BibleProject - Art of Biblical Poetry E1: The Thunder of God

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

This is episode 1 in our series on Biblical Poetry! In part 1 (0-4:43), the guys discuss the fact that about one third of the modern biblical text is poetry. But what exactly is poetry? Tim explains that every culture has its own definition of poetry. Tim prefers this definition from Laurence Perrine: “Poetry is a kind of human language that says more, and says it more intensely than does ordinary language.” (Laurence Perrine, Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry) In part 2 (4:43-27:00), Tim and Jon dive into Psalm 29. Tim offers the poem as a biblical meditation on a storm moving over the landscape. The guys pause on the image in verse 6 of a “wild ox.” This was a species now extinct called an “auroch” (see the show resources). Tim comments that in the Bible, the most dangerous animals are depicted as a lion or a wild ox or auroch. In part 3 (27:00-35:30), the guys discuss the use of cadence, metaphor, and meter in poetry. This varies from culture to culture. The guys note that rhyming and syllable structure allows a person to memorize the lines more easily. Additionally, Tim says that a core concept is that poetry always carries an overabundance of meaning. The limited use of words expands the meaning of them. In part 4 (35:30-54:25), Tim and Jon discuss that the ancient Israelite poetry preserved for us in the Bible doesn’t fit any kind of master “system” like meter (though some think so). However, the Israelites were aware of a certain kind of speech that was poetic, dense, and distinct from normal speech. They even have vocabulary for it. “Song” (Heb. shir / shirah): Exodus 15:1, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song…" “Psalm” (Heb. mizmor): Many headings to the Psalms have these: Psalm 3, “A mizmor of David.” “Lament” (Heb. qinah): 2 Samuel 1:17, “David lamented this qinah over Saul and Jonathan.” There are three keys to reading Hebrew poetry: Rhythm: Hebrew poetry is shaped into a “line-rhythm” or “verse.” It is not metrical (based on syllable counts), but a form of “free verse.” The line in Hebrew poetry is most often: a. A complete sentence or subordinate clause b. Consisting of 3-5 words c. Marked by repetition and clear end-stop signals The Dead Sea Scrolls show the earliest divisions of Hebrew poetry into line-columns. Terseness: This poetry is often concise and uses as few words as possible to communicate as much as possible. “The terseness of biblical poetry gives the impression that each word or phrase is more loaded with meaning, since fewer words must bear the burden of the message.” (Adele Berlin, Introduction to Biblical Poetry) Parallelism: Robert Lowth's Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews and a commentary on Isaiah created the first comprehensive synthesis of features in Biblical poetry. In his words: “There is a certain conformation of the sentences, which is chiefly observable in those passages which frequently occur in Hebrew poetry, in which they treat one subject in many different ways, and dwell upon the same sentiment; when they express the same thing in different words, or different things in a similar form of words: and since this artifice of composition seldom fails to produce an agreeable and measured cadence, we can scarcely doubt it must have imparted to their poetry an exquisite degree of beauty and grace.” In part 5 (54:25-59:24), Jon asks whether or not more people should make an effort to learn to read and understand Hebrew. He says he feels discouraged. Why would God hide himself in a language that is so hard to understand and takes so much effort to learn? Tim says that every serious community of Bible followers should have someone in it who’s committed to studying the scriptures in their Hebrew form. In part 6 (59:24-end), the guys continue to discuss parallelism in Hebrew poetry. All the Proverbs are cast in this poetic form. In fact, the word “proverb” in Hebrew (mashal) means “a comparison.” In Proverbs 16:32, both lines are positive, “better than” sayings. Being slow to anger is better than being a warrior, And being one who rules their passions is better than one who captures a city. Show Resources: Adele Berlin, Introduction to Biblical Poetry Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry Extinct species of wild ox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs Laurence Perrine, Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry Psalm 29 Produced by: Dan Gummel, Jon Collins Show Music: J Cole Type Beat, Thunderstorm Instrumental (Educational and Non Profit Fair Use) Rosasharn Music, Defender Instrumental Unwritten Stories, All Night Miss Emeli, General Vibe

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hi, this is John at the Bible Project. And today, on the podcast, we have a conversation about Biblical poetry. Did you know that one out of three pages in your Bible are poetry? Specifically, ancient Hebrew poetry. It's all over the place. And that's why in this podcast episode, we're going to talk about appreciating the art of Biblical poetry. And to do that, we're gonna spend a lot of time today

reading Psalm 29. So if you have the option, I'd recommend that you pull that Psalm up on your phone or turn to it in your Bible. It'd be nice to follow along. If you're driving or something, just take it all in. And so in the spirit of poetry, let me offer you a poem.

