Step 2: Explore the General Meaning of the Passage.

(This step can be incorporated into the first steps of the inductive method on “What does it say”)

Your objective is to seek the broad-spectrum meaning, the overarching structure of your passage, and clarify it. Thus you observe the structure to see what is going on and report it. In this way, you can understand it then you can communicate that understanding to your people. You can ask, what does the biblical author mean and what is the intent and objective of the passage? What are the basic and essential elements? What did the original readers see in the passage? What are the general precepts and principles being presented? At this point, try not to look at the specifics before you have the general idea firmly in your mind. Paraphrase the passage. Diagram and/or outline it. Remember, you are to engage the Bible by examining the general meaning, seeking the parts of it, and then bringing them all together for understanding and application; whole, to parts, to whole.

·        The primary goal of interpretation is to find the “plain meaning” of the Bible so it can be used in your life, church, and community!

·        What is it? Who is the author? What is the intent, the language, the genre….

·        What does the passage say? What does the general overview of the passage really say? Ignore what you have been told or what you presume; the point here is to do your own deductive analysis to determine, in context and as accurately as possible, what God is saying in the passage you are studying.

·        What is the major theme?

·        What is the storyline?  

·        Start an outline of the passage. I suggest an inductive order in three to four sections.

·        Good exegesis means we write down what God is actually saying not what we want Him to say.

·        Good exegesis means that God has control of what is being said and we do not, we are to hear and perceive what He has for us.