Word Studies
	If God the Holy Spirit took the care to inspire the very words, we must be careful to search out the intent of the author in his choice of words. -J.R. McQulkin

Guidelines

Having considered some of the fallacies that we should take care to aviod, we now move on to consider positively how to do word studies. Following are some basic guidelines to aid in our studies.

1. Gather Your Data - That is, list all the passages where a particular word occurs (don't fall into the English only fallicy, use your exhaustive concordance to get back to the original language.) Take note of the context for each verse you listed. Gregory Koukl wrote an article on biblical interpretation entiteled, "Never Read a Bible Verse." That is good advise, read the verses before and after each cross-referenced passage.
   As we gather our information we will need to make use of an exhaustive concordance or and Englishman's concordance.
   
2. Evaluate Your Data - Not every passage that you gathered together in the step above is of the same importance. As a general rule, the further we move away from the immediate context, the less sure our findings are. The diagram below illustrates how we should move outward from the immediate context as we do our word study.
   

   Other books by contemporary authors Other books by the same author The rest of the book Immediate Context

   
   If none of the steps above shed sufficient light onto the meaning of a word, then one may proceed on to consider extra-biblical uses of the word, or etemology (the study of the roots or orgins of the word).
3. Check Your Findings - We can check our findings against a good lexicon or Bible dictionary. These will give us the range of possible meanings, but generally they do not point out which of the possible meanings is the correct one. If your lexicon does not go to the verse level, then you may consult it at the beginning to get a feel for the range of meanings. Then from that point you would do your study to determine which of the possible meanings is the correct one in the particular passage you are studying.

Homework

1. If you are already involved in a Sunday school class or small group, pick a word in the passage you are studying that you would like to learn more about and do a word study on it.
2. Else, read 1 Cor 6:9-10 and explore the meaning of "covetous."