Understanding the Scriptures, part 4 | March 16-22 2026 | CFM Old Testament | Primarily Scripture with Cindy Young

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Welcome to part four in my tips to help you understand the scriptures better.
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Every week this month, I am giving you a new strategy that can help you to gain better understanding as you study the scriptures.
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And this week we are talking about the power of replacing.
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This is one tip that you don't wanna miss.
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I'm Cindy Young, and this is Primarily Scripture.
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Today's tip for understanding involves replacing some of the words that you read.
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Now, what are you putting in place of those words?
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Well, it depends on the kind of replacing that you're doing.
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And I'm going to give you three different ways to replace words as you study the scriptures.
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The first tip is to identify the antecedents.
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And yes, that is a huge word, and you might think that you have no idea what that means, but once I explain it, you'll realize that you actually do already know all about antecedents.
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Okay?
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So in order to understand what an antecedent is, first we have to talk about pronouns.
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And you know what pronouns are, and you use them every day.
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If you remember, a noun is a person, place, or thing, and a pronoun is a word that we use instead of naming that person, place, or thing.
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For instance, if you say, Cindy picked up a pencil, then she put it on the table.
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Well, the nouns in that sentence are "Cindy" and "Pencil," and the pronouns are "she" and "it," because we don't wanna say Cindy every single time we refer to that person.
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And we don't want to have to say the pencil, the pencil, the pencil, so we will say "it," right?
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She and it, they're like shortcut words.
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They're just called pronouns.
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Now the antecedent is the real name of the shortcut word.
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If someone walked in and only heard me say, "she put it on the table," they might ask, "Who put what on the table?" because it could be anybody or anything.
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Did Rebecca put a cat on the table or did Sarah put a hammer on the table?
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It could be anything.
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We don't know what the antecedent is, what came before.
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So they would ask, who was that?
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What are you talking about?
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And we'd say, "Cindy put a pencil on the table." And now we understand it better.
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So we know how to do this in everyday conversation, but sometimes we forget to do this when we're reading the scriptures.
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We might read a passage and get confused about who in the world they're talking about.
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And so we close the book or we just say, this is too hard to understand and we don't go back to it.
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So before you do that, before you give up on any confusing passages, let's try to understand and identify who the antecedents are and see if that helps.
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Let's start with an easy one together, and it's in this week's worksheet if you want to follow along.
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So let's turn to Genesis chapter 44, verse 14, and it says this, "And Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house; for he was yet there, and they fell before him on the ground." All right, let's read this again slowly and every time we come across a pronoun, like he or they or them, we'll change it from that shortcut word, the pronoun, we'll change it to the antecedent- who it means.
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Okay?
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Let's read it again.
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"And Judah and his brethren," oh, his is a pronoun, so his means... whose?
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Judah's, that's right.
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So "Judah and [Judah's] brethren came to Joseph's house for, he was yet there.
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Who is he?
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Well in this case it means Joseph.
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Joseph was still there.
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Let's keep going.
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"And they fell before him." Who is they?
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Do you remember back at the beginning of the verse?
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It was Judah and his brethren.
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Okay, so "[Judah and Judah's brethren] fell before him." Him meaning?
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That's right- Joseph! Judah and Judah's brethren "fell before[Joseph] on the ground." So if we put this all together, it would say"Judah and Judah's brethren came to Joseph's house, for Joseph was still there, and Judah and his brethren fell before Joseph on the ground." Now, like I said, this was an easy one.
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And you probably didn't even need to do this exercise in order to know what was going on.
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Judah and his brothers came to Joseph's house.
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He was still there, and they fell down before him.
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But it's not always that straightforward.
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It's not always that easy.
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Let's look at verse 16.
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And here Judah is talking.
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And then verse 17 says, " and he said," so you might think that it's still Judah talking.
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But verse 18 begins by saying, then Judah came near unto him.
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So maybe verse 17 wasn't actually Judah speaking.
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Alright, so let's dig a little deeper.
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Judah was talking in verse 16.
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And then Judah was talking in verse 18, and then in 17 it was somebody else talking.
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Who is the other "him" that we have identified so far?
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Do you remember?
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Back in verse 14?
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It was Joseph.
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So verse 17 is Joseph talking to Judah, even though the last time it said Joseph's name was a few verses back.
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So sometimes it gets a little bit tricky.
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If you write in the antecedent once you find it, it's a really great way to keep track so that you can follow the story and understand what you're reading- 'cause it really can get confusing sometimes! Eventually your brain will get used to this old fashioned wording and you'll be able to follow it better.
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And I'll give you an example of how your brain can adapt like that.
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When I was in high school, three of my closest friends were all named Becca.
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None of them were Becky or Rebecca or any other variation.
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They were all three, Becca.
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When we very first started hanging out altogether, it was a little bit confusing and we thought, oh no, how are we gonna keep track of this?
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But it didn't take very long at all, and right there in our closest friend group, we didn't have to say which Becca we were talking about, because we just knew! The people around us, who didn't talk to us every day, they didn't know which Becca we meant, but our close friend group knew exactly which one we were talking about.
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We could even say something like, "Tara and Becca are at practice, and then we're going to go meet at Becca's house and Becca will meet us there." And we in our group, my friends, we knew exactly which Becca was at practice and which Becca's house we were going to, and which Becca was going to meet us there.
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Because it just made sense in our brains and we understood it.