Roses are red, violets are blue, poems spark the imagination. And that's what poetry is meant to do. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. We're in a series on how to read the Bible. Yep. And we've done like eight videos so far. We finished off narrative and we're going into poetry.

Poetry. Which is a large part of the Bible. Yeah. A lot of poetry in the Bible. Yeah. About one third of the Bible is poetry. That's a lot. It's a sign that one out of three verses.

One out of three pages. Pages of both pages. Okay. It's a lot of poetry. Yeah, it is a lot of poetry. An enormous amount. And it all shares in a part of one specific cultural heritage of a way of writing in poetry.

The Israelite Jewish poetry tradition. Yeah, it's not like the Dr. Su's way of writing in poetry, the Israelite Jewish poetry tradition. Yeah, it's not like the Dr. Su's way of writing poetry. Yeah, well, that's a whole interesting thing. I think we should talk about is that every culture has its own categories of what constitutes poetry. And it's differ, differ is from culture to culture. Yeah. So that's been actually one of the really interesting things about the history of biblical poetry,

as it's been studied in the last few hundred years, is spent a lot of the arguing and debates that scholars left to do is whether it's poetry or not. Whether, what's in the Bible is poetry? Correct. Yeah, whether it should receive the title poetry or how do you tell... I didn't know that was a debate. What is poetry versus non-poetry because it's blurry? But what ends up being the case is half the time.

It's people really what they're arguing over is their conceptions of what makes something poetic. Yeah. And those are really relative categories because they're shaped by wherever you happen to grow up. I do remember when I was really young, well, maybe in high school or something, thinking about what is it that makes something poetry?

Because it's all the same words, but there is something you can tell when something is poetry. Yeah, you can often feel it. Feel it before you can define it or talk it. And it just was weirded me out that you could take the same words in the same language and talk plainly, but then you can also then use it to talk in some fundamentally different way.

And it was always elusive as to how that actually came to be. That's right. Yeah, so there's a whole part of this conversation that I think, especially with this video, we're going to have two videos planned on reading biblical poetry. The first one is just on the art, the artistry of the language of biblical poetry. So a lot of these categories won't be unique to Hebrew or Bible poetry. They're kind of universal qualities, but each culture

puts them into practice in different ways. And so it's both kind of a universal conversation we're having about what makes some language more functional and some language more artistic. Like what is that? Yeah. So I've at least boiled down some categories that are helpful for me. Okay. And then there are some unique things about biblical poetry that once you see them, you can see them for what they are. They really enrich your experience of one third of the Bible. So I think it's kind of a helpful tool. Cool.

I thought we could begin by reading poem from the Book of Psalms Psalm 29. I remember reading this poem for the first time, and I don't know if it's somewhere in my first year or two, as a follower of Jesus, and I remember just reading the poem and just going, what? What is going on right now? And now I've come to love this poem. It's beautiful. It has going on inside of it all of the dynamics that make Hebrew poetry what it is. Do you want to read it? Do you want me to read it? Reading it's half the thing. And also just for the listener on the podcast, this might be a challenging conversation to listen to because half of what makes really reflecting on biblical poetry is being able to see it

reflecting on biblical poetry is being able to see it on a page and ponder that way and linger over the words and read and reread and read slowly. These notes will be in the show notes. So if they want to be... Oh, link to them. Uh, notes are actually in the show notes. Oh, cool. Alright, cool. That's cool.

