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It is a principle well understood, and acknowledged even by those who hold what may be considered an extreme doctrine of inspiration, that the Spirit of God, when moving the holy men of old to pen the sacred Scriptures, did not obliterate their natural peculiarities. Men differ from one another at least as much in their mental features as they do in bodily appearance, and these differences did not disappear from their writings, even when they were writing under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The splendid genius of Isaiah was totally different from the melancholy spirit of Jeremiah; the mystic flight of the mind of St. John was at the opposite pole from the vigorous movement of the intellect of St. Paul; and, when the Spirit of God was employing these men in His service, He did not make Isaiah speak with the voice of Jeremiah or St. John with that of St. Paul. Each speaks with his own voice and displays the peculiarities of his own genius. It is
17 B as easy to distinguish the writing of Isaiah from that of Jeremiah as to distinguish Browning from Tennyson, and it is as easy to distinguish St. John from St. Paul as it is to distinguish Carlyle from Macaulay. Inspiration made the man who was under its influence not less but more himself.
So, too, when the holy men who penned the Bible gave expression to the thoughts at which they had arrived under the guidance of inspiration, the products of their minds fell into the same literary forms as the products of the human mind have assumed in other literatures. In other literatures some writers are orators, the products of whose mental operations are speeches; others are historians, producing histories; some are writers of letters, the products of whose skill are epistles; others are poets, who produce poetry; and so on. Exactly the same variety is to be found among the various books of Scripture, some of which are histories, others epistles, some biographies, others poems, and so on.
The books of the Old Testament fall, on this principle of division, into three groups. At the beginning it contains a large number of books, extending from Genesis to Esther, which may be called Histories. At the opposite end there is a large number of books, extending from Isaiah to Malachi, which we call Prophecies. The latter is, indeed, a species of literature which is peculiar to the Bible, At least it is not met with on anything
J8 like the same scale in other literature. The Prophecies bear a certain resemblance to what in other literature are called Orations, and in other respects they have the characteristics of poetry; but, on the whole, they must be set apart, as a literary form which was invented by the Hebrews but has not been imitated elsewhere to any considerable extent. The nearest approach to them may perhaps be found in the sermons of such preachers as Savonarola or the leaders of the Scottish pulpit in the era of the Reformation or of the Covenant. Between the historical books at the beginning of the Bible and these prophetical ones at the end there lie five books which belong to the genus of literature which we call poetical. They are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,* and the Song of Songs. These five are all found side by side in our Bible; but there is at least one other book clearly of the poetical genus, which has wandered away among the prophetical books. This is the Book of Lamentations, which appears in our Bible as an appendix to Jeremiah. Some would reckon to the same class the Book of Ruth, which occurs among the historical books; and there are those who would add to the group, though scarcely with the same certainty, still another from each of the larger groups — namely, Esther from the one and Jonah from the other.
* Ecclesiastes is not, however, printed as poetry in the Revised Version. It is partly prose and partly poetry.
In the New Testament there are no poetical books. The one which comes nearest to deserving the title is Revelation, which is certainly a work of the imagination and carries the reader into an imaginative world; but its Greek name — the Apocalypse — and its resemblance to Daniel suggest — what is the truth — that it belongs to the genus we have called Prophecies rather than to what we call Poetry. There are, indeed, in the Apocalypse scattered poems, and such are to be found also in other New Testament books. These are much more numerous, however, in the Old Testament, occurring in both the historical and the prophetical portions. If they were all collected and published together, they would form a volume as large as some of the poetical books.
Students of literature are very familiar with the division of poetry into different species and varieties, and it may be well, at this stage, to indicate to which of these the poems found in the Bible belong.*
The Lyric species is looked on by experts as the primitive form, from which all the others have been developed. A song is a lyric; and this is the first and most natural poetical product. In all languages which have attained to any measure of develop-
* Ewald, in the first volume of his Dichter des alten Bundes, introduces his account of the Hebrew poets with what is really a succinct treatise on the forms of poetry in general and their development.
meat songs exist. These may be of all kinds — short or long, merry or sad, secular or religious. To this species belongs the Book of Psalms. So does the Book of Lamentations, a collection of infinitely sad and tearful lyrics, which would be called Elegies — a variety of lyric of which a noted example is Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.
