How to Read a Difficult Passage: A Method for the Verses That Don't Sit Right

Some passages are genuinely hard, across every tradition that takes them seriously — here's a method for sitting with one honestly instead of rushing past it.

Every serious reader of the Bible eventually hits a passage that troubles them — a violent episode in the conquest narratives, a harsh judgment, an instruction that seems at odds with a passage elsewhere, or a story whose moral logic isn't immediately clear. This is not a sign you're reading wrong, and it's not a problem unique to skeptical readers. Serious theologians and scholars across every major Christian tradition have wrestled openly with the same passages for centuries. The question is how to sit with a difficult passage honestly, rather than either dismissing the difficulty or forcing a tidy resolution that the text doesn't actually offer.

Step one: separate three different things

A difficult passage usually contains three distinct layers, and conflating them is what makes the difficulty feel unmanageable:

• What the text says. This is checkable — read the passage closely, in more than one translation if possible, and note exactly what it states, in what genre, addressed to whom.
• What traditions have said it means. This varies, sometimes significantly, across denominations and across history. A passage's traditional interpretation is itself a historical fact worth knowing, even when you don't share the tradition holding it. Tradition
• Your own response to it. This is real and worth taking seriously — a troubling passage should trouble a careful reader — but it isn't itself an interpretation of the text. Feeling disturbed by a passage and understanding what the passage is doing are two separate tasks, and it's worth doing both rather than letting the first stand in for the second.

Step two: check the genre and context, every time

A large share of apparent difficulty resolves, at least partly, once genre and context are accounted for — not because context makes every hard passage comfortable, but because it clarifies what kind of claim is actually being made. Is this narrative reporting what happened, without necessarily endorsing it? Is this poetic language, using hyperbole the way ancient Near Eastern rhetoric commonly did? Is this a specific covenant instruction addressed to a particular ancient community, in a particular historical circumstance? Ask these before asking the theological question — it changes what's actually being claimed.

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Step three: know that traditions genuinely disagree, and name where

Some of the hardest passages in Scripture — the conquest narratives in Joshua, the imprecatory (curse) psalms, difficult passages about divine judgment — have real, substantive interpretive disagreement across serious Christian traditions, not just between believers and skeptics. Some traditions read certain Old Testament violence as historically descriptive within its ancient covenant context and distinct from New Testament ethics; others emphasize typological or literary readings; others focus on the text's function as an ancient Near Eastern document reflecting the conventions of its genre and era. Contested A responsible resource names that the disagreement exists rather than presenting one camp's resolution as settled consensus.

Step four: distinguish "hard to understand" from "hard to accept"

These are different problems and call for different responses. A passage that's hard to understand — obscure wording, an unfamiliar cultural reference, an ambiguous Hebrew term — is usually addressed by a good commentary or study Bible, which can walk through what scholars know about the original language and context. A passage that's hard to accept, morally or emotionally, isn't solved by more information in the same way. It calls for sitting with the discomfort honestly, reading how different serious traditions have engaged it over time, and recognizing that struggling with a text seriously is itself a long-established form of engaging with Scripture, not a failure of faith or of reading comprehension. Reflection

What not to do

• Don't skip the passage entirely. Avoiding difficult material tends to leave a reader more troubled later, when the passage resurfaces unexpectedly — in a conversation, a sermon, or a challenge from someone outside the faith — without the groundwork to engage it.
• Don't accept the first tidy explanation you find. Passages that are genuinely disputed among careful scholars rarely have a three-sentence resolution that makes the difficulty disappear entirely. Be suspicious of any source — including this one — that claims otherwise on a genuinely hard passage.
• Don't assume your discomfort is illegitimate. Many long-respected figures across Christian history have written honestly about wrestling with hard passages. Struggling with a text is not the same as rejecting it, and it doesn't require resolving the struggle before you're allowed to keep reading.

Tools that actually help

A good study Bible's footnotes will usually flag a passage as historically or interpretively disputed rather than glossing over it — that's one mark of a study Bible worth using. A full commentary goes further, often surveying multiple interpretive positions directly rather than advocating for just one. For genuinely difficult passages, it's worth reading at least two commentaries from different traditions if you can, precisely because a single commentary reflects one tradition's read, and seeing where two thoughtful, well-sourced treatments diverge tells you something a single source can't.

A worked example, briefly

Take a widely discussed example: the instruction in Deuteronomy regarding warfare against nations in the land of Canaan. Read in isolation, without context, it's genuinely disturbing. Read with attention to genre (ancient Near Eastern conquest and covenant rhetoric, which used similarly total language in surrounding cultures' own records), historical context (a specific, bounded instruction to a specific ancient community about a specific territory and time, not a general or ongoing command), and the range of ways serious traditions have engaged the text since — as historical description within its era, as hyperbolic ancient rhetoric, as a passage requiring careful theological handling rather than direct application — the passage remains difficult, but it's a different, more informed kind of difficult than reading it cold. Contested That's usually the most honest outcome available: not resolution, but a better-informed difficulty.

When a passage seems to contradict another

Apparent contradictions — two Gospel accounts of the same event with different details, a proverb and a specific instance that seems to defy it, two genealogies with different names — usually fall into one of a few recognizable categories rather than being a single kind of problem. Some are differences of selective detail (two authors, writing for different audiences and purposes, choosing to include or omit different specifics of the same real event, the way two honest witnesses to the same event naturally would). Some are differences of literary convention (ancient genealogies sometimes skip generations deliberately, following a convention modern readers don't share). Some reflect real, substantive textual or interpretive questions scholars continue to debate. Contested Treating every apparent tension as automatically resolvable, and treating every apparent tension as automatically fatal to the text's reliability, are both shortcuts around the actual work of examining a specific case on its own terms.

A closing note on posture

It's worth naming plainly that not every difficult passage resolves into comfort, and a resource that promises otherwise is overselling. What careful study offers instead is a better-informed engagement — knowing what's established, what's genuinely disputed among careful readers, and what's your own honest response sitting alongside both. That's a real, worthwhile outcome, even when it isn't a tidy one.

General information for personal study — for questions specific to your church or community, ask a leader there who knows your situation.