The Characteristics of Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Modern readers of the Psalms might be forgiven if they do not realize that the Book of Psalms is the largest single collection of ancient Hebrew poetry.  Although it is obvious on first reading that they are a quite different genré of literature from most of the Penteteuch or the historical books of the Old Testament, the Psalms lack those features that denote poetry to most readers in western societies.

Consider the following lines from the poem On the Morning of Christ's Nativity by John Milton:

Like much of western poetry, this poem is marked by both rhyme and meter.  Rhyme is the correspondence between sounds, especially at the ends of lines of verse, as in morn - born, King - bring - sing, and release - peace.  Meter is "the measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number of syllables in a line," or may be "a particular arrangement of words in poetry, such as iambic pentameter, determined by the kind and number of metrical units in a line."  (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.  Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.)  A poem can exhibit rhyme, or meter, or both rhyme and meter (as above).  To illustrate meter, here are the above lines again, this time with the accented syllables underlined:

These verses exhibit a very clear pattern of five stressed syllables per line.  In other poems, the number of stressed syllables may differ, and it may even differ between lines in the same poem.

In contrast to the standard characteristics of western poetry as illustrated above, ancient Hebrew poetry, such as that found in the Psalms, is characterized by an absence of rhyme and meter and by the presence of a feature known as parallelism.

1.  Absence of Rhyme.

Hebrew poetry does not as a rule exhibit rhyming, the parallel positioning of similar sounds that is a major characteristic of much western poetry.  The Hebrew text certainly does not contain significant rhyming, and this is reflected in the standard modern language translations, where one normally does not find rhyming in the Psalms.  (The exception to this is called the Metrical Psalter, a somewhat more paraphrastic translation of the Psalms used to adapt them for singing with western musical forms.  We will discuss the Metrical Psalter in a later lesson.)

2.  Absence of Meter.

Meter, another major characteristic of western poetry, is absent from most Hebrew poetry, and especially from the Psalms.  A major exception to this is Qinah meter (characterized by unbalanced lines) found in the book of Lamentations and in some other laments.  

It is possible that there were some other metrical features in ancient Hebrew poetry, but modern scholars have not been successful in establishing with certainty the nature of any meter.  Proposals of metrical pattern abound, but these are fiercely debated among Old Testament scholars.  It has been noted that consecutive lines of Hebrew poetry tend to be roughly the same length, and schemes such as word or syllable counting have been proposed, but again, there is no agreement about this.

3.  Parallelism.

The major stylistic characteristic of Hebrew Poetry is semantic parallelism, the parallelism of sense or word meaning between lines.  In modern times this phenomenon was observed and explained by the English bishop Robert Lowth (1710 - 87):

The correspondence of one verse or line with another I call parallelism.  When a proposition is delivered, and a second sub-joined to it, or drawn under it, equivalent, or contrasted with it in the sense, or similar to it in the form of grammatical construction, these I call parallel lines; and the words or phrases answering one to another in the corresponding lines, parallel terms. (Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews.)

Semantic parallelism is not unique to Hebrew poetry.  With the discovery in 1929 of cuneiform tablets at Ras Shamra on the coast of Syria, a previously unknown Canaanite language now known as Ugaritic became available to students of the ancient near east.  A large body of poetic texts containing the stories of Canaanite deities such as Baal, Yam, Mot, Ashteroth, etc., has been translated, and this poetry, which dates roughly from 1400 to 1200 B.C., exhibits the same type of semantic parallelism that we find in biblical poetry such as the Psalms.  It is now evident that the poetry of ancient Israel used the same literary conventions as the poetry of Israel's neighbors.  What was unique about biblical poetry was not its poetic style, but its monotheistic devotion to a single deity, Yahweh, the God of Israel.

4.  Types of Parallelism.

Parallelism is found in a variety of forms, and these have been classified in a number of different ways by different analysts.  The classification given below follows Lowth in his identification of synonymous, antithetical, and synthetic parallelism, and has three additional categories as refinements.

Synonymous Parallelism

Because synonymous parallelism involves saying the same thing in two very similar ways, the interpreter must avoid a forced distinction between the two lines.  For example, in Ps. 1:5, the “wicked” in the first line are the same as the “sinners” in the second.  In Ps. 51:10 (“Create in me a clean heart, O God, / and put a new and right spirit within me”), David is praying for God to do one thing, not two different things.  This is not to say that the second line cannot add to the thought of the first, but at some point it becomes more like synthetic, emblematic, or climactic parallelism (see below).

In some examples, the order of the parallel elements may be reversed in the second line, resulting in a chiastic pattern, as in Psalm 103:1.

Antithetical Parallelism

In antithetical parallelism, the second line contrasts with the first.  Here are some examples:

Antithetical parallelism can make a statement more vivid by giving the reader an image of its opposite.  This type of parallelism is common in Wisdom literature.

Synthetic Parallelism

In synthetic parallelism, rather than simply echoing a thought begun in the first line, the second line develops its thought further.  An example:

George Buchanan Gray, Stephen Geller and others have contested whether it is legitimate to call this parallelism, and some call it merely Formal Parallelism.  Some examples cited by Lowth and others do not appear to exhibit true semantic parallelism between elements in succeeding lines.  The two lines are "parallel" only in the sense that they are grouped together and are of the same length.

Emblematic Parallelism

In emblematic parallelism, one line conveys the main point, and another illuminates it by an image.  Here is an example:

Climactic or Stair-Step Parallelism

In climactic parallelism, the first line is partly repeated in subsequent lines, but they go beyond the first line and add to it's thought.  Here are some examples:

5.  Acrostic (Alphabetical) Psalms.

An acrostic psalm employs a form of composition in which each successive verse, or every second verse, or every section of the poem, begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  The acrostic Psalms are:  9-10 (a single psalm), 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145.  In Psalm 119, the longest psalm in the Psalter, each stanza begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet; each stanza has eight lines, all of them beginning with the same Hebrew letter.  In some cases, the use of the acrostic composition technique results in an apparent lack of logical sequence in the psalm.

6.  The Significance of Poetry in the Psalms.

In Lesson One we noted the importance of the use of poetry in the Psalms to appeal to the emotive, affective part of human nature.  It is interesting that the characteristics of Hebrew poetry lose much less in translation than other types of poetry that rely more on rhyme and meter.  Derek Kidner observes:  “It is the striking fact that this type of poetry loses less than perhaps any other in the process of translation.  In many literatures the appeal of a poem lies chiefly in verbal felicities and associations, or in metrical subtleties, which tend to fail of their effect even in a related language. . .  But the poetry of the Psalms has a broad simplicity of rhythm and imagery which survives transplanting into almost any soil.  Above all, the fact that its parallelisms are those of sense rather than of sound allows it to reproduce its chief effects with very little loss of either force or beauty.  It is well fitted by God’s providence to invite ‘all the earth’ to ‘sing the glory of his name’.”  (Psalms, vol. 1).