Great. So, how about this? Since I've come to love this poem, I would like to perform a reading. Yeah great. Of Psalm 29 and in a my loud Interruptor should I just take it in? Hmm. Just take it in. Okay, and then I want to I want you. Yeah, but here this is an experiment for you and whoever's listening I'll do a reading and then I want you to reflect on what just happened. Okay, I want us to try and give words what just happened. And then the rest of our conversation will be giving form to that feeling that you have. One preface to note, and we'll talk

about this at length, is that poetry often presses words into unusual settings to make them mean more than they would often mean in normal speech. And so there's a Hebrew word that's at the center of this poem gets repeated more than any other word. It gets translated in our English translations as voice. It's the Hebrew word coal. Coal. So it's kind of like ruach in that ruach can refer to just invisible energy so it can

be impersonal, like wind, but it can also be personal, like spirit, and we call that breath. Oh, okay, yeah, or spirit. So in the same way Hebrew coal can be impersonal, in which case, a sound, yes, it gets translated as sound. Oh, okay. Whenever you see the word sound in the Bible,

it's cool. 99% it's the word coal. Okay. When it's a personal Bible, it's called 99% to word call. When it's a personal call, it gets translated as voice. When it's referring to natural call, calls that happen in nature. The sound of a stream or something. Yeah, that's right.

And one of the most common ways that gets used is to describe the call of a storm, namely thunder. So there are some rare words for thunder, but the most common word for thunder is coal. So in my reading of Psalm 29, I'm not going to use the English translation, so I'm just going to say the word coal. But for you to know, it's a word that can be used to mean sound or voice. Voice or thunder. Oh, so it's thunder even if it's just, it's not cold of the storm, it's just cold and sometimes it means thunder. Correct. Yep.

Okay. Alright. Psalm 29 of reading. Give to Yahweh, O sons of God. Give to Yahweh, O sons of God, give to Yahweh glory and strength. Give to Yahweh the glory do His name worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness. The coal of Yahweh is over the waters. The God of glory thunders Yahweh thunders over the mighty waters.

The coal of Yahweh is powerful. The coal of Yahweh is majestic. The coal of Yahweh breaks the cedars. Yahweh breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon leap like a calf, serion like a young wild ox. The coal of Yahweh strikes with flashes of lightning. The coal of Yahweh shakes the desert, Yahweh shakes the desert of Kadeh.

The coal of Yahweh twists the oaks, it strips the forest's bear, and everything in his temple cries out, glory. Yahweh sits in throne over the flood. Yahweh is in throne as king forever. Yahweh gives strength to his 29. Now the word thunder is in there and that's the word call to, but you sit thunder. It's actually the the less common verb is a verb for the thunder to make thunder. Okay. Yeah. And it's not cool. It's not cool there. It's actually the, yeah. The word for thunder. Okay. So, if I were to ask you, this is just like on an intellectual, irrational level, what does this poem about? Yeah. This poem is about comparing God's power to that of thunder.

Hmm. Yeah? You tell me. Why do you think that? Well, I mean, you kind of give. You give the big hit. I mean, all of the, all of the metaphors are, you can just imagine thunder doing all these things, breaking cedars into pieces, making animals jump, striking with flashes of lightning, making mountain ranges jump like animals. What was that? Do you see that? He makes Lebanon leap like a calf.

It's Cereon and Lebanon is a hill. Yep, it's a forested mountain range. And Cereon is Mount Hermann, the tallest mountain in the region. Wow. So even more so, turns up the volume on that theme. Yeah. Shakes the desert, flashes of lightning, twisting oaks, strips the forest bear. I mean, yeah, that's all you can just imagine lightning doing everything. Yeah. So at one level, the center of the poem is describing a thunderstorm.

Right. A thunder and lightning storm. Yeah. It has flames, right? Shatters trees. Yeah. Shoops them apart. Right.

It makes Earthquake. It's a good image. Notice the movement of the coal. It begins with over the waters. So it's rolling in off the Mediterranean. Like you can see the storm coming. Yeah, yeah. So it's a poet sitting up on Mount Carmel

or something, you know, where Elijah had the showdown with the prophets, and he's watching. You can be there and just look at the whole Mediterranean. Watch the sun to come in. The storm come in. It goes up north, Lebanon. Then it moves over the hill country, south to Kadesh, the desert of Kadesh. Where's that?

