Simple Songs for Psalms

The Psalms as poetry

     Whenever we read or recite poetry in English, we expect to hear rhyming, to feel meter, and to encounter regularity in form, in numbers of lines, in length of lines, etc. Even in free verse or modern poetry, we still expect these features to peep out at us now and then.
     Hebrew poetry employs none of these vehicles or forms in any consistent way. Instead, Hebrew poetic form consists in imitation or parallelism of various kinds, not just in the words but in the ideas. Often the lines are paired, with the first exposing a subject and the second paralleling the thought, either by restating it (synonymous parallelism, ex. Ps. 1:1), extending it (synthetic parallelism, ex. Ps. 1:2), or by contrasting it (antithetical parallelism, ex. Ps. 1:3b-4a). Sometimes the lines are not paired but occur in sets of three lines. Sometimes, a question and answer pattern is used. Strong hints of antiphonal presentation are often apparent. The varieties of these modes abound.
     What the reader should notice is that the essence of Hebrew poetic form, the interplay of ideas in imitation and parallelism, is a feature of language that survives translation (as pointed out in C. S. Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms, Introduction, p. 5). This fact is a marvelous example of God’s provision. Thus, God uttered the paradigm of Hebrew poetry, and as a result, the principal feature of Hebrew poetry, parallelism, is one that we can understand and appreciate in its artistic content today, thousands of years later, in an immensely remote language, and in a profoundly different culture.
     There are, of course, some other aspects of Hebrew poetry, e.g., alliteration, word plays of various kinds, etc., that are not very translatable. The poetry of the Old Testament unquestionably suffers many nicks and bruises on its bumpy road from Hebrew to English.
     Why is the survival of parallelism in translation important? It signifies God’s inspiration of the Bible not only in its “message,” in some abstract way, but in its literary form and presentation. The poetry is part of the message, tied to it more firmly than is typical of Western language poetry. In its own way, the art helps to convey Who God is and who we are to Him. It sets a perspective and point of view that we can all partake of, regardless our language and culture. That is the miracle of it.
     Next, The Psalms as literature.

 
Copyright, 2010-2011, by Robert McAnally Adams,
        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day.
Logo image Copyright 1996 by Shay Barsabe, of “Simple GIFs”, by kind permission.
Send comments to curator@cqod.com.

Last updated: 3/6/11

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