Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

In the following, three synthetic parallelisms make a synonymous triplet:

For as the heaven is high above the earth,

So great is his mercy toward them that fear him:

As far as the east is from the west,

So far hath he removed our transgressions from us:

Like as a father pitieth his children,

So the Lord pitieth them that fear him. Psa. 103:11-13.

But our limits will not allow us to pursue this subject farther. The freedom of the Hebrew poet is one of his high prerogatives. He is not a slave to form, but uses form as it suits his purposes. He blends together the different kinds of parallelism as he pleases. Often he breaks through all parallelism to the freedom of prose. But he soon returns again, because this measured rhythm of clauses is to him the natural costume of poetic thought, which always seeks to embody itself in some form of rhythm.

To the form of Hebrew poetry belongs also its peculiar diction. To one who reads the Hebrew poets in the original, this is a striking characteristic. He meets with words, and sometimes with grammatical forms, that do not occur in the prose writers. Many of these peculiar words are Aramean; that is, they are words current in the Aramean branch of the Shemitic languages. Chap. 14, No. 1. They are to be regarded as archaisms—old words that were once common alike to the Hebrew and the kindred Aramean, but which have been dropped out of prose usage in Hebrew. They must not be confounded, as has too often been done, with true Aramaisms, that is, Aramean words and forms borrowed by later Hebrew writers from their intercourse with those who spoke Aramean.

4. As it respects the office of Hebrew poetry, it is throughout subservient to the interests of revealed religion. This is implied in what has been already said of the loyalty of the Hebrew poets to the institutions of the Theocracy. It follows that the poetry of the Bible is all sacred in its character. It contains no examples of purely secular poetry except here and there a short passage which comes in as a part of history; for example, the words of "those that speak in proverbs," Numb. 21:27-30; perhaps also the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan. 2 Sam. 1:19-27. It is certain that the song contained in the forty-fifth psalm and that of the Canticles were received into the canon solely on the ground that they celebrate the mutual love between God and the covenant people, considered as his bride; or, in New Testament language, between Christ and "the bride, the Lamb's wife."