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What are some characteristics of Hebrew poetry?
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Some of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry is a parallelism that includes synonymous, antithetic, and synthetic parallelism.
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Dr. Buzzell describes poetry as a distilled language. Old Testament poetry seeks to extract the essence of the subject matter of the poem concentrating it down into a form of poetry as opposed to prose. This process of “distilling” forces the reader to interact the the writer’s thoughts and discover meaning through the poem’s construction. The writer of poetry works very hard to find just the right word(s) to to make the poem work as one flowing piece of writing. This writing process makes the lines of the verse interact with each other. The expectation of the poet is for the reader to make meaning out of the poem and in the case of poetic books in scripture to discover the truth of the meaning of the writer’s work. “Truth discovered in more powerful than truth given.”
Poetry in the Old Testament is unlike other types of poetry. The writer’s use of parallelism does not require the work to have rhyme or meter. The poem is constructed largely through two line verses as the writer composes a line of verse the then composes another line of verse that interacts in some way with that first line. The meaning is found between the lines causing the reader to critically engage in the poet’s writing. Dr. Buzzell offers Psalm 118: 1 as an example of this writing style. Psalm 118:1 “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is Good.” The writer states that we should give thanks, and with the second line provides the reason we should do so, “for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” The second line explains the thought of the first line. As we begin to engage the in this style of writing we will learn the poets explanation and how the lines of the verses relate to each other.
