Go Deeper: Verse Mapping One Verse at a Time

This is post four in a six-part series walking through my whole Bible study system, one piece at a time. New here? Start with the overview, How to Study One Book of the Bible from Start to Finish, and catch up when you can.

Quick heads up before we dive in.

If you're brand new to studying the Bible, you may want to bookmark this post for later and stick with chapter maps for now. There is no rush to get here, and building that one habit first will keep you from feeling overwhelmed.

But if this isn't your first Bible study rodeo and you're ready to go a little deeper, grab your pen. Let's go!

Now we get down close.

Remember the photos my friend sent from Wisconsin I shared in post 1?

First the whole lake from her porch, then the woods, and then a single fallen log on the forest floor, its whole surface covered in pale green lichen.

That log is where we are today.

We've gone from the whole book, to one chapter, and now we're kneeling down at one single verse to look at it up close.

This is verse mapping, and it might be the step that surprises you most, because of how much is hiding in one sentence you have probably read a hundred times.

And here is the shift from last week.

When we mapped a chapter, I asked you to put all your books away and just sit with the text.

Verse mapping is the opposite. This is where the tools come back out. Cross-references, other translations, dictionaries, Hebrew and Greek word meanings, bring all of it.

A single verse can hold up under that kind of attention, and it rewards you for it.

Before I show you the format, one thing I want to say clearly. There are a hundred different ways to map a verse, and none of them is the official one.

What I am about to walk you through is simply how I do it. Take it, try it, and then make it your own. Keep the parts that help you meet God in His Word and change or drop the parts that do not.

What a verse map looks like

If you've seen one of my verse maps, you know they look a little different from the other pages. Busier. More colorful. That is on purpose, and here's how it works.

The verse goes in the center. You write out your verse, or short passage, right in the middle of the page. Then you circle or underline the key words, the ones carrying weight, the ones you want to understand better. 

Each key word gets its own bubble. Off to the sides, you make a little cluster for each word you marked. And in each cluster you dig into that one word:

• The definition. What does this word actually mean, in plain English? A dictionary is your friend here. My favorite is webstersdictionary1828.com
• The original word. The Hebrew or Greek behind it, and what it meant in that language. You do not need to know Hebrew. You just need to be willing to look it up.
• Cross-references. Other places in Scripture that use the same word or the same idea, so the Bible can help interpret the Bible.

Then the next page holds the anchors you have seen on the other pages: the context, the who, what, when, where, and why. A space for interpretations and cross-references and key words all together. The attributes of God you see in the verse. And your life applications, the so-what for your real, actual life.

A quick permission slip on that context section. If you've just come from mapping the whole chapter this verse lives in, you already did the context work. You already know the who and the when and the why. So feel free to leave that part of the verse map blank, or jot “see chapter map” and move on. There is no prize for filling every line. Do the parts that are actually teaching you something and skip the ones that would just be copying yourself.

Although it looks like a lot at first, it's really just one habit repeated: pick a word, and ask what it truly means and where else God uses it.

Where do I even find the Hebrew?

Before jump into a map, let me answer the question I know is already nagging at some of you: how on earth am I supposed to find information about the original language?

If that makes you feel out of your depth, breathe. It's much easier than you think.

There are wonderful free tools that let you click any word in a verse and instantly see the original Hebrew or Greek, what it means, and everywhere else it appears in Scripture. No language training required. If you can tap a link, you can do a word study.

Rather than list them all here, I already wrote a whole post on my go-to free resources, the exact sites I use for parallel translations, word meanings, and cross-references, with simple instructions for each.

So, if you're not sure where to start, read My Favorite FREE Online Resources and pick one. That is honestly the wonderful thing about studying the Bible in our particular moment in history. Tools that used to sit only on a scholar’s shelf are now free and in your pocket.

A gentle reminder, though. Bring the tools, but keep your own eyes open too. The goal of verse mapping is not to collect every fact about a verse. It is to understand it and to meet God in it. Use the resources to serve that, not to bury it.

Let’s map Ruth 1:16

We've been building toward this verse for the whole series. Last week, when we mapped Ruth 1, I told you to flag the verse the chapter is leaning toward and save it for now. Here it is. Ruth 1:16, where Ruth answers Naomi’s plea to turn back and go home:

“But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God.’”

At first glance, it sounds like a devoted daughter-in-law being sweet to an older woman.

Map it, and it turns into something far bigger. And remember, in verse mapping we start with individual words, not whole phrases. So before we do anything else, let’s circle some key words we may want to look at more closely: urge, leave, lodge, people, God. 

Now we take them one at a time, and for each one we look up the

• English definition
• find the original Hebrew word and how it is used
• chase a cross-reference or two
• write down what we learn

Let me walk you all the way through two of them, “lodge” and “people,” so you can see exactly how it works. I am using the interlinear tool on Bible Hub for the original words, which is free and lets you click any word in the verse to see the Hebrew behind it.

