Do you ever turn the page of a book and feel completely lost? Perhaps the story jumps or the characters change. For a moment, you are totally disoriented as you try to figure out what happened. Inevitably, you realize that you skipped a page and turning back puts you to right again. The context of a story is essential in understanding the flow of the narrative, the development of the plot, and the message of the author. Last week, I talked about the occasional nature of each book of the Bible and how important it is to recognize that the books were written for a specific reason to a specific audience. Beyond this context of each book of the Bible, we also have to ground the text within the context of the passages that surround it. We have to understand how the story or the argument flows together in order for the writing to make sense. The atomized nature of our current Bibles is foreign to the original text. Although I grew up citing chapter and verse, doing “sword drills”, and memorizing individual verses, the chapters and verses weren’t added to the Bible until the Late Middle Ages. For most of history, the text of the Bible was read in the same way that you would read any other book.
Over a few posts, I’m going to look at the importance of context in three different ways, in narrative accounts, in logical arguments, and in the context of the cultural understanding of the Old Testament and other Jewish literature. In this post, we will unpack narrative context by looking at a few examples. In Western society, our media have moved from being an oral tradition to being a literature tradition. In the last 50 years, we have moved away from consuming books into consuming movies, television, and now YouTube shorts and TikToks. The impact of these changes on our attention spans has been catastrophic. Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death catalogs the impact of television on how we view the world. In the church, we have come to expect Biblical lessons to fit neatly into a 30-minute sermon. Like a tv sitcom, we read each story expecting a concise moral example in one chapter or less. We expect to find resolution within a single chapter. The challenge is that the Bible doesn’t function like that. Many of the points of the narrative are found in juxtaposition with other stories. Today, I want to look at a few examples where reading in context, reading with the whole of the text in mind can help us understand exactly what the author is doing.
Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38)
I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard a sermon on the story of Judah and Tamar. This is one of those uncomfortable stories that we don’t know what to do with, so we act like it doesn’t exist. To summarize, Judah leaves his brothers and marries a Canaanite. Judah’s firstborn (Er) marries Tamar, but he is wicked so God puts him to death. Judah’s second born (Onan) doesn’t want to provide an heir for his deceased brother and refuses fulfill his duties with Tamar. God puts him to death as well. Judah then fears for his last son’s life and refuses to give Tamar to his third son (Shelah). When Tamar sees that she isn’t going to be remarried, she dresses up as a prostitute and Judah unknowingly sleeps with her while away on a trip. When Judah finds out that Tamar is pregnant, he commands that she be stoned to death for being a prostitute but Tamar proves that Judah is the father and so her life is spared. In isolation, it isn’t easy to see how to understand this text. Judah and at least two of his sons are wicked. Although Tamar is a foreigner, she demonstrates more righteousness than the family chosen by God. Read within the confines of Chapter 38, the story ends with the birth of Perez and Zerah but the reader gets no further detail on either of their lives. Though Perez is mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy, we don’t hear anything else about them. The crucial interpretive element is to notice where this story occurs within the broader narrative arc of Genesis. Genesis is the story of the origins of the Jewish people. The first 11 chapters cover early human history. 12-25 covers Abraham’s story. 25-36 covers Isaac, Jacob and Esau though they focus mainly on Jacob. The story of Jospeh begins in chapter 37 and continues through the end of the book, excluding this one story. So, the story of Judah and Tamar isn’t really about Judah and Tamar but about framing the story of Jospeh and Potiphar’s wife. In Genesis 38, we see Joseph among a foreign people (Egypt) faced with sexual temptation (Potiphar’s wife) and yet resisting that temptation. Joseph’s integrity earns him several years in prison, where even interpreting dreams doesn’t set him free. The point of the Judah and Tamar story is to show how pivotal Joseph’ actions were. He could have easily sinned in the same ways as Judah or his sons and sidetracked God’s plan for preserving His people in Egypt.
