It would be a huge understatement to say that during the past forty to fifty years, the understanding of Hebrew poetry has undergone an explosion. The study of Hebrew poetry itself is a rapidly evolving field, contributed to by the advent of the overall “historical-critical” method of Scripture study that Ratzinger discussed, and that has marked much questioning of the authenticity of certain parts of Scripture*. However, such exploration has only strengthened the resolve and belief of those who read in faith, such as this writer.
Looking at poetry intensifies the belief that:
- Scripture is Inspired, and
- Scripture is an interwoven tapestry.
As Ratzinger noted that he welcomed the use of tools to investigate Scripture, having the faith that such tools would only enhance learning, used properly, so also are the opinions of this writer. We will continue to share some non-Scriptural witnesses, backing up what is said with Scripture. To get a feel for the excitement in the field of Biblical poetry over the past 40 years, it will be good to share some editors’ thoughts.
In a book titled simply, Interpreting Hebrew Poetry**, from the Editor’s Foreword, by Gene M. Tucker, Emory University: “Although unlike the poetry of modern Western languages in many respects, Hebrew poetry is dense, rich, and often enigmatic language that calls for and evokes careful reading.” Further he says, “this language is not as simple as it appeared to be only a decade ago.” In speaking about the authors of this particular book, he says, “They introduce some of the features of Hebrew poetic style, including stylistic devices, such as inclusios, chiastic structures, plays on words, and assonance.” If we, as readers of Scripture include all of these devices as hallmarks of what “poetry” is, we will find that more of Scripture is poetry than “simple” prose.
There will be a discussion of chiastic structures in the midrash on Elijah, upcoming. Assonance is similar to alliteration, but alliteration means the same sound at the beginning of words [she sells sea shells by the sea shore], whereas assonance is the sound in general, most commonly vowel sounds [I lie down by the side of my bride].
‘Inclusios’ are what the name suggests, that there is a bracketing or enveloping structure that “includes” some other material. In the discussion of the parashah Ki Tavo presentation, the writer pointed out two “bookends.” This is an example of inclusio. It is generally done to focus on the theme of what is “included,” the bracketed part.
Chiastic structure is an even more sophisticated form of this technique. From the introduction to another book, the primary title Innovations in Hebrew Poetry***, which focuses on the Apocryphal book Sirach [Sirach will not be investigated here], Eric Raymond goes through a list of devices used in Sirach, five structural features characteristic of the book’s style. These characteristics all pertain to one [previously thought to be the main] aspect of Hebrew poetry, which is parallelism. It is good to look at his list, to see the types of elements that occur:
- A consistent bicolon structure.
- Relatively consistent length of individual cola within a verse.
- Frequency of grammatical parallelism between cola of a verse.
- Infrequency of clear semantic parallels between cola of a verse, including infrequent use of common biblical word pairs. In place of these are numerous other combinations of words and ideas whose association is in large measure dependent on the context of particular verses.
- Frequent grammatical, repetitive, and semantic parallels between immediately adjacent verses.
The reader can see the dissection that is used. We will discuss some of this terminology. Recall mentioned before, a colon for our purposes is a line of poetry; some call it a clause or a verset. The plural of colon is cola. A verse might have two, three, or four cola [bicola, tricolor, tetracola]. We will look at different parallels [as we did, especially in the discussion of .[אַפַּ֖יִם Introductions to books include some helpful information, it seems, thus here will be a Scriptural example from another excellent book on Hebrew poetry which primarily focuses on parallelism▸. This will hopefully give the reader a feel for some of the the depth and intensity of Biblical poetry, and help you see some of the levels discussed in the previous chapter.
• Job 5:14 BHS יוֹמָ֥ם יְפַגְּשׁוּ־ח֑שֶֹׁךְ וְ֝כַלַּ֗יְלָה יְמַֽשְׁשׁ֥וּ בַֽצָּהֳרָֽיִם׃
Dr. Adele Berlin’s own translation of the Hebrew text:
By day they will meet darkness;
And as at night they will grope at noon.
This very closely matches the translation in the JPS Hebrew English Tanakh.
By day they encounter darkness,
At noon they grope as in the night.
‘However, you will note that the JPS translators changed the order of the second colon, which hides one of the very exquisite points that Dr. Berlin is making. Read her thoughts:
“The linguistic sophistication and complexity of the book of Job is on display in this parallelism. The usual word associates, day and night, are here placed in the same position in their respective lines (at the head), giving the impression that they are ‘grammatically parallel,’ as in so many cases when something occurring by day is paralleled by something occurring at night. Similarly placed are darkness and noon (bright sunshine), another, less common, set of associated words. But while these pairs may be lexically parallel, they do not function that way here. The parallel to by day is at noon, and the parallel to night is darkness. This is not an antithetic parallelism contrasting day and night, to use Lowth’s old term, but a synonymous parallelism wherein both lines speak about the daytime. To be sure, the second line goes beyond the first in describing the metaphoric blindness of the enlightened; they are most like blind people when the sun is brightest. Notice also the sound pair in meet (yp̱ âg̱ ašu) and grope (ymâšašu), helping to draw together two words that are not normally associated.” (Please note other related verses: Dt 28:15-48; Is 59:10; John 9:39-41, 11:9-10.)
When the reader recalls that Job is thought to be the first-written book of the Bible, thoughts of the lack of sophistication of the ancients must dissipate. [See how Yeshua uses this passage in the John references.] There is much discussion in the literature about Hebrew poetry concerning what is and what is not poetry, that is, what separates prose from poetry. If one uses some of the structure noted above in the first book mentioned, more is considered poetry rather than less.
