How should the different genres of the Bible impact how we interpret the Bible?

We must grasp the general character of the particular section of Scripture we study.

We should note the immediate context of the passage and its connection with the rest of the Bible.

Consistently literal, or plain, interpretation indicates a dispensational approach to the interpretation of Scripture. And it is this very consistency -- the strength of dispensational interpretation -- that seems to irk the nondispensationalist and becomes the object of his ridicule.[44] To be sure, literal/historical/grammatical interpretation is not the sole possession or practice of dispensationalists, but the consistent use of it in all areas of biblical interpretation is.. This does not preclude or exclude correct understanding of types, illustrations, apocalypses, and other genres within the basic framework of literal interpretation.

Many applications are often made of the details of this beautiful book; but before these can be rightly made, it is necessary to ascertain its place and significance according to the mind of God. There are two ways in which it may be viewed - as actual history, and what is prefigured by the history; that is, there are lessons to be gleaned from the actual facts, and from the conduct of the persons recorded; and there is also much instruction to be gathered from the typical meaning of the facts and persons, in their relation to Christ and His people.

The fact is that all language is more or less figurative, more especially where it is poetic or impassioned. History, if it be not a dead chronicle, abounds with figures; but none the less does it aim, or at least profess, to give nothing but the truth. Simple language is distinguished from figurative, though both styles are freely used and understood readily in all compositions, as well as in oral address and ordinary conversation. Carnal and spiritual are the true correlatives, as also literal and mystical; but these respectively apply to the sense of what is said or written, rather than to the diction. Allegory, parable (or its abbreviation in proverb), and symbol, again, are varieties of form in which truth may be conveyed, but they ought not to be confounded with figurative language. A symbol may be a material object, actually existing, and applied morally; or it may be made up by combining in one a variety of existing objects, so as to give God's moral view of what is thus revealed, as the four beasts or Gentile imperial powers of Dan. 7, the fourth of which reappears in Rev. 11—19. But symbolic language is exceptional, and seems limited to prophecy during the times of the Gentiles. It is in no way characteristic of prophecy in general. In every case what was conveyed was real, not artificial: when accomplished, it is history from the divine side.

It must never be forgotten, however, that, whatever the form or figure employed, the subject-matter referred to in prophecy is not ideal but real, any more than in the rest of scripture. It may be a fact or a place, a person or a people, a time or a state of things. Simple language may be used alone, or with figures to impart vividness, as in all speech; or symbol may be the method, as sometimes in Ezekiel and Zechariah, and yet more in Daniel and the Revelation; but what is conveyed is a reality, and not a figure. Poetical elevation is not uncommon, any more than figurative representation; and only in an exceptional way, as in Daniel 11, have we the revelation of events successive in relation to each other, though with gaps first and last, for which room is carefully made in the terms of the prophecy itself, before the grand terminus of all, the conflict of the close, in which figures for the first time "the king" in "the land," as distinct from him of the north and him of the south. "The king" it is as idle to confound with Antiochus Epiphanes as with the Pope or Buonaparte. It is the final catastrophe, ending where all the visions of Daniel, and we may say generally of the prophets, do end, in the coming kingdom of the Messiah. As they have one divine authority, so have they one glorious consummation, when He takes His great power and reigns. Thus, as all prophecy looks to that end, none is of private or isolated interpretation. It is the Spirit glorifying Christ, when He shows the things that are to come.

The Revelation, as it is the latest, so it is by far the most elaborate, of all prophetic books, consisting throughout of visions, in which symbolic objects fill a larger place than anywhere else in scripture. Still, it is to be observed that the prophet conveys literally what he saw in the plainest language. The objects and acts in the scenes which he in the Spirit saw, and the words announced to his ears, are given with precision. The symbols we have to study and comprehend in the light of general usage and of the particular context; for symbolic forms, though less pliant than the ordinary expressions of thought, are, like the rest, modified by their associations; and the Holy Spirit alone can guide rightly in this and in all else of scripture; as common sense does in the affairs and intercourse of natural life. Save in the symbolism which forms a comparatively small part of prophecy, its language differs only in degree from that of scripture generally, and must be interpreted on exactly the same principle. Indeed even the symbolic portion finds its counterpart in the types not only of the Pentateuch, but of scriptural history as a whole. The form may vary according to divine wisdom, but one mind and purpose will be found to pervade all. Every scripture is inspired of God; and as Christ is the image of the invisible God, and He alone declared the Father, so is He the object of all revelation, and others only appear as related to Him.