Word study: “lodge”

English definition. Start with the plain meaning. To lodge is to stay somewhere, to dwell, to spend the night, to make your dwelling in a place.

So on the surface Ruth is simply saying, wherever you sleep, I will sleep.

Original word and usage. Now look it up in the interlinear. The Hebrew is lun (Strong’s 3885, also spelled luwn).

And here's the gift you only get by digging: this is not merely a word for spending one night. Its root sense is to stop, and by implication to stay permanently, even to be obstinate about it. 

It is a word about digging in and remaining, not passing through.

Cross-references. See where else it appears.

This same word shows up in Psalm 25:13, where the one who fears the Lord will abide, or lodge, in prosperity, and in Psalm 91:1, the promise that whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will lodge, or remain, in His shadow.

The word keeps carrying that flavor of staying put under a covering.

What we learn. A word that looked like nothing, just “where you sleep,” turns out to say Ruth is not asking to tag along for a night. She's declaring, stubbornly and permanently, that she will remain wherever Naomi’s life takes her. She is not visiting Naomi’s world. She is staying for good.

Word study: “people”

English definition. Plainly, a people is a nation, a tribe, a community you belong to, your own kind, the group you are born into.

Original word and usage. In the interlinear, the Hebrew is am (Strong’s 5971). It comes from a root meaning to gather or associate, and it means a people, specifically a tribe, one’s own kin and nation.

Figuratively it can even mean a flock. This is the word for the group you belong to by blood and birth, the ones who are your own.

Cross-references. Watch what happens when you compare how this word is used just a few verses earlier. In Ruth 1:15, Naomi points at Orpah, who has just left, and says she has gone back “to her people and to her gods.”

Same word, am. Orpah returned to her am.

And in the very next breath, in verse 16, Ruth uses that same word to say the opposite: your am will be my am.

What we learn. Here is where a little context makes the line land.

Ruth is a Moabite. Moab and Israel were not friends. For a foreign woman to say “your people shall be my people” is to walk away from her own am, her own nation and family and future security, and bind herself to a grieving widow who has nothing to offer her.

Set right beside Orpah, who went back to her people, Ruth’s choice is thrown into sharp relief. One woman returned to her own. The other left everything to belong to someone else’s.

Pulling it together

You may want to do the same thing with “urge,” “leave,” and “God,” or you may just want to do 2 or 3 words this time.

But you'll find that once you start digging, the whole verse opens up. 

That last one, “God,” is the heart of it.

The Hebrew is elohim, and Ruth is choosing the God of Israel over the gods she grew up with in Moab, the very gods Orpah just returned to.

At the lowest, most hopeless moment, when following this God has apparently cost Naomi everything, Ruth looks at all that loss and says, that One. I want that One.

Do you see what mapping did? It took a verse we put on wedding signs and showed us, one word at a time, that it is first and foremost a verse about costly, converting faith.

A foreigner leaving her own people and her own gods to bind herself, permanently, to the true God, in the dark, with no guarantee it would turn out well.

That is what one verse gives up when you kneel down at it and study it word by word.

The honest part

As always, you do not need my journal to do any of this. A blank piece of paper with your verse in the middle and room around the edges works exactly the same. 

The Verse Mapping Journal simply gives you the page already set up, with space for the center verse, the word bubbles, the context, the attributes, and the applications, so you can spend your energy studying instead of drawing boxes. If that helps you, it is worth it.

The Verse Mapping Journal is also included in the Bible Study Binder Bundle, just FYI. 

 But if a blank page suits you better, use the blank page. 

Your next steps

• Take one verse. If you are following along, make it Ruth 1:16.
• Write it in the middle of a page
• Circle three or four words that seem to carry weight
• For each one, look up a plain definition, pull the Hebrew using the interlinear at Bible Hub or one of the other free tools from my resources post
• Find one cross-reference
• Then write one sentence on what this verse, understood this way, means for your life.

And remember, this is my way, not the only way. If a different layout helps you see the verse more clearly, use it. You will be amazed how much is packed into a sentence you thought you already knew.

Next in the series, we kneel all the way down to the smallest thing of all, that tiny orange mushroom, and look at one single word.

We will do a word study on hesed, that gorgeous Hebrew word for loyal love that runs like a current under the whole book of Ruth.

That post is The Closest Look: How to Do a Word Study Without Knowing Greek or Hebrew.

 

Before you go, I would really love to hear from you in the comments!

Does verse mapping seem like something you would like to try? Is there anything holding you back or are you ready to jump in?

If you've verse mapped before, is there anything that you include in your maps that I haven't mentioned?