>>18353779the footnotes would be for verse-specific context, but they're no more or less helpful than looking something up when you don't understand it (which you will probably need to do often). a very commonly discussed example of this in Genesis is when Noah drinks wine and passes out.
21And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. (Genesis 9:21-23 KJV)
The verse itself seems self-explanatory, and it's easy to assume that "nakedness" is literal. But afterwards Noah imposes a VERY severe punishment on Canaan, so it begs the question if we are really understanding this correctly. Some people think that seeing him naked was a big deal because of relevant jewish traditions at the time, while others reference a verse in Leviticus as evidence that what Canaan actually did was sleep with his mother / Noah's wife.
11 And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20:11 KJV)
So by looking at other uses of this word in the Bible, we see that this was an idiom in the time period it was written (a phrase with an assigned meaning), similar to how we assign meaning to a phrase like "killing two birds with one stone". It's important to remember that it was already translated several times before the KJV version, and things get lost. Someone once told me "it takes a lifetime to read the Bible."
I started out trying to read front to back but I quickly realized that I got more understanding from it when I skipped around. But everyone's different, and it's always best to rely on God for guidance.
