind the orange sheet, you'll have two pages only. Both of those are marked at the bottom, appendix item. Okay? Yes. Yeah. Well, I just, I know several people had that confused and that's understandable. So you'll have behind the orange sheet, appendix item one, one page from last week.

Appendix item two is the last page of today's package that was sitting in the back here. In front of the orange sheet should be the rest of today's handout so that you'll have in your package behind the table of contents, pages 1 through, I believe it's 18. Let me double check. Pages 1 through 18. Okay. So, after the initial couple of pages, and then a table of contents, and then pages 1 through 18, the orange sheet, and then two sheets with the appendix, okay? Just two sheets, that's it, for the appendix.

I know the easy and natural thing to do is slap whatever you've got in your hand in the back, okay? Go ahead and do that if you want, it'll just get a little confusing, especially if you're trying to find out where you are. So go for it. Good morning. Go ahead and grab today's there. I'll repeat, and it may even help some folks who are here. Grab today's handouts. It's for this week.

And the last page in there on that package goes in the very back behind the orange sheet. Could there be another second orange sheet? One orange sheet, period. from a week ago, from last week's package. Behind the orange sheet, two sheets of paper only, appendix items one and two.

What we'll do in the process of continuing on, because we've got two more months after today, we'll continue to give you a weekly Adding to page numbers, the last page number for today is page 18, and we'll from time to time give you additional items for the appendix. They'll say appendix item on the bottom, okay? Those go in the back. They'll also be numbered after this first one. So it'll be appendix item two, appendix item three.

So they'll be in order, okay? All right. That's the intent anyway. All right. What's that? OK. Are we up to speed so far? Pretty much. OK. What we're covering today is we're continuing through items of language. And today we have grammar and figures of speech. OK? And just those two things. OK? Just those two things, grammar and figures of speech.

Now, when you talk about grammar, a lot of us can say, huh? Or, boy, that was a long time ago I studied that, right? And certainly, oh, there goes a verb, right? So we want to deal with that. It can be overwhelming, puzzling, a little foggy, all those things.

Four points, bullet points on your page one of the handout to keep in mind. As you do so, Keep in mind this, the goal that we're aiming towards is understanding God's Word. The goal is not to be expert grammarians. So it's a tool, not the end point. So that's one thing that just kind of sets you at ease a little bit. We're not trying to be expert grammarians. If you want to be an expert grammarian, you want to see somebody else. I can't help you. I have to look things up. So the goal is to understand scripture, not to be grammarians.

The next thing here, the next point, the basic measure of scripture has been translated into English already. And I think Brad, a couple weeks back, covered some of those English translations that are available. We recommend a more word-for-word translation for detailed study. Some of the paraphrases, while not really good for detailed study, are fine for just quick reading. And they're written and formatted if you want to just read something like quick through, okay? And they read real smoothly.

But we already have things in English. What we're doing with grammar is to get additional insights and clarification, okay? Got that? Additional insights and clarification. That's what we're aiming for. So, for example, when we say love, well, what kind of love is that, okay? Love, whose love? Where does the love come from? Those kinds of questions. We want to be able to answer those questions and get clarity and depth of understanding.

Third thing, we need not carry all the information about grammar around our head. You can look things up, that's okay. You need to look something up, that's just fine. And in the fourth point there, a lot of the insights from studying the grammar, the original language of the Bible, can be gained from just a few key principles.

Some of them we point out fairly regularly in our studies and our service. One of them we'll look at this morning will be that when you see the word but, B-U-T, In the New Testament, if what's behind it is the simple Greek word Allah, the underscoring emphasis is great contrast. We'll see it in the passage here this morning. Great contrast. Paul says, don't get drunk with wine but Allah. Strong contrast. be filled by means of the Spirit.

So those are simple things, and you can find them again and again and again. You can ask that question, which word for but is this? If this is the word Allah, I have my answer. There are a couple of ways to get insights on the Greek grammar, because certainly we could just look at the English, but we're wanting to get additional insights And one is to look at just plain English language resources that explain some grammar.

