Narratives demonstrate and illustrate God’s acts among men. (Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 90-91). Why do we find things in narratives that are not there? Here are some possible reasons: First, we wrongly expect that everything in Scripture applies directly to each part of our lives. Second, we are desperate for information from God that will help us through some problem or situation. Third, we are impatient and want answers now from a specific verse in a specific chapter in a specific book in Scripture.

Fee and Stuart suggest that being selective by combining verses contextually that are not connected naturally and allegorizing is not helpful. (Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible… 102-106). The authors suggest: First, do not practice selectivity: Do not pick and choose specific words and phrases to concentrate on while ignoring the overall context of the passage. Second, Do not combine verses contextually not connected: Do not combine a verse from here and a verse from there and a part of a verse from yet a third place and place them together as God’s word for a situation.

The problem of “selectivity” is addressed by Richard Hays under the concept of intertextuality, which is the “imbedding of fragments of an earlier text within a later one….” (Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, 14). Kent Yinger sees “intertextual play” found in “all strata of the OT” which helps us have a “better understanding” of concepts like “grace and works” in the New Testament. (Kent L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment according to Deeds (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series), (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY), 19.) What Paul and others may be doing when they quote a text from the Old Testament (remember, the Old Testament was not yet canonized and certainly not versified at this time in history) is simply drawing attention to the whole story from which the text being quoted is. A present analogy would be the use of “keywords” in a search engine such as Google to find the larger context in which those words are recorded. It just might be that we have taken our propensity to prooftext and projected it back on Paul and other writers of the New Testament.