In yesterday’s post, we fleshed out Solomon’s first purpose for writing Proverbs. In so doing, we examined an important component of biblical poetry: parallelism.
We saw the importance of observing Genre here and here. Now that we’ve noticed that we’re dealing with poetry, we can appreciate the implications.
English poetry and Hebrew poetry have some similarities and some differences. Knowing them up front enables us to read the Bible rightly.
Similarities
- Uses lots of imagery
- Attempts to evoke feelings
Differences
- English poetry is (often) driven by meter and rhyme
- Hebrew poetry is primarily driven by parallelism
English poetry sounds…poetic. It has a bounce, a rhythm. For example:
When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II.2.30)
Hebrew poetry generally doesn’t have the “bounce.”
To know wisdom and instruction,
To understand words of insight (Prov 1:2, ESV).
Bible translators often format the text differently to signal poetry (lots of white space, parallel lines indented together, etc.). Because of the lack of meter and rhyme, however, translators often disagree whether certain Bible passages are prose or poetry. Just look at the book of Ecclesiastes in a few different versions, and you’ll see that there is little consensus on whether some sections are prose or poetry.
What’s the point?
When you read poetry in the Bible, remember not to isolate individual lines. Instead, we ought to read parallel lines together, for it’s in their parallelism that we get the poet’s intentions. Also, expect lots of figurative and emotive language. The poet wants to communicate a point, but he wants to do so beautifully.
