As suggested by Micah, I’ve decided to write a top-5 list of Bible verses taken out of context. The Bible is a huge collection of books and it is easy and tempting to take verses or pieces of Scripture out of context in order to twist them into something that we want them to say, or to lessen the challenge they present us. In recent years, I’ve had a guilty pleasure of watching TBN. The prosperity gospel or word of faith theology espoused there is built on rather shady exegesis in my opinion. This would be a long post if I were to include all the bad Scripture quoting I’ve heard there, so I’ll leave much of it alone. Here are my top-5 verses taken out of context. I’m curious to see if people agree with me that they’ve been misused, as well as what other texts do you think are commonly made to say something that their original context doesn’t warrant. Some could make a strong argument against the Gospel of Matthew’s use of biblical texts, but I won’t open that can of worms. All the verses here will be taken from the NRSV, unless otherwise noted.

1. Revelation 3.20, “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” I know that this is a very personal verse for many people and I’ve seen it used on many a tract and in many an evangelistic message, but the context of the verse is not about an individual converting to Christ. The larger context of the verse shows that Jesus’ message of knocking is written to a church that needs renewal. Jesus coming to eat with us in our individual lives may be a beautiful image, but that’s not what this verse intends to communicate.


2. Joel 3.10, “Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weakling say, ‘I am a warrior.’” I heard many use this verse in the lead-up to the war in Iraq as a biblical defense to say that sometimes, it is necessary to fight. I’m not a pacifist, but to use this verse as a justification for war is grossly mistaken. If one reads the larger context of Joel 3, one sees this verse as a judgment of God against the nations that oppressed God’s people. It is as if God says with disdain and sarcasm, “You nations want to make war? Fine, make war. Go into the Valley of Jehoshaphat and kill each other. Bring your swords and in fact make your agricultural tools into weapons.” The audience of this command appears to be the foreign nations, not the people of Judah. Joel’s proclamation may be an intentional distortion of Isaiah 2.4, “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” See also Micah 4.3. Perhaps Isaiah and Micah later recast Joel’s formulation—it depends on when one dates these books and some think Isaiah and Micah are older than Joel whereas others think Joel was written first.


3. Job 25.5, “Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.” (KJV) This isn’t a verse used a ton, but I’ve heard it used a few times to defend a reading of creationist science into the Bible. I first encountered the misuse sitting in on a Sunday School class in college—that class was one of the reasons I decided to attend a different church. The class attempted to show that most of our modern scientific discoveries were already well-known in the Bible. For example, the Job passage (it was quoted in the KJV, which is why I use it here), shows that God revealed to the biblical authors that the Moon did not produce its own light, but reflected light from another source, which scientists didn’t discover until centuries later. Clearly the Bible knows more about the physical world than our scientists and therefore, any scientific theory that seems to contradict biblical texts (i.e., evolution) is suspect. But if a person read one verse further, to verse 6 in the King James no less, one would find this, “How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?” Doesn’t that say we have a common ancestor with worms? In context, the Job verses describe the greatness of God in comparison to the physical world and do not draw conclusions regarding astronomical observations.


4. Proverbs. Choosing a whole book is a bit of a cheat, but I think it is an example of misunderstanding genres in the Bible. Many read the statements in Proverbs as commands rather than as, well, proverbs. There is a reason that biblical scholars throughout history have not included Proverbs with the Torah: they are not meant to be instructions or laws, but observations on the good life. Taken together, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes reflect on the meaning of life in light of God, death, and Torah. Many read the Proverbs as commands. For example I have heard people use Proverbs 13.24 as a mandate to spank children. (“Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.”) But the observations in Proverbs are not like the declarations of the Ten Commandments. The author of Proverbs has observed that disciplining children actually loves them, he has not given a manual for corporal punishment. I won’t push this issue further because the post could quickly turn into a discussion of hermeneutics.


5. Matthew 23.23, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.” I have seen people use this verse to take a stand against Pharisaic legalism or as a repudiation of what they consider minute religious observations. Jesus doesn’t actually refute tithing on the herbs mentioned. In fact, earlier in this section of woes against the Pharisees, Jesus tells his audience, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”(Mt 23.2, 3) Matthew 23 does not cancel out the religious observations of the Pharisees, but intends to put them in the correct context. Our practice of our faith can become skewed if we neglect the focus, the goal of our expressions. If the expressions become and end to themselves or merely intend to build us up before God, then we are mistaken. If our practices lead us to greater humility and worship before God as well as to acting justly and mercifully toward our neighbor, then they are healthy and godly.