Really... 'finger rings, nose rings?'

What’s YOUR Favorite Verse???

Have you ever noticed that the verses in the Bible don’t always make sense in terms of how they were divided?  (You do realize, don’t you, that the verse numbers aren’t original….they were added in much later, right?)  The placement is odd enough, that one of my friends and I used to share our favorite verses when asked as, “And the second” Luke 20:30 (that was his) and “finger rings, nose rings” Isaiah 3:21 as mine.  (Don’t believe me?  Look them up!)  The silly old story is that the guy who put in the verses was riding in a carriage at the time, and the wheel must have hit a bump or hole in the road at the moment he read that verse, leaving the ink smear that became the verse marker there.

Well, lots of people know where to point when you ask them their favorite verse of the Bible.  Others use the concept of a “life verse” instead.  I do have a verse that especially means a lot to me that I would tell you is my favorite if you asked (besides the Isaiah verse), but the truth is, there are many verses that really speak to me.  Because it is true that specific phrases and verses can have tremendous impact in our lives at certain times. 

However, like me, perhaps you have heard people quoting verses, and then later, when you looked them up, found out when you read around it, the verse didn’t mean at ALL what the people had indicated.  It is so important to check out the context of a verse, not merely the apparent meaning of a verse itself.  I think a good example is in Malachi 2:16, part of which is often quoted when people say, “God hates divorce.”  But the context implies there is a whole lot more going on than just that God hates divorce.  (I’m going to let YOU look it up yourself, just for practice in examining context if nothing else!) 

People say that P.T. Barnum once said, “There is a sucker born every minute.”  And the people who say that, are some of the suckers!   Because Barnum didn’t say it.  Look it up.  Someone could possibly say that there is a Bible verse misused out of context every day.  And they’d be right.  Just don’t let yourself be the sucker taken in by it, okay?

TL:dr  Biblical context is EVERYTHING when understanding biblical quotes.