And one of those that we make reference to is some of the things, for example, by Kenneth Wiest. Any of you ever heard things by Kenneth Wiest? They're not written in real complicated fashion, they're explained fairly clearly, usually verse by verse or often verse by verse. So that would be one way of getting some grammar information, just reading some plain English. Because all you want is explanation, not something you don't understand. The other thing is if you want to get into more detail, there's a book that we have referenced here, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics by Dan Wallace. You can get that in printed form or a software, either one. And that's highly recommendable. I got a copy of it from Amazon used for like $10. So it doesn't have to be expensive. OK.

Another way that doesn't require that you be a Greek geek or a Hebrew, and I won't say what goes along with that, but is to look at, there is a complete word study Bible. And Bible Essentials is the software that goes along with that. And we've given some references here that Logos is one of the outfits that has that available and others are now making it available for their software. And you don't have to be a Greek scholar to use it.

You just have to be able to read their codes or if it's software, just click on the buttons. And so it's that simple, and it'll tell you details of grammar. If you don't understand it, you click on that and it explains it. So not so tough, right? So those are some tools that you can use that'll help give you some grammar insights. Top of page 16. Let's take a look at that, okay? All right. I talked about some simple principles that'll help understand And we got three points here on page 16. Let's step our way through them.

One is Greek verbs. The verb is a word of action. Jesus walked on the water. Action or being. God is love. Is would be the verb. So action or being. In the Greek, more so than in the English, those words are packed with significance. It will sometimes take 20 words or more for me to explain what one Greek verb says. Because they pack so much into the form of the word. More so than we do.

So, here's a for instance. We give an example in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. that you have been saved is from one Greek word soto and it's the same words translated the same way in verse 5 so twice in that passage right and the Greek has a U plural, so it's not just one person, and it also is in a tense that says it's a completed past action with ongoing results in the future implying permanence.

How's that for a few letters? All that packed into that word there. All of you believers, Paul wrote, have been saved by God as a completed past action with ongoing results in the future, permanence is implied in the way it was written. All that packed into the one word.

So that's where, and you know, if you look it up in the Greek references, yeah, you can find that out. But you know, you don't need to. You can look things up in some of these references we've talked about that'll lay that out. Isn't that neat? Yeah, good stuff. Okay, second item.

The New Testament Greek has a form of verb known as an imperative. The imperative verb almost always carries the sense of must, as in you, plural, must love one another. They're going to be studying that in 1 Thessalonians Selective upstairs and we already studied that in 1 Peter. In the English translations, there are places that might come across either more forceful than the Greek implies or less forceful than the Greek implies. For instance, in Matthew 28, 19, Go therefore and make disciples.

And I wouldn't hazard a guess how many churches have had messages where they Go! Go! You know? That's not what it says. Where's the imperative? The imperative is on make disciples. And the Greek form there actually says, as you're going, make disciples. The going is assumed. The imperative, the emphasis, is on make disciples. That's where the imperative is. So that's one of the values you get. What was the emphasis that Jesus had? Was He telling them to go? And by the way, He also told them to stop and don't go yet. Right? Wait around. But as you're going, make disciples. There's the imperative. There's the emphasis. And that's an important thing. Do we have a command to just go? Are we supposed to be hyperactive? Is that what God wants? Or what else does He have in mind? He has in mind make disciples. Does that mean as you're going in your daily life? Or as you're going overseas? Well, what's interesting is in that context, He just says as you're going. The answer is to how that gets played out.

It really takes time to get answered, doesn't it? You read through the Book of Acts and they eventually did go to other places, but the Book of Acts covers a period of three decades. So if you think about that, put us here. It would be like, okay, Jesus said, go and make disciples, and the end of Acts is the year 2037, to put us in some kind of a time context.

