UNDERSTANDING BIBLICAL POETRY

Many types of literature in the Bible are fairly easy to follow, but biblical poetry is somewhat an exception. And it is important to know how to interpret poetry since between 1/3 to ½ of the Old Testament is written in poetic form. That includes Psalms, Lamentations, all the wisdom literature, and most of the Prophets, as well as songs within the history books. In addition, the NT contains quotes from these OT passages, early hymns, and examples of “exalted prose,” which falls somewhere between poetry and prose.

To most of us, poetry is easily recognized through its use of rhyme and rhythm (meter). But biblical poetry possesses no rhyme and virtually no meter. Then how is it recognized? Of course, we can always recognize it in our English Bibles by just looking for indented lines. But how did translators know that this was poetry to start with?

Well, a second characteristic of poetry besides its extensive use of figurative language is that it generally has stanzas of roughly equal length.

The third characteristic of Hebrew poetry is that it is based on the similarity of ideas expressed rather than similarities in sound or meter. This is called poetic parallelism of thought. Only one basic idea is being expressed through the two or three lines of poetry in each verse. This parallelism can take several different forms as well as combinations of those forms.

Identical Parallelism: Psalm 1:1

Happy are those

    who walk not         in the counsel          of the wicked,

    or stand                  in the way               of sinners,

    or sit                      in the seat                of scoffers.

 If, for example, we didn't know the meaning of the Hebrew word translated “scoffers,” we could still deduce it by realizing that it is related to the wicked and to sinners.

 Extremes to avoid in understanding:

A previous generation of preachers used to read Hebrew poetry as if it were prose and stressed the differences in meanings between the individual lines. (i.e., the wicked are the worst so don't even walk with them; scoffers are the least harmful, but don't go so far as to sit with them.) They ignored the fact that all the nouns and prepositional phrases are basically synonyms of one another. Later interpreters went to the opposite extreme and looked at each line as being completely identical in meaning (i.e., they ignored the progression in verbs in this case). Modern thinking is to take a middle ground: subsequent lines expand and clarify the thought in the first line.

Incomplete Parallelism: I Samuel 15:22b

To obey          is better          than sacrifice, and

To listen         (is better)       than the fat of rams.

The adjective “better” is understood in the second line. See how first line helps eliminate any possible misunderstanding of second line.

Introverted Parallelism: Psalm 1:2

But their delight is             in the law of the LORD

                                 X

and on his law                  they meditate day and night

Here the two lines express the same basic idea but the clauses are transposed in the second line so that delighting and meditating are parallel, and law appears at the end of the first line and the start of the second line. If you draw lines connecting the similar elements, you make an X. That is the Greek letter chi, so that type of arrangement is also called a chiasm.

Antithetic Parallelism: Psalm 1:6

For the LORD watches over             the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked                 will perish.

Note the key word “but.” This type of poetry is especially common in Proverbs – the same idea is expressed using its opposite. (The clauses are also reversed so that this is also an example of introverted parallelism.)

Emblematic Parallelism: Psalm 1:3

They are like trees planted by streams of water (figurative)

In all that they do, they prosper (literal)

This is a type of simile or metaphor in which the figurative language in the first line is explained literally in the last line.

                                                Synthetic Parallelism: Lamentations 3:12

He bent his bow and set me

                                            as a mark for his arrow.

                                                            Lamentations 5:6

We have made a pact with Egypt

                                                    and Syria to get enough bread.

In these two cases, simple prose sentences are broken up into two lines. It is not truly poetic, and so it is called synthetic.

Stair-Step Parallelism: Romans 1:4-5

One of the best examples of this aptly named type of parallelism, in which subsequent lines repeat the idea in the previous lines but go beyond them in thought, is actually found in the NT.

In him was life

and the life was the light of men

                          the light shines in the darkness

                                        and the darkness has not overcome it.

Note that same length of lines is preserved. I used to have a roommate in graduate school who tried his hand at writing a novel. And practically every page had several examples of this type of writing. A little bit of this type of writing goes a long way. That is why biblical poets utilize a variety of forms and even a combination of forms within the same verse.

With all that background, let's look at a simple-minded poem in English:

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

Sugar is sweet,

And so are you.

 If you break it into two, each set of two lines makes perfect Hebrew poetry. 

Roses         are     red.

Violets       are     blue.

The first half is expressed in identical parallelism and would have the overall meaning of “flowers come in different colors.” 

            Sugar                is        sweet,

And     so (sweet)        are       you.

The second half is a mixed form (incomplete, introverted emblematic parallelism) whose overall meaning would be, “You are as sweet as sugar.”

Advantages of Poetic Parallelism

1. There is no loss of meaning when you translate the Hebrew into another language. By contrast, it is very hard to translate other types of poetry without either sacrificing the rhythm, rhyme or meaning

2. As I said before, it aids in translation and understanding. This is especially important in poetic passages since they tend to use words that were archaic even at the time the poetry was written.