Week 75: Hebrew Poetry Part 3
December 26, 2011
(from Unlocking the Bible by David Pawson)
Wonder
Because poetry is partly about communicating pleasant sounds, the effect
of poetry is often lost or diminished if it is just read silently. Poems are meant
to be read aloud. There is something very satisfying about the sound of poetry.
It brings a sense of wonder that isn’t generally found in prose. It is no surprise,
therefore, that poems are used in the worship of God. The Psalms (the Jews’
hymn-book), are all in poetry. Prose is generally very difficult to sing, while
poems lend themselves more readily to musical accompaniment.
Furthermore, poetry helps us to appreciate and express the sense of wonder
that we feel as we worship. I will show what I mean by using a well-known
poem:
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Jane Taylor
It’s possible to kill the child-like wonder in this poem by reducing it to scientific
terms:
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
I don’t wonder what you are.
You’re the cooling down of gasses,
Forming into solid masses.
Let’s take it a step further:
Scintillate, scintillate, globule prolific,
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific.
Loftily poised in ether capacious,
Closely resembling a gem carbonaceous.
Note the contrast between the language of science and that of poetry. The
former is exact and cold, while the latter is less precise but evokes wonder and
awe. This is what makes poetry such a good medium for worship. Hymns, songs,
psalms and choruses help us to express something of the wonder and glory of
God in a way that scientific forms of expression cannot.
Poetry is visual as well as verbal. It paints pictures in the mind. Imagination
is very necessary to writing poetry. It uses metaphors, similes and images. For
example, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star … like a diamond in the sky’ helps to conjure
a picture of a shining star.
Let’s take Psalm 42 as another example:
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul longs for God.
We imagine an animal panting, with its tongue hanging out, and that makes
us think of our own thirst for God.
Sound and sense
English poetry is based on Greek and Roman poetry, where the emphasis is
on the sound. Although there are other forms and styles, English poetry generally
rhymes, while in Hebrew poetry, the emphasis is on the sense.
This distinction is especially clear in the English tradition of ‘nonsense verse’,
of which Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll were the masters. Carroll’s ‘The Jabberwocky’
is a prime example of this sort of poetry:
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Reading such poetry is a little like enjoying Pavarotti singing Italian opera
without knowing the language, or enjoying pop music when the words are inaudible
or meaningless. We haven’t a clue what it is about but we like it anyway.
Such poems may ‘move’ us but they don’t take us anywhere. Reading them
may help us to relax and to appreciate life, but they don’t affect the way we
live.
Hebrew poetry is very different from the English style. Even in the original
language, the emphasis is upon the sense of the words rather than the sound of
them, which is one reason why there is very little rhyme in Hebrew poetry.
(from Unlocking the Bible by David Pawson)
Week 74: Hebrew Poetry Part 2
December 19, 2011
(from Unlocking the Bible by David Pawson)
Beauty
Poetry touches the heart, the mind and the will by making words beautiful
as well as meaningful. We are drawn to poems because the words are arranged
in such a way that they appeal to our sense of beauty, balance, symmetry and
proportion.
Just as a beautiful person has well-balanced features, so it is this balance that
appeals to us in poetry.
There are three basic features of poetry that make the words beautiful for us:
rhyme, rhythm and repetition.
Rhyme
Rhyme is a common feature of English poetry, but it is not generally found in
Hebrew poetry. This classic nursery rhyme demonstrates a balance of rhyming
words well:
Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
It has a simple rhyme structure that is common to most nursery rhymes, and
children have no trouble learning them.
Rhythm
The second feature of poetry that makes words beautiful is rhythm or metre,
where the beat based on the syllables must fall on the correct words. For example:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled.
Mrs. Hemans
The poem has a 4/3 rhythm, a favorite for both Hebrew and English poetry,
and often used in the metrical Psalms in Scotland. Take another example:
The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want – (4)
He makes me down to lie (3)
in pastures green he leadeth me – (4)
the quiet waters by – (3).
Francis Rous
Good rhythm is dependent on the emphasis falling on the right syllable. When
a hymn or chorus fails in this regard the effect is unpleasant. Take, for example,
these two lines from a hymn:
For all the good our Father does,
God and king of us all.
The beat is placed on the wrong syllables and so emphasizes the wrong words.
The hymn’s beauty is lost.
Rhythm can also be used to shock the reader:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Is that fair?!
The last line is startling because it breaks the rhythm and brings you up with
a jolt.
Repetition
The third aspect of poetry that makes words beautiful is repetition. The repetition
of a word or a line makes it poetic. There is a famous speech in Shakespeare’s
play Julius Caesar that repeats the line, ‘And Brutus is an honourable
man.’ Or take this famous nursery rhyme that uses repetition:
‘Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?’
‘Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.’
The repetition may be of lines, phrases or even letters. Maybe you noticed
how Studdert Kennedy uses words beginning with ‘c’ in his poem ‘Indifference’:
‘crude’, ‘cruel’, ‘crouched’ and ‘cried’. They serve to emphasize the two ‘c’s that
are the key to its theme: cross and crucify.
In other cases a refrain is used to emphasize a point. For example, Psalm 136
repeats the phrase, ‘His love endures for ever.’
Other poems employ alliteration. I n ‘The Siege of Belgrade,’ the first line of
each verse is a consecutive letter of the alphabet, but this same letter is used for
the main words in each verse. Psalm 119 is similar.
