It has get increasingly popular in recent years for teachers of the Bible (myself included) to disparage people who apply Jeremiah 29:11-thirteen to their lives. "You're non paying attention to the context!," they loudly protest ( … as I have). This post will explore whether such disparagement is appropriate, and conclude that oftentimes it is not. I hope to model something most how to interpret the Bible at the same fourth dimension.

Jeremiah 29:11-thirteen are favorite verses for many people:

For I know the plans I accept for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a promise. And so you will telephone call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you lot. You lot volition seek me and find me when you lot seek me with all your eye (Jeremiah 29:eleven-13 ESV).

People love these verses considering they find encouragement in the thought that God has good intentions for them even in the midst of suffering. They are heartened when they read that God hears their prayers. They are strengthened with the thought that when they seek the Lord with all their heart they will find the Lord.

Just teachers of the Bible sometimes indicate out that the immediate literary context pertains to God'south promise to bring back the people of Israel from Babylon after seventy years in exile (Jeremiah 29:10). Thus, these verses apply only to the exiled Israelites living in the 6th century B.C. — not to the states, or then it is claimed. "Pay attention to the context!" is the reminder they offer, and, truthfully, a reminder that all of us need to hear.

But I remember that at that place is a bit more than to consider in biblical interpretation. The dissenters are correct that the literary context (the verses surrounding these verses) connects the reader to a particular historical context, that is, return from the Babylonian exile. It can be terribly frustrating (maddening, actually) to listen to people interpret the Bible who glibly ignore literary and historical contexts. Simply are those two contexts (the literary and historical contexts) the only two contexts you need to pay attention to when reading Scripture?

No, at that place is another context that is crucial if you want to read the Bible well. That context is the approved context, or, labeled differently, the whole-Bible context. The whole-Bible context is the context you work with to identify patterns and themes that run through (you guessed it…) the whole Bible and pay attention to whether such themes are also present in the verses you are trying to translate. If whole-Bible themes run through the verses to which you are attention, then it is proper — even necessary — to telephone call out such patterns and themes — not as the main meaning of the verses, but as a proper broadening of the meaning that connects specific verses to the overall narrative and teaching of the whole Bible.

Are at that place such whole-Bible patterns and themes that appear in these verses from Jeremiah 29? Aye. There are at least four.

  1. God makes promises that are good, and intends to fulfill them (poetry 11) (compare ane Kings 8:56; Psalm 105:viii-10; Jeremiah 32:42; Luke 24:49; Rom 11:29).
  2. God listens to his people when they pray (verse 12) (compare two Chronicles 7:12-xvi; Psalm 34:15; Matthew 7:xi; James 5:fourteen-18).
  3. God allows his people to discover him when they seek him (poetry xiii) (compare Deuteronomy 4:29-31; 1 Chronicles 16:eleven-17; Isaiah 51:one-3; 55:6; Matthew 7:7).
  4. God repeatedly rescues his people out of exile (verse 14) (compare Exodus 2:23; Psalm 144:11; Ezekiel 34:x-22; Colossians ane:xiii; ane Peter i:1).

Whatever time nosotros fail to pay attention to the literary and historical contexts of Jeremiah 29:11-13, we deserve the wrist-slap we've been getting from teachers who complain that we have been misinterpreting these verses. Notwithstanding, information technology turns out that the master ideas found in these verses are consequent with the canonical (whole-Bible) context. Consequently, these verses do communicate words of encouragement that God'south people tin depict upon for encouragement in their daily lives, non because the verses offer such encouragement directly, only because they do then in conversation with patterns and themes that course their way throughout the whole Bible.[ane]

Notes

[1] Now, if people take this passage to mean that they individually will prosper (say, materially or vocationally), then that is a different kind of error altogether. I have left that event out of today's post to make the signal nearly the need to pay attention to the broader canonical context of the Bible.

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