Yeah? How do you then interpret the first word, though? I think of that as an imperative. It sounds in English, right. In English. Right. But what would be the proper way? Is there some synonym you would use or some other word? Yeah, let me expand it. As you are going, you must be making disciples. So as you're going, wherever you happen to be going, wherever you're going, you must be making disciples. That part all makes sense to me. Ah, okay. It's because the as you're going is assumed. He didn't say don't go. But he's saying the as you're going is assumed. The key thing is you must be making disciples wherever you're going. Isn't that also a translation thing? That's the way they translate it? Sure, yeah. Here's one other thing. You've got to remember what translators are up against.

They have publishers telling them, hey, don't just use a gazillion words, right? You've got to come up with a simple thing and just come up with an equivalent word and let her go. I'm glad I'm not a translator because I get to be able to explain it and say, well, this is what it means. And I can take however many, whatever the number of words is required, to explain that.

But what that does is that allows us to see what was Christ's emphasis. How were they hearing it? As you're going, you must be making disciples, teaching them. So just getting that emphasis is a key thing. So just being able to look up in whatever one of these references happens to be fitting to your approach and whatever you happen to have. Looking for these things. Where's the imperative really? Not what comes across necessarily in the English. Because the English in a lot of our translations would imply, boy, I better get going. Whereas what Jesus was really focusing on, make disciples. Make disciples.

Yes? I think the thing is, the translation, like the New American Standard, I've met one of the translators. In the early part of the process, Kenneth Wiest was one of the translators. I've heard of some of the others and had contact with their work and that kind of thing. They're carrying it across, I think, faithfully and with intent. They do have certain limitations and restrictions.

Here is where I think we need to work from, and what we included earlier on in this package, like the first week. Our doctrinal statement says that the original writings were what was inspired. And so we're looking at what did the author intend when they sat down and wrote that.

And so what we do is the English reading is an intensely valuable tool. I sure don't want somebody to set that aside. An extremely valuable tool. But we want to continue to look around it and study it. And that's one of the reasons we have this elective, to look around it and let's get the full sense of meaning. When Paul writes, as we pointed out earlier, when he writes adoption of sons, he's not talking about getting a little baby in your arms. He means something far bigger and far more grand and far more certain than that. And it is not just nice, but extremely valuable to get that understanding of just that one word, adoption. Yes. Okay. All right. Now, let's take a look at the third point.

Greek nouns, these are words that are persons, places, concrete or abstract things. What do I mean by that? The table is concrete, even though it isn't made of concrete, okay? The table is a concrete noun. The truth is an abstract noun. See the difference there? I can talk about the truth, and you know what I mean. And I say, well, give me a truth. I'll put it in my hand. Well, it's not so easy, right? But I say, give me the table. Well, yeah, that we can do. So we have nouns that are of that category.

In Greek, the ones that have a definite article point to the specific thing. The ones that do not have the definite article point to a character or a quality. For example, Jesus says, I am the truth. Definite article in Greek and in English. the way and the life. He means specifically, He is the singular one. It's pointing to Him. The way, singular, the truth, the specific truth, the life. So, we've got that. So that's John 14, 6. I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me. And all the definite articles in English are also there in Greek. I have to reveal my ignorance of grammar here. Wonderful. Yes. Is the the only definite article or is that just the one you happen to use? It is. It is the only. That makes things easier. Yes. And here's an indefinite article. An indefinite article in English would be the letter A. And not instead of the truth, a truth, right? Right. And there is no equivalent in Greek to a truth. There is no indefinite article. They have only the definite article. The lack of that definite article then points to a character or a quality. And so one of the ways that that comes across, I give an example here at the bottom of page 16.

In 1 Timothy 3, 2 and 12, and Titus 1.6 where the qualifications of elders and deacons is being given. A lot of our English translations there have the husband of one wife as the writing, but in the Greek the definite article is missing. So it's been inserted there. Sometimes translators put something in to try to smooth it or even drop it out to try to smooth it out.

What I'd rather do is to represent it and if it sounds funny, well that's the way it is. But nonetheless, in the Greek, the husband of one wife, it's not specifying that must be married, either must be married as a qualification, or never remarried, or not polygamous, that's not what it's saying.

