
“The wisdom of what a person says is in direct proportion to their progress in learning the holy scriptures–and I am not speaking of intensive reading or memorization, but real understanding and careful investigation of their meaning.” —― Saint Augustine of Hippo
How do you begin to understand the Bible? Well it all starts with seeing the Bible as both a unified story and a library of different books. Every book of the Bible has a unique context and most of them tell you exactly what those contexts are. Anything written by Paul is a letter written to a specific church in a specific place and time. Reading the Psalms you’ll see that it’s poetry that is written by many different people. Genesis has both poetry and narrative. The whole Bible is full of distinctive books with special attributes to consider.
One way we can look at each book of the Bible is that it has three contexts we should consider:
1. Original context: Who it was originally written by and who was the original audience.
2. Biblical context: Where it fits into our Bible. Consider positioning and chronology.
3. Christian context: How it fits into our lives in light of what Christ has done.
If we want to grow in biblical understanding it’s important that we do our best to investigate the Bible and truly understand it in all of its contexts.
Use your physical Bible or digital Bible to read Psalms 22
Growth Challenge
Apply the context of Psalms 22 through thoughtful questions
-Original Context- Who is authorship attributed to here?
-What kind of literature are the Psalms? Does that change the way you read it at all?
Biblical context- What book is this verse located in?
-Psalms 22:1 is famously repeated in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 by Jesus himself while he was about to die on the cross. It stands to reason that Jesus was referring to the whole chapter of Psalms 22 when we quoted Psalms 22:1.
-Based on all of Psalms 22- What else was Jesus referring to? Think about how Jesus is actually fulfilling the call of a king like David was trying to do. Pay special attention to 22:6-8 and the human emotions Jesus must have been feeling.
Christian Context- How can we apply Psalms 22 and other Psalms knowing how Jesus used it?
-How much more impactful are Jesus’ words knowing the context of the Psalm he was referring to?
-Knowing that Jesus used the Psalms to call out to God what does that mean for us? Can we use the psalms the same way?