Rules for Interpreting Historical Narratives, Part 3 | Rapp Report Daily 0059 | Striving for Eternity

Welcome to The Rapid Pull, daily edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

Historical Narratives Record Events Without Directly Teaching Doctrine

As we've been looking this week, starting to investigate how to interpret the Bible, we start with historical narratives, and we want to spend a lot of time on this one, specifically because it is so often misrepresented and abused.

One of the things we see and have looked at already is the fact that many people try to use historical narratives to teach doctrine, and the first principle we saw when interpreting a historical narrative is that it does not directly teach doctrine.

It records what did happen, not what should happen, and therefore we have to remember that narratives do not always include a statement of whether the event is good or bad, so without a statement of God condemning or commending the behavior, we don't know whether it is something that's recorded and we should follow, recorded and we should avoid, or just recorded.

When we see Laban basically tricking Jacob into marrying the older daughter before the younger, is that a practice that we should follow? Should fathers be tricking their future son-in-laws just because Laban did that?

Well, actually, the Bible doesn't say specifically whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but what it does accurately record is what actually happened historically. So when we look at that, we see what did happen.

When we see David or Solomon or anyone else having multiple wives, does that mean that God says we should do it? Well, we see that God makes it clear that he planned one man and one woman, and so we have to look at other principles sometimes to better understand the narrative.

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