What it's talking about is a one-woman kind of man. Quality. The lack of the definite article points to quality and character. It's not saying, is this elder or deacon candidate, has he never been divorced and remarried? It's not saying that he must be married. It is not saying that he's not polygamous, and actually that wasn't an issue, because polygamy virtually did not exist in the pagan cultures. But what it is saying is that guy must be of a character, that he is a one-woman kind of man. That's what it's pointing to, okay?

Why? Lack of definite article. And that's where if you just simply read the English translation, you can't quite get that information because a lot of times they're kind of smoothing out the English. So being able to look up whether you look it up in some reference where you don't really need to know Greek or whether you can look up in some Greek reference, either way, look, is there a definite article there? You find out, no, there isn't.

Then it's pointing to character. Okay, so the qualification there is, is the guy faithful to his wife? Is he a one-woman kind of man? Okay, figures of speech. Before we get into the written part there, there's something I'd like to bring up. We had a How to Study the Bible class about six years ago. that was far more detailed, but also didn't have quite the consistent write-up that we have here, or at least trying to put together. And interesting, at the time we had Heidi and Helmut Naumann with us in the elective. And we brought up that we have figures of speech in our language.

For example, if Tom is joking with me, I might say, Tom, you're pulling my leg. He's way in the back of the room. He's not pulling my leg, right? But figuratively speaking, no one would be puzzled by that. Of course, we know what you mean. Well, I brought out, you know, I have a little bit of background of speaking Spanish. So in Spanish, it's not you're pulling my leg, right? It's you're pulling my hair. ¿Estás tomando mi pelo? Are you accustomed to that? Yeah. You're pulling my hair. In Spanish. Heidi brought out, in Germany, it's neither one of those. It's, you're carrying me on your arm.

That's the figure of speech for you're joking with me. She also brought out a couple of other interesting figures of speech. In Germany, if you were driving someone along, maybe in the middle of the city, and you said, I'll drop you off at the corner, that's a figure of speech that says, I'm going to do a hit on you. So if you don't want somebody to say, I'll drop you off at the corner, that's not good. Because that's a German figure of speech. Now, with that as an intro, there are a great many figures of speech.

I've got a book at home, I didn't bring it, it's about a thousand pages, written by a guy last name Bullinger. And it catalogs, I won't say all, but a great many of the figures of speech in a thousand pages. And it's not quite complete. I found a few that aren't listed. So it's not exhaustive. No. No, it's in their language that it comes out. However, here's something interesting. A great many of the figures of speech do come across in English.

The question the translators have is, do I translate it literally? Or do I carry across the figure of speech into English? That's where they get into a little bit of a head-scratcher. For example, if we were translating from English over to German or to Spanish, how would we translate, you're pulling my leg? If we were to translate it literally, we would go and look up each word and carry it across. If we were to translate it in the meaning that it has in those cultures, we would translate it differently, wouldn't we? So that's a translation question.

Tom? In that case, would you say that a thought for thought would be more accurate than a word for word? Yes, possibly. Yes, possibly. And here's the reason why we encourage a word-for-word. A word-for-word is better from the standpoint of you being able to check out things like figures of speech and the very reason we talk about it. The difficulty with a word-for-word, the Achilles heel, is you're relying on the other person to do the interpreting, not the translating, but the interpreting. and hopefully they've done it right. So, pardon? Thought for thought, yes, thank you. Yeah, in order to carry it over thought for thought, you're relying on the other person to do the interpreting for you.

If they've done it well, you're okay. But if they haven't, then that's potentially a problem. So, it can, most directly, it can, be more accurate, but it has the backside risk that sometimes, you know, you're hoping he's done his interpretation correctly. Yes, you are correct. Yes, that's right. You're exactly right.

And so that's why if you use a word for word translation, which we recommend for detailed study, that goes along with the assumption that you're going to do these other things to study what the figures of speech mean. Even like when you say adoption of sons. Really, in a thought-for-thought translation, you wouldn't just say adoption of sons.

You'd do something to try to explain that. But what we're suggesting here is that the best thing is use the word-for-word, but then do the background study so that you understand what's going on. Yes, know how they're using the words. Know how they're using the figures of speech. Understand those.

