“What’s your favorite Old Testament Bible verse?”
Do you realize that’s a question the biblical authors would have never been able to answer? They didn’t have Bible verses. That was something invented only about 500 years ago. They had various methods for drawing attention to which section of the Bible they were discussing. As an example, they would frequently quote part of a Psalm in order to point to the entire thing. This is likely, in part, what Jesus was doing when he quoted Psalm 22 from the Cross.
This is different from the way we typically quote a Bible verse. When we quote verses the whole of our thought is typically encapsulated in what we are quoting. For example, if someone quotes Jeremiah 29:11 at a graduation the only point they are making is that God has a plan for them. It’s not meant to call into mind the entirety of Jeremiah’s argument.
This impacts the way we deal with New Testament quotations. When a New Testament author cites a verse his whole thought isn’t typically contained in that one verse. He is often thinking of the entire context of that one verse. Take for example Paul’s quotation of Psalm 116:10 in 2 Corinthians 4:13.
“I believe, and so I spoke”.
That’s it. That’s all he quotes from Psalm 116. Is he only using that verse to make a point that their belief leads to their speaking? If we read it like we typically read Bible verses we will skip right through that verse. But if we go back and read all of Psalm 116 we see how much the entire Psalm influences what Paul is saying.
The context of Psalm 116 is a thanksgiving to God for delivering from impending death. It’s no accident that Paul spoke of “despairing of life itself” in 1:8 and now says “perplexed, but not driven to despair”. His experience in Asia has done it’s work. Paul sees his suffering in the line of sufferers modeled in Psalm 116. This is the same “spirit of faith” that he is talking about in 2 Corinthians 4:13. Just as the Psalmist was afflicted and yet was delivered so also is Paul. And in the same way that the deliverance is to be shared in the public worship, so also Paul’s suffering and deliverance is for the sake of the Corinthians growth in Christ. Read Psalm 116 and then read 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 again and see how many connections you find.
But we miss all of this if we think the biblical authors quoted verses the way that we do. So here is a little tip for your Bible reading. Whenever you see that a New Testament passage is a quotation of an Old Testament passage, don’t just go back and read that one verse in the OT. Instead go back and read the entire Psalm, or the entire context of that quote. It’ll help you to understand more fully why the biblical author quoted that verse.
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Similarly, while we need academics and scholars in biblical study, the academics and scholars sometimes need to reflect that the biblical authors don’t necessarily think like academics and scholars.
I did as you suggested here when I read the quotation from the prophets in Mark 1. I gave me a seriously different understanding of it. Thank you. Keep up the good work.