The second species of poetry is the Epic, and is manifestly a development of the lyric. A song may tell a story, but, when this expands to a certain length and dignity, it is styled an Epic. To the epic species belong many of the greatest poetical works in existence, such as Homer’s Iliad, Virgil’s .Eneid and Milton’s Paradise Lost. But of this species there is no example in the Bible, unless we reckon Ruth a poetical book. Ruth would be styled an Idyll, which is a variety of the epic species, and, if Esther were admitted among the poetical books, it would be on similar terms.
The Drama is also a development of the lyric. In a song a story may be told, not directly, but by making two or more people speak to one another in successive verses. Songs of this character in our own literature will be easily recalled by everyone. Now, if a long and complicated story is told in this way, the poem is called a drama; and to the dramatic species many of the foremost products of human genius, such as the plays of Sophocles, Shakspeare and Schiller, belong. Two of the poetical books of the Bible appear in this form — namely, Job and the Song of Songs.
There still remains the fourth species of poetry — the Didactic, which, as its name indicates, uses poetry as a vehicle for instruction. In some of its forms it is simpler than even the lyric, as, for example, when a rule or maxim is put into a couplet, for the sake of fixing it in the memory. But it is also capable of development into large and imposing forms. Many of Cowper’s poems are of the didactic species; and in the Bible two books belong to it — namely, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Everyone remembers how much these books speak about wisdom and the instruction of the foolish; and instruction is, as has just been stated, the aim of didactic poetry.*
The primary reason for reading the Bible is that it is the Word of God, telling the sinner what he must do to be saved and pointing out to the pilgrim the pathway by which to reach the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. For this reason it would be entitled to the closest attention, though it were the driest and least attractive book in existence. In point of fact,
* These considerations may be allowed to determine the order in which the materials are arranged in the present volume. We proceed from the simpler to the more elaborate forms of poetry. But, as didactic poetry, though usually mentioned in the fourth place, is really simpler than epic or dramatic, we take the didactic books immediately after the lyric.
however, so far from being dry or unattractive, it is first-class as literature. This is something which the reader of the Bible gets into the bargain. To the mature and sanctified mind, indeed, its literaryexcellence may be a small matter in comparison with its spiritual value; but there may be cases in which admiration for it as literature may prove a vestibule through which to pass to an appreciation of its interior mysteries. It is honouring to its Author, while partaking of the heavenly viands which it contains, to appreciate and enjoy at the same time the lordly dish in which these are presented.
II
It may be asked why some portions of the Bible are called poetical, as distinguished from others to which we do not apply this name. And this is no easy question, because few things are more difficult than to tell exactly what poetry is. But we may say that the poetical portions of Scripture are so called on account of peculiarities in their form, their language and their thought.
(i) All are familiar with the fact that books which are poetical have a different form from books in prose. On opening a book of poetry, the reader, as a rule, sees at once that the lines are arranged in an unusual way: they do not run on with uniformity, as in prose, but are of irregular yet definite length. Perhaps they rhyme with one another — thus:
For pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed,
Or like the snow-fall in the river,
A moment white — then melts forever.
Everyone would recognise these lines to be poetry, and this is partly because they end with words which rhyme — “shed” rhyming with “spread,” and “forever” with “river.” But, familiar as this mark of poetry is to us, it does not belong to all poetry by any means. Indeed, rhyme is a comparatively modern poetical device. There is none of it in ancient Greek or Latin poetry; and it is totally absent from the poetry of the Bible in the original tongues, or at least very rare.*
A more universal form which poetry assumes is metre — that is, the regular recurrence of the same number of syllables or feet in the line. In English poetry this is combined with rhyme. For instance, in what we call Common Metre the first and third lines of a verse contain eight syllables each, and the second and fourth six each — thus:
That man hath perfect blessedness
Who walketh not astray
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinners’ way;
and in what is called Long Metre each line has eight syllables — thus:
Here and there coincidences of sound can be detected, but they are probably fortuitous.
All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
Him serve with mirth. His praise forth tell, Come ye before Him and rejoice.