So anyway, that's kind of the quick answer. It's to be certain of what is being said rather than entirely relying upon the translator, because the translator is no longer translating their interpreting at that point. Here are some figures of speech, and some of these we use in English. You're going to look at it and say, well, what's so difficult about that? Well, yeah. Well, it isn't.

One of them, 1 Peter 5.8, here is what's called a simile.

1 Peter 5.8 says, Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Like. Like or as, or similes.

In other instances, the figure of speech may be unique to the culture in or to which it was written. A figure of speech pattern that is used in both the Old and New Testaments is like this. This was something, by the way, I looked this up and kind of dug into it myself. I've not seen this anywhere other than to just observe it as a pattern. The work of God in the physical realm, such as in creation, is often spoken of as being done by God's hands or is called the work of his hands. God's work in physical creation is done by God's hands or is called the work of his hands.

You've got several passages there, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. When God does something, however, and again, both of them, it's God doing something. When God does something in the spiritual realm, The figure of speech, and this again is both Old and New Testament, is not made with hands or made without hands. Isn't that interesting? God does something in both cases.

But if it's physical, the figure of speech is made with hands. If it's spiritual, made without hands. Very interesting. So that's the figure of speech that is used there. And this brings Tom's point that as a translator, most of the translations just put the made with hands, made without hands.

But the understanding that you want to get, and it's possible that a translator misses it, the understanding that you want to get is if it's without hands, it's spiritual. It's a spiritual accomplishment. When he identified us with Christ, that was done without hands. When our sins were placed upon Christ on the cross, that was done without hands. That was spiritual. When God created the heavens and the earth, that was with hands.

Other figures of speech may be more commonly or even uniquely used by one specific author. Dr. Luke, for example, wrote commonly with a figure of speech called Litotes, a writing that has no small or no little. And here's some examples in the Book of Acts. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsman. What did he mean? Big business! No little is big.

Acts 12.18. Now when day came there was no small disturbance among the soldiers. What do you mean? Big disturbance. So here's an interesting figure of speech to express something by denying the opposite. And it seems Luke was the one who did it and he did it repeatedly. Yeah, Doug? Talking about that, I'll add this to it. Throw this out.

I'm familiar with Wickham. much of theirs is done in the villages, getting, talking to the people in the villages, what this means to them. Yes, yes. What does it mean? Yes. Also, we had the privilege of meeting with St. Nate's sister, Rachel. Right. Yes. She spent quite a bit of time in the village. Yeah. Many of the, that village that was Yes, yeah. Yes, yeah.

And those kinds of questions are extremely important. I've had various contacts with people who have worked with tribal groups. And one fellow I knew years ago by the name of Paul Carlson, my dad worked with him. He was with the Tarahumara Indian tribe in northern Mexico. And they were high elevation above Timberline. The whole tribe was living above Timberline.

An interesting thing, you come to Psalm 23, he leaves me beside still waters. The Tarahumara people believed that still waters, because they didn't understand all the technology behind it, that still waters sometimes would get stagnant. So that's bad. He leads me beside still waters to them was bad because it had little imps called weeliebies in the water. So he leads me aside still waters made them alarmed.

So Paul had to translate it. He leads me beside rushing waters. Oh, okay. That's good. So it was a reversal of what we think of because they thought of still waters is that scary. Why would I want a God that leaves me beside still waters? It was their understanding. What's that? Yeah, I mean, there were several things about still waters that I just thought, boy, that's bad. Yeah, it could be ice, could be contamination that sits there, the water gets stagnant, various toxic and pollution problems show up. So, yeah, you can get these figures of speech. The one that we point here, Paul used a figure of speech called ellipsis. And interestingly enough, most of our English translations drop that out. Top of page 18. Here's Philippians 4, 8, and 9. I put this in a kind of a poetic form because I think it's a little easier to see.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, and then here's the interesting part, the next five places it says whatever and the is isn't there in the Greek. whatever honorable, whatever right, whatever pure, whatever lovely. And his reason for doing this, and this isn't the only place he does it, his reason for doing this is because leaving the verb out creates a literary pause. And let me read it that way. Whatever is true, whatever honorable, whatever, right, whatever, lovely. Mentally, your anticipation of the word, dropping out the verb, places an emphasis upon it. Mentally, you're saying, okay, what's next?

