A slingful of stones (1)

Then he [David] took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine. 1 Samuel 17:40

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved… who correctly handles the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15

I recently read online a sermon about David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17). One detail the preacher focused on was the “five smooth stones” which David took from the stream to go with the deadly weapon of his sling.

He obviously wanted to find an up-to-date application of these stones for us as modern Christians; so he suggested that they represent… faith, obedience, service, prayer and the Holy Spirit. To be fair to him, he wasn’t claiming “this is the one, true meaning” of the stones, but “suggesting” that they can helpfully be taken that way.

Fair enough. But others are not so restrained; they ferret out all sorts of weird and (most people would agree) not very wonderful meanings in Bible passages.

The Christian bishop Augustine of Hippo (354-430) famously did this with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). You always thought this was a beautiful, simple story about compassion and generosity shown by an enemy, a foreigner, to a person in need? Well, sorry, but you got it wrong…

The “man” on the journey is in fact Adam. “Jerusalem”, where he is headed, is heaven. “Jericho”, where he’s travelling from, is the moon(!), which waxes and wanes and therefore represents mortality. The “robbers” are the devil and his angels. When they “strip him” they rob him of his immortality. When they “beat him” they persuade him to sin. The “priest and Levite” who fail to help him represent the now obsolete Old Testament covenant. The “Samaritan” (of course) is Jesus. The “wine and oil” he anoints the man with represent sin being dealt with. The “inn” to which the Samaritan takes the man is the church, and the “innkeeper” is an apostle. The “two coins” the Samaritan gives the innkeeper are the present life and the life to come.

So now you know…

I shouldn’t mock: Augustine was, by all accounts, a great teacher and a truly spiritual man. But who would dream of suggesting such an interpretation today? Can it be called an example of “correctly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15)?

Where do these thoughts take us? Well, David’s five stones and Augustine’s interpretation of the Good Samaritan illustrate a vital distinction we should always keep in mind when we read, teach or preach the Bible. If you’ll pardon the technical terms (please bear with me), it’s the distinction between exegesis and eisegesis.

Exegesis is the attempt to “draw out” from the passage the meaning which is there (ex in Greek means “out of” or “from”). Eisegesis is the attempt to “put into” it a meaning which isn’t there (eis means “into”). Putting it in plain language, if you exegete a passage you aim to make its true meaning clear; if you eisegete it you foist on it your own agenda – putting it even more bluntly, you make it mean something you want it to mean, not something which is clearly there. And that’s not good.

Oh dear, I can see an objection heading my way… “Look, you said yourself that the man preaching on David’s stones was saying some helpful things, even if they’re not explicitly there in the passage. And even Augustine’s wacky interpretation can remind us of some great Bible truths. So wot’s yer problem, sunbeam?”

The problem is this: handling the Bible like this means that we can make it mean just about anything we like – including seriously wrong things. All we need is a bit of ingenuity and a willingness to twist it to suit our own prejudices.

The most obvious example is passages from books like Daniel and Revelation which describe strange visions and point towards “the last things”, the end of the world. How many sects and cults – some of them horribly dangerous and destructive – have been born from groups which treat these books for all the world like a mystical code, and which are convinced that (wahay!) they alone have cracked it?

The proper way to read the Bible is to follow the most natural sense. And if there are times (as there will be) when we are puzzled, isn’t it better, humbler (not to mention simply more honest) to say, “We really can’t be sure exactly what this passage means, so let’s rest content with that”? (1 Peter 3:19-20 or 1 Corinthians 11:2-12, particularly the bit about “the angels”, might be good examples from the New Testament.)

The Bible is God’s inspired word. But it isn’t always easy to understand, and even the parts that seem fairly straightforward are open to misuse. May we never be misled! Even more, may we never be guilty of misleading others!

Loving Father, please help me to approach your word with humility and wisdom, never reading into it ideas of my own, but always wanting, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to draw out its true meaning – and then to put it into practice. Amen.

(Having said all this, I think that David’s stones can legitimately signify  something very practical and helpful for us today – perhaps I’ll come back to it next time…)