THE POETRY OF THE BIBLE
The first poetry was made to be sung. It almost made itself. It had two qualities--the expression of strong feeling of some kind, and some sort of rhythm that could be put into song. Ever since the days when all men were savages, and told simple stories and sang rude songs as they gathered about the campfires, those two things have marked the difference between poetry and prose. Poetry must have feeling and rhythm. In most languages the rhythm is one of sound. The words flow along so easily that they run themselves into a sort of tune. That is what is called measure. Measure cannot be easily translated from one language to another. Even if it could, it would not always be so beautiful as it is in the language in which it is first written. So it comes about that we do not often try to get the rhythm of the words in the poetry of the Bible. Indeed, scholars have puzzled themselves greatly over just what sort of rhythm the words of Hebrew poetry have. The Hebrews who wrote the poetry did not think it worth while to say anything about that, and later men forgot that there was any rhythm at all; so now it has to be all discovered over again. But Hebrew poetry has also another kind of rhythm beside that of words--a kind which English poetry does not have. It is the rhythm of thought. In Hebrew poetry a thought is expressed in the first line, [{12}] then either repeated with some slight change, its opposite expressed, or something added to it, in the second. The following are illustrations:--
The thought repeated:--
| The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? |
The opposite expressed:--
| A wise son maketh a glad father, But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. |
Additions made to the thought:--
| All the paths of the Lord are lovingkindness and truth Unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. |
This rhythm of thought is called parallelism; and parallelism is the one thing that makes Hebrew poetry differ from prose.
In most Eastern languages the line between poetry and prose is not so sharply drawn as in our Western languages. When a man made a speech, it often fell quite naturally into poetry. So a good deal of the talk of Jesus, even, seems to have been in the form of Hebrew poetry; as when he said:--
| Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, Nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food And the body than the raiment? |
In the same way the New Testament writers also, being mostly Hebrews in thought, although they wrote in Greek, often fell into poetry, when some strong feeling moved them.
The study of the form of the poetry of the Bible is very fascinating, the form is so rich in variety and often so remarkably well fitted to express the thought of the poetry.
Yet after all the richest part of the Biblical poetry is the strong feeling that it shows. For example, in that little song of the shepherd, the twenty-third Psalm, the form is very beautiful with its rhythm of thought, but much more beautiful is the strong feeling of perfect trust in the loving care of the Good Shepherd.