Near the staging area where the spies went to go into the land, Kadesh-Barnia, or Kadesh, desert of Kadesh. So it moves from north, all the way to south, all the way to south, earthquake, blasting trees apart. Yeah. So that's the center of the palm. Yeah. Is describing a thunderstorm, but every single time the word coal appears, it's someone's coal. Yeah. It's Yahweh's coal. Yeah. So we're equating the power of a thunderstorm with the power of the cloud rider. It's creation theology. That's what the poll that's doing here. You wouldn't know

that. Most translations, I'm sure, to say the voice of the Lord. Yep, that's right. But you could pick up from the poetry that it's describing a thunder stone. Sure. But yeah, the fact that it's the voice of the Lord instead of just the sound. Yeah. Or the thunder. Yeah. If you're just listening to it, you also can't see. I've highlighted color patterns, all the key repeated words. And if you see, they kind of appear in groups. Like, the first four lines had that repetition. Give to Yahweh, give glory, give glory, do His name. Give to Yahweh, give glory, give glory to His name. Oh, notice. Okay, so you have a description of a thunderstorm. Who is being called in the opening line to give glory to Yahweh?

The sons of God. The sons of God. The angels. Or spiritual beings. Spiritual beings. This is the sons of A. Leam or a variation of Elohim. So it's actually the subordinate gods who are being called to recognize they've been lowercase G gods. Lowercase G gods. spiritual beings. spiritual beings. It's not

even a human audience at first that's implied or addressed. That's fascinating. Yeah. And notice the triple address. give, give, give, all three beginning. You could have just said it once. We say three times. Yeah. And that's a big part of poetry is repetition. Repetition. Yep. Repetition. Notice also there's a word used only in the opening pair of lines and in the last pair of lines, I have it in yellow there. It's the word strength. So in the opening lines, the spiritual world is being called

to recognize Yahweh's more powerful and to recognize He has strength. Acknowledge that He has strength. The closing lines, ooh, actually look at those closing lines. Yahweh sits inoned over the flood. Why are we talking about the flood? Yeah, that seemed to jump out of nowhere.

Yeah. But, but I guess a thunderstorm comes with a lot of water. Yes. And remember, look at verse three, the storm began in the palm over the waters. Yeah, it's like sucking up the waters and bringing it in the land. So it's, if Yahweh's power, if a thunderstorm is this image of the creator's power, he's obviously even more powerful.

And if it moves over with the Chaotic Sea and over land, he has power over both. So these final lines are like drawing these theological implications of if the storm is powerful over water and land, how much more, yeah, way. But it uses the word flood. It uses the precise word that's used

in the book of Genesis to describe the flood. We're now we're talking about the chaos waters about Genesis 1. So he's king of chaos. He's king of chaos. He's king over chaos. Yeah, chaos is powerful. But yeah, it's more powerful. He also isn't thrown as king.

Kings aren't just powerful, they're powerful over like a people. And then that's the next line. the Lord gives strength to his people. So the opening line is spiritual beings, recognizing the strength of Yahweh. But now Yahweh's power and strength over, you know, all chaotic forces is relevant specifically to the people over which he rules and Yahweh gives his strength to them and then the last word of the poem is Shalom. He blesses them with Shalom. And that comes out of nowhere too because everything's so chaotic and destructive and unruly and then the last line is

blessing with Shalom. It's calming, isn't it? After all, the thunder and the plow, and it's, he gives strength to his people, blessing them with Shalom, with peace. Yeah. And yeah. And actually, that last line, the Lord blesses them, his people with peace is riffing off

of the blessing of Aaron in number chapter six. Hmm. One, I sing. Hmm. Sometimes. But may he bless you and keep you, cause his face to shine on you, and then the end is may he give you shalom. Psalm 29. So you can dissect it, and it's kind of like killing the butterfly from the examination table. But it's worth really reflecting on how it works as a poem. So you named repetition, right, and you immediately clued into the imagery. I'm just curious. What else stood out to you or stands out to you? Well, yeah, the whole midsection of this poem is just one, one metaphor after the next of the

voice being like thunder and different scenarios. And it's very repetitive. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord, majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks eaters. So that kind of, it's like a, gets you in a little bit of a trance there. Yeah, I know. Yeah, sure. You're really just thinking about one core thing. Yeah. The power of a thunderstorm. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so the technique is there are some realities that we encounter that thinking about

them from one perspective won't be sufficient. You need to turn it over and look at it again through a different way of talking about it. And then again, and again, I mean, how many lines? There's like 16 lines here basically making the same point that a thunder storm is really powerful and that it's always power. So repetition, but it's not just free, free for all. You know, there's, it's like a structured repetition. There's a rhythm.