One interesting discussion in Petersen and Richards’s book centers on the emotion expressed in what is written. Recall our earlier comments about Judges 4 and 5. They note that one view [p8] “emphasizes that poetry is a form of discourse that expresses powerful or profound human emotions and feelings.” And they quote a book by J.G. von Herder “a poetical image exists only in its connection with the emotion that prompted it.” This certainly seems to apply specifically for “songs” that basically praise God for his glorious accomplishments, like Deborah’s song in Judges 5, Mary’s song, the Magnificat, in Luke 1, and the two songs of Moses in Exodus 15 and Deuteronomy 32, for some examples.
But few, it would seem, would question that Job, Psalms, and Proverbs are poetry, some seemingly emotion-filled, others not. Thus that is not a reasonable criterion for Biblical poetry. Petersen and Richards present that there seems to be a “continuum,” and end with what they consider the “hallmark” of Hebrew poetry [p14], “Poetic expression constitutes a subtle interplay of the rhythmic expression of carefully crafted human speech wrought with special attention to artistic effort. Hebrew poetry constitutes these features along with a perceptible elastic parallelism.” If we accept their definition, a very large percentage of Scripture is “poetic expression.” And if one considers that Scripture is Inspired, with the guideline that every letter and word are important, it would be easy to say ALL is “wrought with special attention to artistic effort.” A beautiful tapestry.
The reader will see in the upcoming efforts of this writer at midrash = exegesis, that large parts of otherwise more prosaic passages will fit into this definition, which the writer agrees is appropriate.
Another thought to help understand the use of parallelism in Hebrew poetry will help the reader as this book progresses, and as the reader of Scripture progresses in her/his walk. Robert Alter has a beautifully expressed book with a great deal of detail and many examples of Biblical poetry▸▸. His primary focus is parallelism, but certainly not exclusively so. A good point for readers to understand is his use of terms of “parallelism of specification” and “parallelism of intensification.” The terms are pretty self-explanatory, but are good for the reader to have in mind when reading poetry. The terms are used relative to the interrelationships between the first colon or “verset” and the one or ones paralleling that first one.
“Is this set of cola making something more specific, as one progresses from the first in the set, or is it providing an ‘intensification’?” And of course, he notes, sometimes the lines are blurred, the categories are not totally distinct. He gives four very rapid-fire examples in his text that show the ideas. Again note that all of these experts in the language do their own translations, so it may not match any specific version the reader has available. His text flows directly from one to the next. The only change this writer has made is beginning a new line with a new example:
“Perhaps more commonly, a verb appearing in the first verset will be matched with one in the second verset that is more specific, more extravagant, or even explanatory of the initial verb. Here is a twoline example from that most elegant of biblical poets, Deutero-Isaiah:
• Isaiah 48:20-21 “God has redeemed His servant Jacob,
and they did not thirst in the wastelands where He led them
Water from a rock He made flow for them
He split the rock and water gushed.”
“Note how the interlinear parallelism carries on this movement of specification in what amounts to an explanatory chain: What does it mean that God ‘redeemed’ Israel (first verset)? They were not thirsty in the desert (second verset). How could they not have been thirsty？⼀because He made water flow from a rock (third verset). How did He make water flow from a rock? ⼀by splitting it so the water gushed（fourth verset) The greater specificity of the verbal activity in the second verset can be a way of dramatically realizing the initial verset, as is evident in these lines from Isaiah, or more compactly in Balaam’s formula of poetic self-introduction:
• Numbers 24:4 ”Who the vision of Shaddai beholds prostrate with eyes unveiled,” where the general visionary capacity is transformed into an image of ecstatic seizure. And not infrequently the heightened specificity becomes a hyperbolic stepping-up of the initial verb:
• Isaiah 49:23 “Face to the ground they will bow to you,
they will lick the dust of your feet.”
A similar parallelism occurs in
• Psalm 72:9: “Before him the desert-folk kneel,
and his enemies lick the dust.”
Hopefully these examples make the “distinction” clear. Once again, the purpose is not so much for the reader to be able to demonstrate that this verse is of one type and the other verse is of a different type, but that you may see the types of functions that parallelism may play. [No quiz!] As listed above, there can be semantic parallelism, grammatical parallelism, and repetitive parallelism. It has already also been noted there is synonymous parallelism and antithetical, same meaning or opposite.
Some examples of more sophisticated diagramming:
https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/diagram_Hebrew_Poetry.html
This has been a brief introduction to the topic of poetry in Scripture. The four references given can give much more detail, and the reader will see more detail in the upcoming examples. Proceeding now with a Post on the “Synthetic Grasp of Life” the reader will probably understand that though the topic could have fit in earlier, some of the discussion required having had some of the intervening topics under the belt, so to speak.
* The Five Gospels, What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, Harper San Francisco, 1993
** Interpreting Hebrew Poetry, part of a series: Guides to Biblical Scolarship, David L. Petersen and Kent Harold Richards, 1992, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN.
*** Innovations in Hebrew Poetry, Parallelism and the Poems of Sirach, Eric D.Raymond, 2004, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta.
▸ The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, Revised and Expanded Edition, Adele Berlin, 2005 [first edition 1985], William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI.
▸▸ The Art of Biblical Poetry, Revised and Updated, Robert Alter, 2011, Basic Books, a member of Perseus Books Group, NY.
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