Nicodemus and the Woman at the Well
Another text that only makes full sense in context are the stories of Nicodemus (John 3) and the woman at the well (John 4). We often read these and preach these as stand-alone stories. People draw broad theological conclusions (“you must be born again”) for one or the other of these encounters but the narrative is clearly pairing them together to make specific points. First, we have Jesus meeting with Nicodemus. Nicodemus is not only a male Jew, but a Pharisee and a ruler. Nicodemus should be well-versed in the Scriptures and should readily understand who Jesus is and what He has come to do. Instead, Nicodemus is literally in the dark. He comes at night. He doesn’t understand the Spirit. He doesn’t understand the second birth. The story doesn’t resolve with any action or response by Nicodemus. Next, we have the woman at the well (John 4). Of all the people Jesus encounters, the reader would expect this woman to understand least of all. Women were generally uneducated and were not educated in Torah. She is a Samaritan, meaning she comes from the mixture of the 10 Northern tribes that were exiled by Assyria and the people groups that they settled in Judea. Samaritans only considered the Torah to be scripture; they did not read the Writings (Ketuvim) or the Prophets (Nevi’im). Their religion amounted to a syncretism between authentic Jewish worship of God and their own tribal traditions. In contrast to Nicodemus, she talks with Jesus in the middle of the day (full sunlight). Despite her initial hangups (not understanding living water, Mt. Gerazim vs. Jerusalem, etc.) she rather quickly recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah. This recognition spurs a response: she evangelizes to her community and “many of the Samaritans…believed.” John doesn’t actually tell the reader when in the ministry of Jesus either of these encounters occurred, but he pairs them together to paint a picture of the established leadership remaining “in the dark” while the outcasts (the Samaritans) are coming to faith.
The Waiting Parables
There are an astounding number of connections made when we start to read the stories as the author’s intentional narrative flow. One other example I want to touch on are the series of parables that follow the disciple’s questions to Jesus on the Temple Mount. The disciples are calling Jesus’ attention to the grandeur of the Temple and Jesus predicts that it will be destroyed (Matthew 24). The disciples ask two questions (when will this happen, what will be the sign of the end of the age) which Jesus addresses in some way. As an aside, what of Jesus’ response is tied to the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. and what is tied to the “end of the age” is widely disputed. It is in this context that Jesus tells (or Matthew recalls) a series of parables. You first encounter the negligent servant (24:45-51), the ten virgins (25:1-13), the talents (25:14-30), and the sheep and goats (25:31-46). Our tendency is to break each of these into its own morality play, to draw a conclusion from them, preach a weekly sermon on them, and be done. What Matthew is doing, though, is connecting all these parables with the dialogue that Jesus just gave about the destruction of the temple and the end of the age. In the first parable, the servant gets lulled into thinking that because the master hasn’t returned quickly, he won’t return at all. He abuses his fellow servants and becomes a drunkard and is then exiled from the kingdom when the master returns. The parable of the 10 virgins, then, conveys the opposite warning. For those expecting that the bridegroom (Jesus) might return quickly, they are unprepared for an extended wait. These don’t have enough oil to stay ready and end up missing the wedding banquet. We then have servants rewarded for good stewardship while the master was gone or punished for poor stewardship with ill-intent. Lastly, you have a judgement between the righteous and the unrighteous based on how they treated those in need. If we connect the four parables, we see a picture of how we should live with regard to Christ’s return: ready at any moment but prepared for an extended wait and wise stewards of what has been entrusted but not at the expense of those who are in need. When we try to remove these from their context, we get skewed readings that overemphasize one view at the expense of another (expectation or patience, stewardship or generosity). Many of the parables are meant to be read contextually. The stories that precede or follow them, whether parables or events can shape their message and meaning.
What are ways that you have drawn connections between Biblical narratives in context? Are there stories that have come alive in a new way when you read them in context with the passages that surround them?