The sentiment on opening the book and reading it for understanding is still there.
after sleeping on this and searching i have to disagree with even this assumption. We do have two refs for "study the Book,"
Bible Search: study the book, both OT,
with a third, forged one,
John 7:52 They replied, "Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.", NT,
and here is the list of "study" NT,
Bible Search: study NT.
So, even looking at the first two, given in the Disp of Law, give clues imo that steer us away from that...sentiment, "
This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; but you shall meditate therein day and night, that you may observe to do..." , and a bit less directly @ Isaiah 34:16, as that v is a summary of the several vv preceding it, and if you read the verse it does not even make practical sense, you cannot look in the scroll and verify that none of them will be without a mate, right; you have to observe that IRL.
And of course if you looked hard enough, you could find a bird without a mate anyway, literally speaking, and this passage is really about...something else, imo.
This is not meant to be a discount of studying the Book either, i don't mean that ok, but it is kind of like the Word thing; if you believe that studying can
only be accomplished by reading the Book, you will discount the "observe" part that occurs IRL--or at least i did, for years--and your theology is in danger of being completely disconnected from IRL in any practical way, again from experience.
And i suggest that this is how...that we have already lived through this stage, up until a couple hundred years ago even if you were an atheist you had to be in the closet about it, everyone had to be religious, it was virtually the law, or at least carried the force of law.
Study to show yourself approved, BAM. But if you limit "study" to the Book and you might be an excellent professor (of the literal, anyway), while simultaneously being sanctimonious and overbearing...a couple of members come to mind here...and practically speaking, completely useless to God.