Exegesis

In today’s world, where the Bible and Biblical passages are misrepresented, misunderstood and weaponized for personal, financial, and political gain, it is imperative that we pay attention to who and what we are paying attention to. That is why exegesis is so important. The Divine expects us to think for ourselves, but more importantly he expects us to think intelligently for ourselves. Hence… exegesis.

Exegesis is “the process of careful analytical study of the Bible to produce useful interpretations of those passages.”1 (The word “exegesis” comes from the Greek term ἐξηγέομαι (exegeomai), which means “to explain” or “to narrate” or “to show the way”).

The process of exegesis involves asking questions of the text that might unearth new insights. However, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary is clear that the goal of exegesis is “to know neither less nor more than the information actually contained in the passage. Exegesis places no premium on speculation or inventiveness” and “novelty in interpretation is not prized.”

Simply put, exegesis is not about discovering what we think a text means (or want it to mean) but what the Biblical author meant. It’s concerned with intentionality—what the author intended his original readers to understand.

In his course New Testament Exegesis: Understanding and Applying the Old Testament, Andy Naselli explains:

Exegesis interprets a text by analyzing what the author intended to communicate. … For example, when a young lady who is deeply in love with her fiancé receives a letter from him, she reads it carefully. She wants to understand what her fiancé meant. The text means what the text’s author meant.

His point? Good exegesis involves reading God’s Word like that woman read her letter—scrupulously and with the right intent.

What is the difference between exegesis and eisegesis?

It can be tempting to slide into what’s called “eisegesis” when trying to interpret Scripture. (Yeah, I just tossed out another word-that-sounds-theological-but-is-really-not.) Exegesis and eisegesis sound similarly, but the words themselves give a clue to the difference—namely, in the prefixes “ex-” and “eis-.”

“Ex-” means to take out of, while “eis-” means “into.” So quite simply, exegesis means digging into the text to pull out the meaning, while its opposite, eisegesis, reads meaning into a text that isn’t there. Students of the Bible must perform solid exegesis, not eisegesis, because, as Peter J. Leithart says, “We don’t want to twist Scripture into saying something that it doesn’t actually say.”

We might not always like what the Bible says, but we must resist trying to “explain away anything [we] don’t like as ‘culture bound’ or in some way irrelevant to modern society,” as Henry Blackaby warns. Proper exegesis requires guarding against taking verses or passages out of context or doing irresponsible word studies that lead to misleading conclusions to fit what we want Scripture to mean.

Remember, we’re searching for what the author intended for it to mean.

What is the difference between exegesis and hermeneutics?

Though they might seem similar, there’s a slight difference between exegesis and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics focuses on principles of interpretation—how the interpretive process works, the “rules” necessary for searching out meaning. Exegesis applies those principles.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. explains that hermeneutics may be regarded as “the theory that guides exegesis; exegesis may be understood … to be the practice of and the set of procedures for discovering the author’s intended meaning.”

Is exegesis biblical?

The word “exegesis” does not appear in the New Testament, but the verb exageomai, “to lead out of,” does (once each in Luke and John and four times in Acts). Alan Cairns in Dictionary of Theological Terms affirms a good handful of folks in the Bible actually did exegesis:

The disciples who met the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus exegeted the events to the other disciples (Luke 24:35). Cornelius exegeted his vision to the servants whom he sent to Peter (Acts 10:8). Paul and Barnabas exegeted to the Jerusalem council the significance of the miracles and wonders God had done through them among the gentiles (Acts 15:12). Peter exegeted to the same gathering God’s first outreach to the gentiles through his ministry (Acts 15:14). Finally, Paul exegeted to James and the Jerusalem elders “particularly,” that is, in detail, what God had done through him among the gentiles (Acts 21:19).

Now let’s lean in to 2 Timothy 2:15 to further evaluate whether exegesis is biblical:

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

It’s the tail end of that verse, “rightly dividing the word of truth,” that convicts me. According to Paul, I have work to do. And so do you, dear believer. And we are to do that work well so as to not be ashamed. The work? “Dividing”—or in the ESV “handling”—God’s Word “rightly.”

Paul’s word choice “dividing” in 2 Timothy 2:15 was deliberate—it’s orthotomeō in Greek, which means “to cut straight.” It echoes the imagery used of the Word of God as a “double-edged sword” in Hebrews 4:12, a sword Charles Spurgeon says is “not to be played with”:

Swords are meant to cut and hack, and wound, and kill with, and the word of truth is for pricking men in the heart and killing their sins. The word of God is not committed to God’s ministers to amuse men with its glitter, nor to charm them with the jewels in its hilt, but to conquer their souls for Jesus.

One biblical hero who exemplified handling God’s word rightly is Ezra in 7:10:

For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. (Ezra 7:10)

In Old Testament Exegesis: Understanding and Applying the Old Testament, DeRouchie notes there’s an order present:

• Study the word.

• Do [practice] the word.

• Teach the word.

“Before you teach the word to others, you need to practice it,” DeRouchie says. “You must practice what you teach and preach. But before you practice and teach the word, you have to know what it says. So, you must study it. You must exegete it.”

So must we. We must responsibly and rightly divide God’s Word so that we can discover what the author intended for us to understand, then apply it to our lives, and then teach it to others.

Exegesis is not only biblical—it’s something we are charged to do.