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And the same thing can happen to you as you read scripture.
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You'll get accustomed to the way that the antecedents and pronouns were used in this very old fashioned way of writing.
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Your brain will just get it eventually.
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So don't give up if it's confusing to you.
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Alright.
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The second tip about replacing is- I want you to use synonyms.
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And if you remember back to elementary school, a synonym is a word that means the same thing.
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So big and huge- those are synonyms, as are father and dad.
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But besides words that you know really well, the Bible is full of phrases and words that were more common a long time ago that we don't use very often today.
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So if you see a word or a phrase and it feels slightly off, or you're just not sure what it means here, you can try asking a smart device what that phrase means in the Bible, and I literally mean to use this exact wording, okay?
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When you speak or type into your device, ask- " What does the word, for instance, servant, mean in the Old Testament?" Say it exactly like that.
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If you wanna get really precise, you could even type in what does the word servant mean in Genesis chapter 45, and it can be very exact.
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Now on my worksheet, I've identified some of these words that are a little bit old fashioned, and that might mean something a little bit different than what you think.
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For instance, did you know that sometimes when the scriptures say, "my lord," it is a way of saying YOU, with extra respect.
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And Lord is actually kind of a tricky word in the Old Testament specifically.
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If you see the word lord, and it's spelled with all lowercase letters, it's just talking respectfully to another person.
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Often it's someone powerful or in charge.
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Sarah even called Abraham, her husband,"my lord," so it's used that way a lot.
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If you see the word Lord and the L is capitalized, or the whole word is capitalized, that's when it's talking about Jehovah or God.
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So in verse 16, Judah says, "we are my lord's servants," he's respectfully saying, we are your servants, or we will do what you say.
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Finding the definition of big words is another tip that I already gave you a few weeks back, if you remember.
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So this kind of goes along with that.
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But if you can figure out what something means, then you can read it again to yourself and replace in a synonym.
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And there are other words that you'll come across that might just feel weird as you say them or read them.
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And if you know a synonym, go ahead and put it in and it will help it click in your brain as to what this actually means.
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Alright.
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The third thing that you can replace is your own name and your own experiences.
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And in some verses it's really easy to put your own name into.
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For instance, there's a verse in Doctrine and Covenants that says, "Hearken my servant John and listen to the words of Jesus Christ." And it's a section that was written to somebody named John.
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Well, it's really easy when you see something like that, to just put your own name in there, because we all need to listen to Jesus.
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So I could say, "hearken my servant Cindy, and listen to the words of Jesus." So that's a really easy way to do it, but sometimes it's a little bit trickier than that.
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Let's turn to Genesis chapter 45 verses four and five, and Joseph says this, he says, "I am Joseph, your brother whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life." So you probably have not been sold as a slave, so you wouldn't say, I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold.
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But maybe you could say something like this- "I am Cindy, your friend, whom you were mean to." I know we could all say that we've all been treated badly at some point or another.
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And what did Joseph say next?
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And how can we try to say something similar about our own lives and circumstances?
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I'll use some synonyms as I restate it.
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Joseph said, don't be mad at yourselves for what you've done, for God did send me before you.
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So he's saying that he sees how God has used the situation for their benefit; that there was a good side to this bad situation.
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Now, when you are thinking about people who have treated you unfairly, it might be hard to think, don't be sorry for the way that you've acted.
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But I don't think that that's exactly what Joseph meant, because he actually had just tested them in the previous chapters before they even knew who Joseph was, and through those tests, Joseph learned that they were actually sorry and felt bad and had changed.
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And feeling remorse is a very important part of repentance.
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But Joseph didn't need them to say that they were sorry before he forgave them.
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And he didn't need an apology before he could see how the Lord was blessing him in his trials.
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Was Joseph saying that it wasn't hard for him to be sold or to be in prison?
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Of course not! Joseph didn't want to be a slave, and he didn't want to be in prison! But he also didn't need the situation to be fixed before he could forgive, or more importantly, before he could see God's hand in his own life.
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So how can we replace our own situations as we're reading this, and really make this apply?
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Maybe I would say something like, "I'm Cindy, who you were very mean to, but the Lord has helped me to learn..." what?
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What are we learning?
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In your trials, is the Lord helping you to learn to be patient?
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Or to rely on him more?
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Or maybe to count your blessings?
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Maybe we're learning that everybody makes mistakes, or that withholding forgiveness really only hurts you, not the person who wronged you.
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There are literally millions of lessons to be learned from unfair and hurtful situations.
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In fact, that's part of why we are here on Earth- because we have to learn for ourselves what it's like to go through those hard things.
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And how to turn to the Lord in the middle of those trials, instead of letting our emotions run out of control.
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I love this lesson that we get from Joseph, but you will actually learn it better when we replace parts of his story with your own story.
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So the three different ways that we're going to replace words as you study so that you can understand the scriptures better, are to, 1- find the antecedents for the pronouns.
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2- use synonyms so that your brain can relate better.
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And 3- put your own name and your own circumstances inside of the stories as you read.
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Come back next week and we'll wrap up our month of learning to understand the scriptures better with more tips and tricks that are so easy that even a kid can do it.
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I am Cindy Young, and this is Primarily Scripture.
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Thanks for tuning into Primarily Scripture with Cindy Young.
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Don't forget you can subscribe to the newsletter and download free worksheets on the website, primarily scripture.com.
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See you next time.