SB WWG Hebrew context
As seen previously, a single word may have many meanings derived from the letters within. All of that is lost in translation. Hebrew must be 'tasted', not merely read. This is a true context for the prophetic riddle.
The Western scholar taught to reason and think as a Greek is troubled by contradiction. "Answer a fool..." vs. "Answer not a fool..." seem like a contradiction if you are looking for a contradiction. But there are no contradictions in the Hebrew mind concerning the scripture. This is a presuppositional context.
Apparent contradictions are intentional riddles. In the 'answering a fool' riddle, what is the unknown key from outside the riddle? It is the venue. Why engage a fool in his folly privately? The fool is the one who says there is no God. There is no changing him since he has willfully declared himself to be God. Your debate is predicated on your belief that you are greater than he in foolish debate. You have become like him.
But in the public square, the answer is not for him; it is for the onlookers. The ideas he presents are shredded in the public eye so that truth is taught. Left unanswered, both he and the audience may presume there is not an answer.
Another form of context is the trope. A trope is where something represents another thing. In the Bible, if five men have coffee [a silly example] and one of them has sugar, they all had sugar. This seems like nonsense until you recognize the substitution. All the men represent Christ, so Christ had sugar.
Another way to look at this is to see pericopes as transparencies. Each pericope has parts and pieces of the picture of Christ, but none of them have all. The transparencies are placed in a stack, and the parts and pieces are aligned where they occur so that together, they tell the complete picture of Christ.
An example of this are three women at the same well, the well aligns the transparencies. Rebekah was chosen by the Father, Rachel was wooed and worked for by the Son, and at Sychar [meaning intoxicated as a hint of Pentecost] the town was gathered by the Holy Spirit. Together the stories tell us that the Father chooses the bride, the Son woos and worked for her, and the Spirit gathered her.
The concepts of scriptural context are not difficult to learn. They can be applied in English with no knowledge of Hebrew in many places. Much more requires enough skills in Hebrew to use tools.