In Latin and Greek literature metre, without rhyme, is the form of poetry. But it is doubtful whether Hebrew poetry has this form either.*
What it has, in place of rhyme or metre, is what is called Parallelism. This means, that in a verse of Hebrew poetry, the thought is expressed twice, or, it may be, thrice, but generally twice, in parallel words — that is to say, with only a slight variation of language and ideas — thus:
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained,
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
For Thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honour.
Thou mad est him to have dominion over the works of Thine hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet.t
* Of late by such scholars as Ley, Bickell, and Budde elaborate efforts have been made to prove that Hebrew poetry has metre as well as parallelism. Of course, in a prose translation into a foreign language, metre disappears; but even in the English version of the Book of Lamentations it can be discerned by anyone reading attentively that there is a great difference in the length of the lines in chapters ii., iii. and iv.; and the phenomena of this little book seem to supply the foundation on which the argument for the existence of Hebrew metre rests. See the article on Lamentations by Professor J. A. Selbie, as well as the article by Budde on Hebrew Poetry, in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible.
t Psalm viii. 3-6.
Sometimes it is the reverse side of the thought which is expressed in the second half of the verse — thus:
A wise son maketh a glad father,
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing,
But righteousness delivereth from death.
The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish, But He thrusteth away the desire of the wicked.*
It is like the swing of a pendulum: the thought, having traversed the space one way, swings back through the same space the opposite way. It is like the advance and the backward sweep of the wave, or the inspiration and the expiration of the breath in the lungs.
To some it may seem a strange notion of poetry thus, when a thing has been said, to say it over again in similar words. But probably to an ancient Hebrew our love of the clink of rhyme at the end of our lines would have seemed a still more surprising conception of poetry. The underlying principle of the two is, however, the same. When we hear a line of a certain length, we like to hear another coming after it of the same length and ending with the same sound; and, when the Hebrew heard a poetical thought expressed, he liked to hear it expressed again in nearly the same words. Our poetic form is a parallelism of sound, his was a parallelism of sense. At any rate the intelligent
* Prov. x. 1-3.
reader will find it of enormous advantage, in reading the poetical portions of the Bible, to attend to the parallelism. Sometimes this even determines the sense of a passage; because, when there are two rival translations of a line, one of which affords a parallelism with the other line in the verse, while the other docs not, the probability is high that the former is the correct reading and rendering.
The reality of the line as the basis of Hebrew poetry is guaranteed by Psalm exxxvi., where every line is followed by the words, “For His mercy endureth forever “; and the guarantee of the reality of the double line or verse is found in the existence of a number of what are called Acrostic Psalms, in which the number of verses is the same as that of the Hebrew alphabet, and the successive verses begin with the successive letters.* It is a singular fact, however, that the parallelism in the structure of Hebrew poetry had been forgotten for centuries and had perished from the minds of men, until it was rediscovered by Bishop Lowth and published to the world in 1753. This fact encourages the hope that the future may contain discoveries which will be equally illuminating; and at the present time, in quarters not a few, the acutest researches are being made into the poetical form of Hebrew
Psalms xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii., cxi., cxii., cxix. (an eightfold acrostic), cxlv.
poetry.* But the long neglect of parallelism raises the question whether the copyists, being unaware of it, admitted alterations which now require correction through the nearest approach that can be made to the original parallelism. Certainly in the poetical books, as they now stand, this is far from being perfect; and the question is, whether it was ever perfect, or whether there was always room for the introduction of a good deal not absolutely corresponding to the type.
While the parallelism is an important guide to the sense of the single verse, there are other indications of the sense of more verses than one. Among these is the refrain, or chorus, occurring fairly often. In Psalms xlii. and xliii., for example, the threefold recurrence of the words,
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him, Who is the health of my countenance, and my God,
may indicate that these Psalms were originally one, and at all events they lead the reader to expect a certain unity of thought in the portion preceding each occurrence of the chorus. In Psalm cvii. there is a double chorus, which is a remarkable guide to the sense. In the opening verses it is announced that the Psalm is a Song of Redemption;
* Cf. Briggs: General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture, pp. 361 ff. and Koenig: Stilistik, Rbetorik, Poetik in Bezug auf die bibliscbe Literatur.
and in the rest of the Psalm the troubles are enumerated from which different classes have been redeemed. In each case the trouble is briefly described, then comes this chorus:
Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, And He delivered them out of their distresses.
