Dr. James Rosscup · The Master's Seminary · 76 minutes
Lecture by Dr. James Rosscup, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
Topic four opens the interpreter's most-used tool: the word study. Dr. Rosscup shows where a word's root history helps and where it misleads, why actual usage in context is what counts, how comparing a word across a book can nearly settle an interpretation, and where the riches hide, in lexicons, journals, customs books, and even Egyptian loanwords. The classroom questions at the end are as valuable as the lecture: answering the Watchtower, the so-called law of first mention, and what to do with a holy kiss.
A word's root can illuminate: the word for bishop is built from over and see, and the man is exactly an overseer; parable is cast alongside, one known thing set beside another for comparison. But words change in the history of a language, and etymology can mislead: kicked the bucket tells a foreigner nothing about dying, and spitting image began as spirit and image. Actual usage in actual contexts is what counts.
The English can hide distinctions the original makes. Dead in Ephesians 2:1 and the dead of the wake-up call in 5:14 translate different Greek words, and a Hebrew word like ruach can mean spirit, breath, wind, the Spirit of God, or a people's disposition, five or six senses sorted by context. The interpreter checks which word he actually has before he reasons from it.
Compare a word's instances across its own book first. Spirit in Ephesians usually names the Spirit of God; and tracing the word fill through Ephesians 1:23, 3:19, 4:10, and 5:18 turns up a pattern: in every other instance, God does the filling. That observation, pure context work, quietly strengthens the case that the filling of 5:18 is God the Holy Spirit's own work, and it thrills the student who had no idea it was there to find.
Concepts wear many words. The second coming appears under coming, appearing, and more; salvation is spoken of as eternal life, treasure in heaven, entering the joy of your Lord, and above all the kingdom, which study shows has both its thousand year aspect and its eternal, ultimate state beyond. Building that vocabulary is part of learning to read the whole Bible on any one line of truth.
Scripture's vocabulary is drawn from the race course, the marketplace, the farm, and the stage. Paul's fruit that abounds to your account in Philippians 4:17 is a business term for accruing interest: he wants not their gift so much as spiritual interest compounding toward their reward. Lexicons flag such colors, and manners and customs books, like the classic treatment of ancient sieges that explains how armies took walled cities, put the hearer almost inside the scene.
Luke 11:8 hangs on a Greek word that appears only once in the New Testament, so its meaning must be hunted outside it. One scholar devoted an entire journal article to its occurrences across the Greek world; another, in Poet and Peasant, gave it a chapter. The main views: the knocker's persistence, or the sleeper's concern for his blamelessness in a small community where refusing a neighbor would be all over town by morning. Either way the parable argues from the lesser to the greater: how much more will a good God give.
Beyond the lexicon: Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias that give pages on a single river or town; journal articles, like the studies on coals of fire in Romans 12:20; the six volumes of word pictures that walk the New Testament verse by verse; and the recent full-scale commentaries that build on all who came before. Use several sources, keep checking, and then stop and go preach: the checking principle serves the message, not the other way around.
Discernment applies to tools. Some hefty works stretch word meanings and are little used by careful scholars; some thin popular helps serve laypeople wonderfully. Match the tool to the reader: a Greek-laden exegetical commentary would choke the new student a flowing lay-level work would feed, and recommending the right book at the right level is a form of love, never condescension.
Commerce carried words between nations, and cognate languages sometimes unlock a text. The ships of desirable pictures in Isaiah 2:16 likely carry an Egyptian loanword for pleasure boats, so the day of the Lord falls on the whole proud fleet, great merchant ships and small pleasure craft alike, a reading that fits the context's judgment on self-sufficient commerce far better than imaginative alternatives.
Asked how to meet Jehovah's Witnesses on I and my Father are one, Rosscup prescribes the method itself: take the exact Greek word to the lexicon, trace its passages, read each in its own context noting what surrounds it, lean on a strong commentary on John, and master three or four primary verses thoroughly rather than skimming everything. Careful notes drawn from the text, not read into it, are the answer to those who read in.
A questioner raises the idea that a word's first biblical occurrence fixes its meaning everywhere after. False, Rosscup answers: the lexicon shows the same term carrying different senses in different contexts, and pasting one meaning across them all falsifies the text. What is legitimate is a progressive revelation thread on a subject, as God's provision of coverings in Genesis 3 anticipates the white garments of Revelation, but that is theology traced forward, not a law of words.
God told Jacob to leave the land; that is no command to leave seminary. Greet one another with a holy kiss belongs to its culture; the principle of warm, holy greeting travels, whether by handshake, bow, or, where fitting, the kiss itself. For a passage aimed at another audience, find the legitimate principle, confirm it by the analogy of the faith in passages like God's promises to guide, and apply the principle to your own situation as God applied his word to Jacob's.
A closing question: with pages of accumulated study, what goes in the message? Pore over the notes repeatedly, pray for direction, and let a disciplined outline work like a football field's boundary lines, a prescribed space that frees rather than confines. Overshoot and undershoot will both happen; take out illustrations that crowd the point; and after preaching, entrust the inevitable sense of having blown it to the God who is sufficient, and move on.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all thirteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. Why can etymology mislead the interpreter?
2. What does the example of dead in Ephesians 2:1 and 5:14 illustrate?
3. What pattern does tracing fill through Ephesians reveal?
4. What does Paul's phrase fruit that abounds to your account draw on?
5. Why does the key word of Luke 11:8 require special hunting?
6. What are the two main views of that word in the friend at midnight?
7. What is the parable's argument once the word is weighed?
8. What caution governs choosing study tools?
9. How does the Egyptian loanword help in Isaiah 2:16?
10. What method does the lecture prescribe for answering the Watchtower on the word one?
11. What is the verdict on the law of first mention?
12. How should the holy kiss command be handled today?
13. What image does the lecture use for a disciplined sermon outline?
All thirteen correct. Lecture 7 is complete.
Kicked the bucket proves that a phrase's parts do not give its meaning. What Bible words have you defined by their parts or their English feel rather than their usage, and what would checking actually look like?
God guided Jacob in Jacob's situation, and the principle, not the geography, applies to us. Pick one Old Testament command to someone else and practice finding its legitimate principle together.
Rosscup says he leaves every message feeling he blew it in some way, and entrusts it to a sufficient God. How does that honesty change the weight you put on your own performance in teaching, parenting, or witness?
The confession of Jeremiah 10:23: the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his steps. Every word study ends where the interpreter began, dependent on the God who speaks.
The lecture's own commendations: the word study appendix of the course syllabus with its step by step method, A. T. Robertson's Word Pictures in the New Testament, the standard lexicons for Hebrew and Greek, Kenneth Bailey's Poet and Peasant on the parables, the journal literature on hard words like the coals of fire of Romans 12:20, and, for laypeople, flowing helps at their level such as Alan Johnson's The Freedom Letter on Romans.