So that's the way he wrote there. Then he said, if there's any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. And he put those things down for emphasis. So here is ellipsis. Here's where you drop something out intentionally. There are a great many other figures of speech. Let me give you some examples.

We talked about God's hands. How about figures of speech that talks about God's seeing? God's eyes are upon such and such. God listens. God even talks about God's ears. So different body parts that are human parts are used as an explanation, not because God has those parts, but because that's a figure of speech that we understand.

How about, here's another one. There's places in the Psalms where it says, He has us under His wings. He's got a chicken? Probably not. What's the intent of the figure of speech? Why would that description be valuable, helpful, comforting? His care. His care, yeah.

If you look at a mother bird, and I saw this numerous times when we had chickens on the farm and the chicken hawks would come over. All the little chicks, the hen would be gathering up under the wings, right? And so this figure of speech, It's not intended to convey that God has wings. It's intended to convey God's great care, His protection and care for us. So, we've got those kinds of figures of speech. Can you think of any others? Yeah, from the Bible or even general ones because frequently they're in the Bible too. Other figures of speech. Can you think of some?

That's actually part of something we'll look at later, and that's looking at culture. So the real question is, what does that mean culturally to them? And what does that mean to us? So those are key things that, and when we look at culture, we'll want to understand that. It's not quite a figurative speech, but it's an important one to take a look at.

Yeah? How about God on his throne? God on his throne. He doesn't sit on a throne. Yeah, what is that? He rules. Pardon? He rules. He rules, okay. Yeah, even talking about Christ as a king is really kind of a figure of speech, isn't it? It's using an analogy of things that we understand. What are some other figures of speech? How about in our own language? Figures of speech that we use regularly.

The Bible is a double-edged sword. Now, if we said that the Bible is a double-edged sword, that's called a metaphor. If we said the Bible is like a double-edged sword, that's a simile. That's the difference between simile and metaphor. Like or as is the simile. Drop out the like or as, and then it's a metaphor.

Christ says, I am the bread of life. Do I have Him for lunch? I am the door. I am the good shepherd. So all those are figures of speech, aren't they? Those are things that are given to give us illustration of the way in which the Lord cares for us. The position that the Lord has. Yeah, Tom? How about in Christ? That's a good question. In Christ.

Is that a figure of speech? I haven't heard that called a figure of speech. Vine the branches? Those would be I'm the vine, you're the branches? That's a metaphor, right? Because there isn't a simile. like or as used, so that would be a metaphor. In Christ is a statement, I'm not quite sure, I have to figure out if that's a figure of speech. It's a declaration. Pardon? Oh, it's certainly a declaration, yeah.

How about Galatians 2.20 for that?

Galatians 2.20. Okay.

And what part of that would you say is a figure of, Galatians 2.20 is a figure of speech?

It says that we are in Christ. but not using the word in place. Yeah, there are other places that describe it differently. If Christ was here in this room, we wouldn't literally be in His body, His physical body. So it's kind of like a figurative speech in Christ. It is referring to our spiritual position.

Yeah, there is a sense in the way you call that a figure of speech. If you look at it, we use figures of speech all the time. Scripture uses figures of speech all the time. Lots of places. And some of it is so much like our own, like this one we gave in the example of Peter. Some of it is so much like our own that we don't even recognize it as that. Others of it, it will be important for us to see. Okay, that's a figure of speech. I better get that figured out. Here's one of the interesting things.

Anybody heard of a theology called open theism? God doesn't know the future is the teaching of open theism. About the last roughly 25 years, it's been something that's been presented, although it's been taught elsewhere and other places and whatnot. But within Christianity, evangelical Christianity, that's been something that's been introduced. But it says God doesn't know the future. And so what they will do is interpret the things that talks about God in human terms, And they'll interpret all those kinds of figures of speech unless it has to do with God knowing the future. And then they interpret it literally, as if God doesn't know what's going on. I thought it'd be called closed theology. Yeah. Yeah, well, that may be a better term. But nonetheless, it's been called open theism or openness theology and a few other similar kinds of terms.