An account follows of the circumstances of the deliverance; and then, in each case, occurs the other chorus:
Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men.
The section closes with a recapitulation of the deliverance in a single verse. With great picturesqueness are thus described the redemptions experienced by travellers (4-9); by prisoners (10-16); by penitents (17-22); by mariners (23-32). From this point onwards the experiences of emigrants appear to be described; but the choruses have disappeared, and the Psalm winds up in a certain amount of obscurity, if not confusion; but whether this is due to a breakdown in the poetic energy of the author or to the failure of a transcriber to observe the structure of the poem cannot now be affirmed with certainty.
It is often easy to see that several verses have a close connection among themselves, even when there is no chorus to indicate the fact; and the ability to identify these paragraphs or strophes, as they are called, is one of the chief gifts of the interpreter. In Psalm ii., for example, which contains twelve verses, the parallelism in the several verses is easily perceived; but, when the whole piece is divided into four strophes of three verses each, there emerges a dramatic unity so striking that it is worth while to work it out in detail;* and this is given as a specimen of what can be done in the way of interpretation through close attention to the metrical form.
(2) Another distinctive feature of the poetical books of Scripture is their language. The language of poetry is more choice and exquisite than that of prose. Hence in poetry words and phrases may be quite appropriate which would sound affected and exaggerated in ordinary speech. As on occasions of festivity and ceremony we naturally wear clothing which would be out of place in everyday work, so poetry demands a splendour and gorgeousness of language which prose hardly tolerates. Especially is figurative language the native wear of poetry. Wordsworth speaks of the swan that on St. Mary’s Loch “floats double, swan and shadow “; f and all are aware of the charm which is added to the graceful form and dignified motion of that bird by its reflection in the sunny water on which
* See Appendix A, p. 226. Appendix B, though introduced for different reasons, illustrates the same thing.
f Cf. Gilfillan: The Bards of the Bible, p. 33, sixth edition, London, 1874.
3° it sits. This is like the charm of figurative language, which lets us see both a truth and, at the same time, its reflection in a material image. For example, when Psalm xxiii. says, “The Lord is my shepherd,” and goes on to give an elaborate and exquisite picture of the life of the sheep under the care of a good shepherd, the care of God, thus reflected in an image of human kindness, affects us far more than if it were described by itself. The delight we enjoy in this double expression of the truth is like that felt by the ear when, in somesylvan scene, it hears music softly answered by an echo in the distance.
Nowhere can the true poet be at a loss for imagery in which to mirror the truths which it is his mission to express; but in Palestine the sacred poets were at a very great advantage; because theirs was an incomparably beautiful country, in which the poetic temperament derived nourishment from everything entering the senses. The contrasts of raging sea and placid lake, fruitful plain and sandy wilderness; the picturesque labours of the inhabitants — of the shepherd tending his flock, the fisherman spreading his net, the vinedresser tilling the soil — the vicissitudes of peace and war; the festive pilgrimages of the religious year, when the whole land was in motion with singing companies thronging the roads on their way to the capital and the temple; the procession over its surface of the seasons and the profusion of its products — all these fed the poetic imagination and tempted it to the utmost exertion of its power. Hence, in the poetical portions of Scripture the aspects of the Holy Land stand revealed in lifelike forms of beauty and sublimity, but only as the reflection and echo of truths still more beautiful and sublime.
(3) The third thing which makes certain portions of Scripture poetical is their thought. And this is the most decisive distinction of all. Although poetry naturally flows into certain forms and expresses itself in language of a certain kind, that which makes it poetry is the quality of its thought. Poetry may be defined as exquisite thought in exquisite words. As the moisture of the atmosphere at a certain height becomes snow, so thought at a certain elevation becomes poetry; only it is not cold which makes the transformation in this case, but heat. It is when thought is issuing from the mind with a certain impetuosity and warmth that it comes out in poetic form. It is when an original idea has ignited the mind with a flash of fire, or a fresh and overmastering feeling has set the heart in a glow that poetry is likely to appear as the result.
