Beef Up Your Bible Reading 8

About one-third of the Bible is written as poetry. You can easily tell when you’re reading poetry in most modern Bible translations; it’s set out in lines rather than solid paragraphs, so there’s more white space on the pages.

Poetry isn’t so much concerned with hard facts as it is with presenting images to be visualised, feelings to be experienced and broad ideas to be ruminated upon. To do that, English poetry relies not only on carefully chosen and arranged words but also on patterns of rhythm and sound. Old Testament (Hebrew) poetry is different. It relies on patterns of ideas to achieve its ends. That’s why it survives translation into other languages.

Hebrew poems are made up of lines (colons). Each line is made up of two or more units. Each unit expresses a single idea.

Patterns of ideas are created by the way lines are grouped. Mostly they’re grouped in twos with the second line reflecting the ideas of the first either by repeating them (synonymous parallelism), contrasting with them (antithetic parallelism), completing them (climactic parallelism) or adding to them (synthetic parallelism). Sometimes the lines come in threes or fours and sometimes groups of parallel lines are separated by other parallel lines, making patterns within patterns. It can get pretty complex. Oh, and a word of warning, the verse numbering in your Bible doesn’t always correspond to the way the lines are meant to be grouped: best ignore it.

Other methods used to create patterns are:

Refrains. Refrains are lines or groups of lines that are repeated either to emphasise a thought or to divide up the poem by marking the end of one line of thought and the beginning of another.

Chiastic Parallelism. In chiastic parallelism, symmetrical patterns of ideas are used to highlight a point. The main idea or high point comes in the middle and similar ideas are arranged on either side with a progressive build-up to the high point and a progressive decline after it. Sometimes a chiasm will be just three lines of poetry; sometimes it will extend over a whole section of a poem. The entire Song Of Solomon is a chiastic poem; the high point is the two verses that fall at the exact centre of the book (4:16 – 5:1).

Acrostics. In an acrostic poem, each group of ideas is introduced with a successive letter of the alphabet or a word that summarises the overall theme. The best-known example is Psalm 119

Figurative Language. Poetry relies heavily on the use of figurative language to present images and patterns of images.

Good Bible reading distinguishes poetry from prose. When you’re reading poems don’t be so concerned about detail. Instead, imagine the images, feel the feelings and soak up and meditate on the impressions and broad ideas. But don’t forget to look for those patterns. They’ll help you to pick out the most important thoughts in a poem. And as well as that, appreciating those patterns can help you to understand some of the more difficult lines. If the meaning of a line is not clear, look at its parallel line; that will give you some helpful clues.