A long narrative poem with frequent lyric interludes. The time is 1034 B. C., in the reign of David. David’s forces under Joab, sweeping south, spoiling and conquering in the name of their God, Jehovah, meet the resistance of the Kenites, the hill dwellers of Mount Sinai whose tribal God Jehovah is. Demanding tribute for their king and worship for their God, the Israelites are faced with the Kenites’ claim for priority in Jehovah worship, Moses having learned it from his Kenite father-in-law, Jethro. In the conference that follows two conceptions of Jehovah are set forth. The tribal god of the Kenites is opposed to the imperialist god of Israel. By trickery Joab outwits the weaker forces and falls upon them unawares to slay and exterminate, all for the glory of Jehovah. Toward the end a new conception of God is developed, the God of brotherhood as visioned by the prophet Jotham. The poem was awarded one of the Lyric poetry prizes for 1919.
+ Booklist 17:148 Ja ’21
“If it won the Lyric prize, it was hardly for its lyrism. Still, the poem is dramatic, the characterization interesting, and some of the passages genuinely powerful.”
+ − Dial 69:435 O ’20 90w
“When Clement Wood wrote ‘Jehovah’ he took the chance at being dull on the bigger chance of successfully writing a poem about an evolving god. He fails, and he is dull; but there is a sort of leaden grandeur about the attempt.” R. D.
− + Freeman 1:382 Jl 7 ’20 120w
“It has, curiously, a flavor of ‘Beowulf’ rather than of the Hebrew poets and prophets. It is written in a variety of verse forms, many of them interesting.”
+ − Ind 104:246 N 13 ’20 80w
“‘Jehovah’ suffers from a too constant strenuousness of reach and a too mighty savagery of diction; there is more motion than flow, more activity than strength. Yet certain of the songs genuinely mount; and Uz, the wrinkled patriarch, spokesman for the Kenites, is a triumph in portraiture.” Mark Van Doren