There's a rhythm to it, which is easier to see when you look at it. Even just what we noted, the center of the poem is 16 lines. How do you know there's lines? What's a line? What's a line? So I've broken the poem up into lines. Oh, but it wasn't originally that way? Well, it begs the question of how do I know that it is consists of lines? What are the clues?

I just imagine in Hebrew it was also in lines. Oh, so that's very interesting. We actually, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are a number of biblical poems that are broken up into their poetic lines. So it's really not normal. It's a really ancient practice. Oh, okay. I'm just saying, if you were just to throw words on a page, how do you recognize something

as a poetic line? Oh, right. Yeah. And so what a poet does is give very clear indications that this language isn't just free flowing, it's following a pattern, a rhythm. When I write poetry or when I have, the line is kind of when I get to the end of my page. I got to switch. But there's more thought than that. Yeah, that's right.

So that kind of, I think, can transition us into, as we think about this poem, all the poems in the Bible, what are some of the universal characteristics that mark the kind of speech that is poetry that is able to take entities or realities of our experience, put them under our view, but in a way that doesn't just think about it from one perspective, and the language is in drawing attention to itself, as intentionally artistic. Oh yeah, actually I have a good quote here.

This is from Adele Berlin, who in our narrative conversations, like quoted from her excellent book on biblical narrative, and she has a great book on biblical poetry. And she says, poetry conveys thought. There is something the poet wants to communicate. Poetry conveys that thought in a self-conscious manner through a special structuring of the language that calls

attention to the how of the message as well as the what. In fact, good poetry, excuse me, in fact, in good poetry, the how and the what are indistinguishable. As Robert Alter puts it, poetry isn't just a set of techniques for saying impressively what you could say otherwise. Rather, it's a particular way of imagining the world. So Psalm 29 is talking about the power of God as creator through a poetic exploration of a thunderstorm. But it's structured the language about the thunderstorm. She says in a self-conscious way.

Yeah, it's being very plain about what it's doing. Yeah, it just repeats the same word like 12 times. And half the lines are about shattering trees. Right. So wouldn't one light have one line have surfaced about the trees? Apparently not. Because the goal isn't just to communicate information, it's to invite you into an experience. So I think I know what she means by good poetry, the how and the what become indistinguishable. I don't know if I do know what it means.

I just... Well, understand what she means. So biblical poetry is always about something. There is a message. Well, understand what she means. Biblical poetry is always about something. There is a message. There is a what? There is a what that the poem is about. This poem is about the power of God.

Yeah. That's right. Yep. It's about the power of God that should make spiritual beings bow their knee to Yahweh and should make God's people feel shalom. That's what it's about. And you could have just said that. Yeah, you could just write a short statement. Oh, sons of God.

Yeah. Bow the knee to Yahweh. He's very powerful. And he blesses his people. Amen. Dear sons of God. Yeah. So very clearly, this long poem is saying something

through what she calls a self-conscious how. And the how then is all the metaphor, it's all the repetition, the rhythm, the rhythm, the dense, overlapping repetitions. So it's self-conscious. Somebody sat down and crafted all those lines. Very carefully. Because think about, remember how, you can it's easier seeing in a color but there's key repeated words right at the beginning right in the end that link different things together so someone worked for days and days on this thing you know and that's what she means the how and good poetry the how itself communicates the one along with the what because the poet could have easily just written a statement. But that wasn't enough for the poet. The poet wanted you

it to experience the statement in a way that made the statement come to life in a new way. Yeah. So in this case repeating all of these scenes of thunderstorms, shaking things, breaking them apart, shattering and twisting trees. Yeah. It's all of a sudden the words are doing to you what is shaking and waking and what a, why it's a little exhilarating too. Yeah, it has an energy to it. Yeah.