All right, so we've got these grammar and figures of speech we have on the bottom of page 18. You've got some suggested resources, and what I have here is links. Those are kind of long, so if you want to type those in, go ahead. The other option is to download this off the website and click on the link, and that'll get you to all three places. And the bottom line is, if you're thinking about, man, what's a verb, and what's a noun, and all that, here's just a four-page summary of those words that's free for the downloading. And if you want to take a look at it, I've got a sample up here. The next one is a little booklet. And I suggest you get it at this link, because it's only $2. Believe it or not, I've seen this little 23-page thing available for as much as a hundred bucks. Insane! So anyway, if you want one, pay two bucks for it. And this is at this link here, it's actually the Dallas Theological Seminary bookstore.

And then The next one, this is figures of speech, and I got permission from this guy, I can print them out, and you can as well. This guy is Brad Shaw over in England, and he's got a 17-page kind of explanation with examples. of scripture passages that use that figure of speech.

And so, anyway, and you can take a look at that as well. So he gives different examples. He even gives you, if you want to go that far, problems and exercises you can do. So I'll leave that up to you. But anyway, those are available. None of those are terribly expensive. Two of them are free and free for the downloading and printing. And so you can use those as resources that are helpful for study. OK. Thoughts, comments, questions, exasperations? Yes. Go ahead.

Something that was coming up a couple weeks ago, I think it was Galatians 5.16, but I'm not sure of that, but there's the words from grace to grace, which we interpret as increasing grace. Yet the literal words in the Bible, and I've looked at several different versions, actually NIV does say increasing grace. Right. Right. Right. Yes. Yes. And just the way they tended to use that. Yeah. Yeah. Faith. Yeah. Faith to faith. Grace to grace. You'll find that used several times in the New Testament, usually by Paul. It's increasing.

Of course, you have to look at context always, but that's the general use of the figure of speech. In other words, if somebody is actually pulling my leg, that's not a figure of speech, right? If they're joking with me and I say, hey, you're pulling my leg, that's a figure of speech. So you have to look at the context always, but that's the general use of the figure of speech.

It's faith to faith, grace to grace, glory to glory, 2 Corinthians. Yeah, yeah. It's a figure of speech. Just like this thing about what God does in the physical realm, He does with hands, and what He does in the spiritual realm, He does without hands. Well, that sounds weird. Unless you understand it's a figure of speech. Okay. Now I understand. If He does something in the physical realm, it's with hands. If God does something in the spiritual realm, it's without hands.

No problem, it's just a cultural figure of speech. How about in Paul's speech, don't muzzle the ox. That's quoting from the Old Testament. I wouldn't say it's a figure of speech because it was actually in the Old Testament you were literally not supposed to muzzle the ox, period. What he does is he uses that as a basis for how you deal with people in the New Testament. But it actually was intended literally, rather than as a figure of speech.

In our language, we would say, for example, he drives me up the wall. It doesn't mean you've ever been in a car with him, or he's driving. And I've yet to see anybody drive up a wall without getting in real trouble. Yeah, and I think, Doug, did you have a question or comment?

The only thing I was going to say, you notice this last one here that you put down has idioms. It's another thing that is important to understand. Yes, an idiom is a culturally contexted figure of speech, right? Something that has to do with a particular culture. This is the way they speak. Yeah, an idiom is a special kind of figure of speech. What page is that on? That's on page 18. What he's noting is that the very end of the website address, the link there, has idioms.

That's what Robert Bradshaw called it. Other thoughts, questions, inspirations? Okay, we're there? Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you. Thank you for the insights that we can have into your word and that you have inspired it for our benefit. And we just pray as we continue the day that you would speak to us through your word, touching between heart and between soul and spirit. Just thank you for the depth that your word touches. In Jesus' name, amen.