Interpreting Words: How to Use a Bible Dictionary to Guide Your Understanding
Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law.—Psalm 119:18
Sometimes the key to Bible study—in fact, learning anything new—is to simply be curious.
As a homeschooling mom, I have discovered that if I am willing to be a learner, if I just start picking up a book, whether it be on Roman baths, literary analysis, or the Krebs cycle, it becomes interesting as I start to unearth facts, make connections, and add the new things I learn to what I already know.
The same is true for Bible study.
But Bible study is not merely about knowing more. It is meant to help us become more—more like Christ. What we know is then reflected in how we live, model and teach to others. Our time with Jesus fuels us to help others become like Jesus.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been digging into Titus 2, specifically verses 3-5, which read:
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
So far, we have spent some time observing the passage, where I have discovered that this is a pastoral epistle addressed to a church planted by the apostle Paul himself. Though it is addressed to Titus, the people of the church were also included in it.
In the passage I’m studying, this directly includes the older and younger women, but the surrounding context shows that the older men, younger men, and bondservants were also included as well. Pretty much everyone!
In my last post, I also discovered that like many of the new churches, this church struggled with living godly lives in the midst of the pagan culture. They were notorious for their dishonesty (Titus 1:12-13), but they were also victims of dishonest teachers who were seeking to steer them away from the truth (vv. 10-11).
Pull Out Those Questions!
As I shared earlier, almost anything can be interesting if you approach it with a posture of wonder. Putting your wonder to work, wondering about the details, asking questions—and not just absorbing information—leads us to the real treasure of discovery.
One way I do this is simply be asking questions. In my earlier post, I had mentioned that we start a list of questions. Some that I started with included:
What is considered “older”? Is there a certain age?
What does it mean to be “reverent”? What does that look like?
What do the words “pure” and “submissive” mean? How can these keep God’s word from being reviled?
What does it mean to teach?
What is considered “good” to teach (implying that we may also inadvertently teach what is “bad”)?
After my last post, I came up with some more questions—ones I didn’t know to ask before:
What’s with the lists in 2:1-10? In a letter to a pastor and his church, why does Paul focus on roles that concern home and family?
How does the home and family impact the bigger picture and story?
What qualifies someone to teach?
With a list like this, I can keep myself occupied for quite some time, so for the sake of this post, I will pick one or two to use as examples. The rest will be things I explore on my own!
As I look at my list, I have noticed that my earlier questions tend to focus on word meanings as well as general themes. This will give us the perfect opportunity to take a closer look at the first of two skills that will help us to interpret more precisely. I’ll start with word study this week and tackle cross-references next time.
Pick a Word That Interests You
Because words are the building block of meaning, it’s good to wonder about what they mean. This is especially so in Bible study, as we are reading an English translation of the Greek text.
Now, for most of us lay people, the good news is we don’t need to learn the original languages to understand words. What we will need is a concordance and a Bible dictionary or lexicon to help us.
If you’d like to do a true word study, you would take the concordance and look up all the usages of a particular word, but most of us are probably not going to have time for that.
However, we also want to not just reach for an English dictionary either because word meaning can change with culture, we may import our American understanding into it and skew the interpretation slightly.
For this post, I’m going to just start with my first question: What is considered “older”? Is there a certain age?
In asking this question, I am wondering if I should take this literally (that is, a woman who is literally old in years) or if it can be understood as a comparison (that is, relative to one another). Do women need to wait until they reach a certain age to join the “older woman” camp, or does this call apply to any woman who has younger women looking up to her?
This is interesting to me because I know of some exceptions to the rule. I have learned greatly from women my age (and even those younger!) about how to love and care for my children. On the flip side, there are also women older than me that I should not be listening to. How do I find out what Paul meant?
But First, A Side Note About Figurative Language
In general, Howard Hendricks, in his book, Living by the Book, explains that if it makes “normal sense,” then we need not seek any other hidden or secret meanings. That’s why I like the epistles: they’re mostly straightforward and direct, which makes it a lot easier in some ways. It’s when we get into imagery (especially the fantastical kind in apocalyptic literature), figures of speech, or object lessons where plain sense doesn’t make any sense that we need to stretch our literary muscles.
In short, unless things are impossible, absurd or immoral and there is good reason not to take things literally—as in dreams, visions or obvious figures of speech that are not meant to be taken literally—stick with the literal.
Remember: God desires to communicate with us. If He uses other literary devices, they are subservient to His purposes, not a secret code we need to decipher. He has already told us plainly the way of salvation. Those who have ears to hear will find that even the bizarre eventually makes sense in light of what is clear.
Understanding Words=Understanding Meaning
If you do not have a concordance or Bible dictionary, no need to fret! We now have so many tools online we can use. Here’s how I did my study.
To start, I headed over to Blue Letter Bible and typed in Titus 2:3 and selected “ESV”, as that is where the phrase “older women” is found.
Next to the verse is a button “Tools.” Hovering over it showed a menu of options. I selected “Dictionaries.” There, I found an entry for “Age/Old age” from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia that tells me “We have scarcely any word in the Old Testament or New Testament which denotes ‘age’ in the familiar modern sense.” Well, that is a start!
As I skim further down this entry, I find out that the Greek word for “older women” is presbytis, literally “aged women,” the counterpart to presbytēs (for men), which means “aged” or “advanced in days.” So while the Bible may not have a particular number of years in mind, it is someone on the older side.
Towards the end of the entry, the dictionary did for me what would often take hours if I tried to do it on my own: it summarized what the general understanding of “age” in the entire Bible. Several things stood out:
Old age was generally held as an honor and respect was required (Lev. 19:32).
Wisdom was often tied to old age (though not always, as noted in Job 32:9).
Those who were both wise and aged were often given positions of leadership where their life experience and insight can serve as a guide to the community.
Old age was an attainment greatly desired, as it was linked to divine blessing (e.g. Gen. 15:15; Ps. 91:16). While we try to get rid of gray hairs, the Bible considers them “a crown of glory” (Prov. 16:31).
To compare and round out my study, I went back to the “Tools” list and looked up Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words to see if there was any additional insight.
From here, I learned the Greek word for “older women” (presbytis) is only used once in the whole New Testament (in Titus 2:3), but I discovered that the male form, presbytēs, translated “older men,” is used 3 times to refer to an old man (Luke 1:18; Titus 2:2), but it could also possibly mean “to be an ambassador” as in Philemon 1:9. Hmmm….
As always, after I deep dive, I like to come up for air and try to summarize what I’ve learned. To answer my original question, I can say that while “older woman” may not have a number of years in mind, they are probably not young either.
But I am intrigued by the additional dimension of being an ambassador as well. This role requires that someone know intimately the one they represent. And that kind of knowledge takes time and effort.
Unlike our modern understanding of age, to be called an “older woman” is actually an honor and special position. This honor is often tied to wisdom that comes with advanced years of life experience—and in this case, experience in walking with God.
Timeout…Again!
Again, when I get to a point in my study when I’ve got something to chew on, I’ll stop.
As I add this piece to my growing understanding of TItus 2:3-5, I am realizing this: that older women participate in the gospel in this unique way: by being an ambassador to younger women, encouraging them to reach out to the mission field in their own homes.
Teaching and training younger women—drawing from their own life experience (presumably both of failure and success!)—how to love their husband and children is a way that we multiply the gospel. This is important in a time and age when women were still second-class citizens. Yet Paul gives them a special role to play in the development of the new church.
Far from taking it easy in retirement, God intended older women to continue to grow in their reverent behavior by growing in their awareness of God’s greatness. This is the prerequisite that equips them to teach and train those coming after them. This is good work—and powerful too.
