Good intentions will not get you very far in personal Bible study. It takes a willful commitment on your part. You have to go through the steps of observation, interpretation, and application. I want to challenge you to see at least one new thing in every passage you read. The ability to see details in Scripture is one of the most powerful skills you can develop. One of the things I observed in Hebrews 13 this morning in my quiet time was an instance of paronomasia in verse 22.
I had never seen it before. Here Paul opens and closes his sentence with two Greek words that clearly parallel each other.
Yet this connection is completely lost in your typical English translation. Here are a couple of examples with the parallel terms printed in bold:
NIV: "I urge you ... my word of exhortation."
CSB: "I urge you ... this message of exhortation."
ESV: "I appeal to you ... my word of exhortation."
Sherlock Holmes, that master sleuth of yesteryear, could often be found on his hands and knees, inspecting the floor for cigar ashes or footprints. In the same way, finding clues in a passage of Scripture demands more than a quick overview. Here in Heb. 13:22 we clearly have a pun or wordplay that many if not most interpreters overlook. But not in German. Here's how Luther rendered the verse:
"Ich ermahne euch, aber, liebe Brüder, haltet das Wort der Ermahnung zugute."
I absolutely love that. Paul is "urging" his readers with a "word of urging"! I thought, You've got to be kidding! As I said, I'd never seen this before. The genius of the word of God is that it has wordplays like this one on practically every page. With every book I've written, you can pretty much put it on the shelf and move on to something else. That's never true of the Bible. You can read it over and over again and you will still discover things you've never seen before.
So we're back to the same issue: the books of the Bible were meant to be read and studied. They were never intended to be given a perfunctory once-over. One way to avoid that is to slow down and, if you can, use a variety of translations. You're bound to notice new things!