Literally, the poetic techniques are a part, become a part of the what, the message, to become indistinguishable. It becomes a way to experience the what. Yeah, that's right. That's cool. It is cool. I would like to make a note that I don't know what a young wild ox is like.

Oh man. Serion, like a young wild ox is like. Oh man. Cereon, like a young wild ox leaps. Yeah, that's because these don't. It's an extinct species. It's gone. The alroc. The alroc. The alroc.

You want a little piece? No, I want a little piece. Oh, did. Yeah. A-U-R-O-C-H. Okay, so it looks like a cow, like a bull. But if you see it in comparison to something, it's a, it's like the size of a, the short bus.

Whoa. Or a big 15 passenger man. Yeah, it's massive. Yeah. I mean, they're like the size of elephant body. There's one in here that has like a main like a lion. Yeah. The wild ox, massive, massive creatures.

A wonderful scientist, you're thinking about bringing these back. Yeah. I mean, I think, I don't know, a Texas longhorn, those can get pretty big, but I think these things were bigger. And these, there's wild animals. Yeah. So actually the most dangerous animals in the Bible, aside from like crazy two and Job, the animals. Yeah, so actually the most dangerous animals in the Bible, aside from the crazy two and Job, the human of the biothin,

is always a lion or the wild ox. And they were always referring to these guys. Yep, massive, massive horn creatures. So that fits into the strategy of the poem too. He makes a young calf leap. And the ultimate of that species leap, the wild ox. He makes the babies leap and the most powerful wild ox leap. Like a young wild ox would be like a full grown, but still scrappy and ready to dominate.

Has something to prove. Yeah, like the older ones, they're tired of charging people and stuff. So you're not as afraid of those, but the young ones. Don't mess with those. That's exactly right. So the way I think would be helpful, the role of these videos is to introduce people

to biblical poetry one. I want to give people some handles on just the basic things to look for in the techniques, communication techniques, the biblical poetry is specifically just with language. That's what video 1's about. The art of biblical poetry. And then video 2 will invite people in just the wild imaginations of these authors and how they use metaphors and imagery. So to begin the video, we might want to think about how to invite people into more familiar ways of poetry. So poetry is a way of, it's a language that has a what

to communicate, but it's intentionally pouring energy into the how, the artistic use of language. So all cultures have ways of doing this. And you could call them poetic conventions, right? So every human culture develops like a functional use of a language. And then it develops this other. Some cultures develop this other type of language that's more reflective of artistic, emotive.

We call it poetry. But it happens through many other, many types of techniques. So the way it happens in the West, mostly is through rhyme and meter That's how we typically yeah think of poetry. So I just put the silly classic here, but it's such a great example Rose is a red violets are blue Sugar is sweet and so are you Thank you So there did look you in the eyes.

So there's four short lines. Each consists of three words, except the last, the fourth has four words. Look at it right there. Three lines have three words, the fourth has four words. Yeah, the cadence is, that's good. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Yeah. So cadence is that's good. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Yeah, to the fourth one's like that's right different. Yeah, so there's there's multiple conventions coming together there

There's rhyme blue and you there's overlapping metaphors flowers and sugar. Okay There's word plays. Word plays. Sugar is sweet. You are sweet. A person is sweet. Yeah. In a really different way than...

There's all that. And then there's the... What's called the meter. Yeah. It's the syllable patterning. Right. And that's a heritage that in the west, we get, I think, primarily through the English poetic tradition that

translated or mediated the ancient Greek lyric poetry tradition that's like from way back, from like the late kingdom period in Israel, the Greeks were up in like the six seven hundred species, the Greeks were up. These were like the Odyssey and Iliad kind of things. Yeah, so origins of that system I still don't quite understand called Iambic Pentameter. He's lots of different. Because Shakespeare was mediating a form of Iambic Pentameter into English poetry. Yeah.

