CONTEXT! That is the cry of many a frustrated exegete when challenged with faulty interpretations of scripture. One cannot hope to interpret any scriptural text properly without a basic understanding of its context, historically, and within the whole counsel of God. F. F. Bruce, concluding his book The Canon of Scripture, writes:

   It is not enough to say ‘the Bible says . . .’ without at the same time considering to whom the Bible says it, and in what circumstances. One sometimes meets people who, in discussing the life to come, quote Ecclesiastes 9:5, ‘the dead know nothing’, as though that were the Bible’s last word on the subject, as though Jesus’ death and resurrection had not given his people a new and living hope to which the author of Ecclesiastes was a stranger.
   Canonical exegesis does not absolve the reader from the duty of understanding the scriptures in their historical setting. Indeed, it reinforces that duty. Each part of the canon makes its contribution to the whole, but that contribution cannot be properly appreciated unless attention is paid to the historical setting of each part in relation to the whole. Historical criticism, rightly applied, is as necessary for canonical exegesis as it is for the exegesis of the separate biblical documents. Each separate document may take on fuller meaning in the context of the wider canon to which it now belongs, but that fuller meaning cannot be logically unrelated to its meaning in (precanonical) context. A study, for example, of the biblical doctrine of election could not be undertaken it there were no Bible, no canon of scripture; but it would be worthless unless it took into account the historical sequence of the relevant subject-matter.
   This is bound up with what is often called progressive revelation. That the biblical revelation is progressive is obvious when one considers that it was given in the course of history until, ‘when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son’ (Gal. 4:4). To call it progressive, however, may be misleading if that adjective suggests that every stage in the revelation is more ‘advanced’ than the stages which historically preceded it. If one thinks again of the doctrine of election, the principle of election implied in God’s call of Abraham, according to the narrative of Genesis 12:1–3, is more ethically and religiously ‘advanced’ than many of the ideas on the subject cherished by some of Abraham’s descendants at later stages in their history. (The principle revealed in the call of Abraham, that some are elected in order that others through them may be blessed, has not always been borne in mind by those who thought of themselves as the elect of God.)
   To adapt words of Paul, the reader of scripture should say, ‘I will read with the Spirit and I will read with the mind also.’ The inclusion of each scripture in the canon of all scripture helps one in the understanding of each scripture, but at the same time, since each scripture makes its contribution to all scripture, the understanding of all scripture is impossible without the understanding of each scripture.

—F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (InterVarsity Press, 1988), 296–297.