If many millenarians have lost sight of the general analogy of the book of Revelation, Dr. W. appears to have hardly a ray of light upon it at all. Prophetical books are not necessarily literal, nor figurative, nor symbolic. In Ezekiel, and Daniel, and Jeremiah, we find all three styles occurring in each. For example, in Ezekiel 37 we have the valley of dry bones, confessedly a symbolic vision, and later the symbol of the two sticks: but substantial facts were conveyed by both. Again, "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost. … I will open your graves" {Ezek. 37:11-12}, are clearly figurative expressions; but they do not the less indicate positive facts. Lastly, we have a number of plain literal expressions in verses 21-28 of the same chapter, some of which are the explanation of the foregoing symbols and figures. Prophecy is future history; and God may, and does, communicate it, in the forms which seem good to Him. Is the second book of Samuel to be rejected as real history, because the Holy Ghost has begun it with a dirge (2 Sam. 1) and closed it with a song, (2 Sam. 22) alike full of the boldest and most beautiful, but true figures?

It is granted, that the vision which precedes the one in question, is symbolic. But, mark, if we have the symbol, the dragon, we have the explanation immediately after, "which is the devil and Satan;" if the prophet saw in the vision the key, chain, prison, and seal, connected with that old serpent, surely, it does not take much spirituality to discern that, by all this, was meant, not the final crushing under the woman's seed, but a previous intervention of God by an angel, to confine the tempter and destroyer during a certain defined period; that is to say, as in Ezekiel, so in Revelations, we have a symbolic vision with its meaning literally annexed, so far at least as God judged needful to guard against mistake. Now, it is upon exactly the same principle that I understand the next vision. As the key and seal are symbolical of a confinement and security thereupon, the thrones which John saw convey the idea of the kingly dominion which will succeed the binding of Satan. Neither the key nor the thrones were other than prophetic symbols; but they were equally symbols — one of what God would do to His enemy, the other of what He would do for His friends during the period of the thousand years.

On the other hand, this rule of perfect consistency, as interpreted by others, must require us to blot Israel entirely out of such a prophecy as this, and from all place therefore in those Old Testament promises which the apostle assures us belong to his "kindred according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4). The fact is, the consistency so much advocated cannot be maintained in this way for even the briefest moment in interpreting the book of Revelation. Thus, for instance, under the fifth seal, we have a symbolical altar, and in connection with it "souls" that can scarcely be symbolically slain for the word of God. Nor can this be said of their fellow-servants and their brethren who are about to be killed as they were. Such a mingling of the literal and symbolic in one vision is only a sample of what will be found in almost the whole series of visions; and if it be asked, How then are we to distinguish between the literal and the symbolical? the answer should be plain that we are to judge, as it is so necessary always, by the whole context, and therefore by the wider and more important consistency of such visions as a whole — a thing which is unhappily but too little attended to by such interpreters. Symbols, of necessity, require in us all something of "the mind that has wisdom." They are supposed to require attention and exercise as to their meaning, and are by no means intended to make everything plain to the dullest as to the clearest, spiritually. All is fully open to us, but we must not make any prophecy of Scripture of private (that is, isolated) interpretation, as the apostle warns us; and the observance of this rule (which the apostle gives us as "first of all" to be observed) will necessitate much useful searching of Scripture, as well as what should be most profitable meditation upon it. The Spirit of God is in it and in us also, blessed be His name; and we are dependent upon Him everywhere to guide us into all truth. But the truth will speak to the true, and God deals with us as those who should be competent thus to look everywhere beneath the surface. "In all labor there is profit," and here assuredly our labor shall not go unrewarded.

No one that knows the Psalms will doubt that they have all the largeness of the Genesis-books. That they are in fact thus large with the fulness of the divine counsels which they contain is the result of their being prophetic, as they are, more fully than is even now generally seen. The reason is, no doubt, the style in which they are written, which may be well understood from the confessedly Messianic psalms. Take for example the twenty-second psalm. It is not a direct prediction, but the Spirit of God leading the Psalmist, in the expression of personal feelings, to go beyond himself, so as to become, whether consciously or not, the representative of One greater than himself. The psalm is thus left as a divine secret, a mystery to be unraveled by faith. The prophecy is made to conform to the character of these experience books.

The narratives of Samuel and Kings also abound in types, as indeed do all the historical books. Necessarily, the poetical and prophetic books have less of this character about them, being themselves unfoldings of principles which grow out of what has been presented in the earlier books.

The historical books of the Old Testament present to us a regular series of types, each book having a set of its own, connected with a special line of truth, upon which in perfect order the separate gems are strung. To read them aright, therefore, we must see first what is the truth which characterizes each, and then each individual type will find its place.

The books of the Law have a double character, — as literal history and as spiritual type. Both need to be considered, the literal fact being the necessary basis of the other; and in both respects the numerical structure is significant, and the same. We have literally, then, — Genesis: the ages of promise, and the birth of Israel. Exodus: the people redeemed and taken into covenant with God. Leviticus: their sanctification in view of His holiness. Numbers: their trial in the wilderness. Deuteronomy: the moral summing up as wisdom for the land.