Lots of his plays are structured. But part of the reason is to help memorize these stories, right? Yeah, that's right. Poetry is the type of literature that is originated for sure as an oral art form, composed orally, and performed orally. And once it's written, it takes on a different or a whole other set of characteristics. That's interesting. But then you get like, high-coup poetry, which isn't about rhyme, but it is about syllables.

Five, seven, five, four, five, four, three, three, three, very terse. Yep. So let's think there. Why would you write in high-coup poetry? The poet is, you're taking upon yourself some practice that your culture has and actually sets limits on you. Right. Yeah. Try to say a lot through a little. Through very little. That's right. And in this case, that little in whatever your cultural practice is, you also have to structure the language to match these patterns that is the way

you do it. Some case like Shakespeare's, you really, you see his true brilliance that seems to me, if you could understand the metrical system that he was working within, then you're just like, oh, his vocabulary was off the charts. He didn't have like thisaurus.com. Yeah, yeah. I really think, like're you're taking on limitations Through which you will express something well, I kind of it forces you to search for Options that you wouldn't first think to search for that's right. That's right. I've written

Songs and the same thing happens because you're like oh, I need a two syllable word here instead. Yes, or yeah, I need something that rhymes. So you have to start searching for other ideas. And then that makes you go, oh, I never really thought about this this way, but that's a good way of putting it. Stretchers your own understanding of the topic. Yeah, that's right. That's the right. So the writing of poetry becomes a discovery process. You're discovering your own language, which then helps you put ideas together in new combinations

Right, and then all of that together creates a dense artistic statement That oh this is all the way back. This is a quote that I read when We first got together. It's a classic introduction to poetry by Lawrence Perrine called Incent yeah, and it's it's not a technical definition of poetry, but I like it classic introduction to poetry by Lawrence Perrine, called Stanton Sense. Yeah. And it's not a technical definition of poetry, but I like it.

He says poetry is a kind of human language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language. Yeah. So he's not talking about form or meter or anything. He's just saying the net effect is language that does more than language normally does. And I think at the heart, that's what I want this video to be about. I want to introduce people to

some of the conventions and practices. These limits that the poets take on themselves, constructing speech and erhythm. But the net effect of it is that through these new combinations poetry carries a surplus of meaning and overabundance of meaning. Yeah, for me, that's a driving core concept. So what's the overabundance of meaning for you in Psalm 29 with the thunder and God's voice. I think what captures my imagination is it's somebody meditating on the most powerful and again for 3,000 years ago. So it's one and still today to be in the middle of a thunderstorm is one of the most humbling experience. Yeah, is one of the most humbling experiences. How you're just, you're puny, you're powerless.

And so that's a window into experiencing a thunderstorm as a window into my own nature as a human and to the powers at work that rule and are providentially rule over creation, which for this relied is Yahweh. It's all of a sudden this powerful frightening existential experience of a poet is trying to translate that. So this poetic medium becomes a way of inviting the reader into an emotional existential experience of their mortality, of Yahweh's repetitive, driving, unavoidable nature, right?

These lines over and over again. So there's an overabundance of meaning that you could never communicate any other way except through this form, which does it beautifully. I mean, I'm not in the habit of doing my theology by looking at rain clouds. We live in Portland. Yeah. We look at a lot of rain clouds.

And this poet's a Bible nerd, for sure. He's one of the biblical authors. But he also apparently thinks you should read the rain clouds. You should just enjoy a storm rolling through and think about the power of God. Do some theological reflection. In light of a powerful rainstorm. Yeah. I'm going to go to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach.

I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach.

I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. Now when they're thinking about the voice of God, is that connected to the word of God? Totally. Okay. Yeah, that's the other thing this poem is a hyperlink to is the appearance of Yahweh in the Garden of Eden in that interrogation scene after the humans take from the tree, and it says the coal, the voice of Yahweh, they heard the voice of Yahweh in the sound of Yahweh, in the wind of the day, and usually gets translated at the cool of the day, at the breezy time,

but it doesn't say that, it says in. Yeah, so it's like Yahweh's Voice showed up with the wind. Hmm. It's a storm scene. Oh, and that it's a storm Totally and that's a it's a preview to design pattern. It's previewing when Yahweh will show up with Israel at Mount Sinai Oh, and there what they see is the coal the voice voice. They see the voice of Yahweh. At Sanai? It's very odd. I thought they saw the glory. Oh, they do in chapter 24, but in Exodus 19, they look up at the storm cloud coming over to Mounton.

