Week 3 | Angels & Shepherds
Trace the Thought Flow with Phrasing
Phrasing: The Five Passes
Our Bible study method for this week is called Phrasing (also known as block diagramming). For those of you unfamiliar with this method, We've included a brief summary of the five steps involved in phrasing a passage, which we call The Five Passes of Phrasing. To help you remember them, we’ve used the acronym DIALS:
Divide
Indent
Arrows
Label
Savor
The First Pass: Divide
Divide the passage into phrases. A phrase is a group of words that form a conceptual unit. Examples include prepositional phrases (like "in him") and genitive phrases (like "of God" or "of Mary"). For a complete list of phrases, you can take a look at the following document:
In the example below, “for our sake” is a prepositional phrase, and “who knew no sin” is a relative phrase; therefore they are divided onto their own lines.
The Second Pass: Indent
Indent the subordinate phrases. A subordinate phrase is a phrase that supports, illustrates, qualifies, explains, etc. another phrase. Since “for our sake” and “who knew no sin” both modify an element of “he made him to be sin,” they are indented one tab past the beginning of that phrase.
The Third Pass: Arrows
Draw arrows to relate the phrases. Use blue arrows for genitive phrases, green curved arrows for relative phrases, and yellow arrows for all other subordinate phrases.
The Fourth Pass: Label
Label the relationships between the phrases connected with arrows. All phrase types except relative phrases need a label. The labels describe how one phrase relates logically to another. In the example below, you can see that "so that...we might become the righteousness of God" (21d) provides the purpose of our main phrase in 21b "he made him to be sin."
Take a look at the following document for a full list of potential relationships between phrases:
Cheat Sheet: The Phrasing RelationshipspdfThis cheat sheet lists all the potential ways one phrase could relate to another. Plus, the document identifies each label with a list of the types of phrases commonly used by that relationship.
The Fifth Pass: Savor
Savor the text by wrapping your mind and heart around it. Consider how our Lord's words should shape three areas of your life: your head, your heart, and your hands. In this pass, we take a few minutes to think, to pray, to confess sin, and to worship.
Practice Phrasing
If you are completely new to Phrasing, here is a practice area set up with 2 Cor 5:21. Try to duplicate what I have done above, taking each pass in turn. The Editing Palette has several tools that are worth exploring and experimenting with.
Divide, Indent, add Arrows, add Labels, Savor as you workOptional
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