There may be those to whom it sounds disparaging to speak of some books of the Bible as poetical and of their writers as poets, because poems seem to them a light kind of literature and poets a light kind of people. No doubt there has been plenty of light poetry, and there have been many frivolous poets. Yet the greatest books of the world are poetical. Homer is the chief representative of Greek literature, and the poems of Horace are more read than any other Latin book. Dante’s Divine Comedy has done more to give to Italy its literary position in the world than all the rest of Italian books put together, and Goethe’s Faust is the palmary product of German literature. If English literature were on the point of perishing, what the world would like to rescue from the flames would be the works of Shakspeare and the poems of Burns. A nation’s poetry is the sublimated essence of its thinking, and the poetic form has a preservative virtue, which confers immortality on that which it enshrines. The reason why the Bible is so pervaded with poetry is because the thought which it contains is so living and original, and because this so mastered and melted the minds to which it was first communicated that their utterance partook of the movement and music from which it originated. Coleridge’s well-known remark, that, wherever the words become peculiarly beautiful or sublime, the thought which they express will be found to be deep and original, applies to the Bible in the fullest measure; and the Bible reader may rely upon it that, when the poetry intensifies, there are, underneath, the great deeps of truth and faith.*
* Robert Louis Stevenson, in a communication to a volume entitled Books which Have Influenced Me, once wrote — and the words
III
Up to this point the theme of this chapter has been the poetry of the Bible in those respects in which it resembles other poetry; but it will be well, before closing, to point out the grand distinction by which the poetry of the Bible is separated from that of other peoples.
At present it is becoming common to speak of the Bible as a library instead of a book, as it can be printed in many volumes, exhibiting great differences in size, age and contents; and hence the impression might easily be taken up that the Bible is simply the literature of the Hebrew people in the same sense as the body of the Greek classics forms the literature of the Greek people or our own classics might be spoken of as the literature of the English people. Now, it is true that the books of the Bible form a literature, that they were the products of the history of the Hebrew people from age to age, and that their various forms are due to the variety of genius in the writers by whom they were penned. This is far truer than used to be generally recogmight almost be borrowed for a motto to the present volume: u The next book, in the order of time, to influence me was the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and move anyone, if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible.” So it would; and this is the one thing kept in view in this volume.
nised; and the recognition of it is one of the gains of the stage of enlightenment at which we are now standing. Yet this by itself will not account for the Bible. It will not account for what is in it, and still less will it account for what is left out of it. There were plenty of other books produced by the genius of the Hebrews besides those included in the Bible. In the region of poetry especially, with which we are at present dealing, we know from evidence in the Bible itself, there were plenty of pieces devoted to wit, love, bacchanalian sentiment and similar themes, produced by the Hebrews; and, if the Bible were merely the literature of the Hebrews, it would include these. But they have all been excluded.
The peculiarity of the Bible is that, in spite of the variety of its contents, their widely different ages and their different authors, it is all about God and man in his relation to God. In Greek literature, one poet, Homer, is religious, another, Aristophanes, is grossly irreligious; one historian, Herodotus, takes a religious view of history, another, Thucydides, takes a purely earthly view of the events which he records. So, in our own literature, Milton is a religious poet, whereas Byron is the reverse; one philosopher, Lord Bacon, sees God in the structure of the universe and the workings of the human mind, while another, John Stuart Mill, leaves this element out of his speculation. But all the books of the Bible are full of God. History, prophecy, poetry are in this respect set on one key, like the various groups in a large orchestra. However these books may have been collected, the principle by which they are bound together is not merely or chiefly their common connection with the Hebrew people or the Hebrew history, but the fact that they belong to Him whose Spirit breathes through them all, the connection with Him imparting to them their unity.
Not only, however, do these books with one consent and harmony speak of God, but those of them belonging to the Old Testament — and these form the great majority — exhibit, further, a common movement: they are all pointing and straining forward to the revelation of the Son of God in the flesh. Some do so more distinctly, others more obscurely; but the movement is common to them all. They all convey a subtle sense of their own imperfection, and make the reader lift up his eyes for the complementary truth which is to complete them; and this, when it is discovered, is nothing less than the Truth Incarnate. Thus will the mind, apprehended and guided by them, be landed eventually at the manger of Bethlehem and the cross of Calvary.