And what it says is they saw the voice of Yahweh. Yeah. Which thunder. But it's such a visceral experience they see it. So this poem's tapping into a whole design pattern in the biblical narratives about Yahweh showing up when his voice, his command as creator, it's powerful and awe-inspiring. The poem communicates that. I think when you get into it, the poem does that. That's what I mean, the overabundance of meaning.

So we've already developed the impressionist, painting aesthetic. And I'm kind of excited about that visual medium to unpack. Somehow, as we talk about different techniques of biblical poetry, it'd be cool if we have lines of poetry that we componder together in the video, talk about the technique, but then stuff is growing out of the words. It's just one idea. Right. But the idea is the words communicate more.

They grow stuff out of them that you can't quite analyze. You just experience it by experiencing the poetry. Yeah. We know the biblical authors knew when they were writing in poetry, because they had words for these compositions. There's at least three. Probably there's a few more, but the three most common ones, they called them a sheer, which is translated as translated as song so this is what they would call their poetry

yeah they actually had vocabulary to describe this kind of artistic speech they call it sheer it's a word for sing is it because a lot of these words sung totally yeah that's right yep so there would be melodies that's right same thing with the Odyssey and Ily and I think they thought that those were songs. I think that's right. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with music then when you set poetry to music your words are imitating the conventions of the music which set limitations on you, within a tradition, but also create opportunities for you to create new meanings.

So yeah, song is one of the ancient Hebrew terms for poetry. Another word, Mismor, it's the word solemn, it gets translated as solemn. And this is the word I only know because of the Bible. Yeah, totally. So I don't even really know what that means. Yeah. What is a song? Well, it comes from a verb, zamar,

which is another word for to play music, to play a song. Oh, to play a song. To play. So it's a synonym for song. Song simply means song, sung poetry. What's the difference then? Song is, it's related to the word sing for us, but song is also the word sing.

Yeah, another word Psalm is a verb in Hebrew. You can refer to something you do and then the end result. You're solving. The composition. Yeah, you Psalm. And then what you have at the end of that is a psalm, a sung poem. And these words aren't used enough. And we don't know enough about the choir system.

Nation Israel, we just don't know. Yeah. Enough to be able to distinguish these words like a shear was this type of song. And a Mizmour was this type of song. We do know, the next term, we do know about this one, it's a Kina, and's a song of grief or a lament. So the book of limitations, there's a quina that David sings when Saul and Jonathan are dead. So this was a type of song, just a grief song. That was a whole cultural tradition, as long as poems of grief. So these labels are given a lot to poetry in the Bible.

So we know the biblical authors. New, not in these categories. Yeah, they knew when they were entering this mode. But writing. Sure. So then the question is, okay, so what was the little menu list, right, like when you're working on your computer and you go up to the menu at the top?

Or what, I guess? What are the tools? What are the tools set? I guess that could be a dated metaphor in a few years here. The menu is? Yeah. Yeah, what's the tool set? Yeah.

And this has become a huge area of debate for going on over 200 years. What tools they have? Because there's a debate. Yeah, it's Bible nerds arguing about the nature of ancient Hebrew poetry. My favorite description is a poem written by a Bible nerd. It's a poem about the Hebrew poetry, how it works. I don't fully agree with it, but I agree with most of it. But it's clever. It's by John

Hollander. He says, the verse of Hebrew Bible is strange. The meter of Psalms and Proverbs perplexes. It's not a matter of number, no counting of beats or syllables. Its song is a music of matching. Its rhythm, a kind of paralleling. One line makes an assertion. The other part expresses, in other words, sometimes a third part will very yet again. Yeah.

Clever. Yeah, it's clever. Bible nerds. It's nerdy. So Hollander's claim is no meter, no syllable. Which makes it difficult for singing. It could. A wood.

I mean, if there's a set melody. Ah, I see. I mean, I think a lot of, I guess I just imagine what would happen. Well, it makes it difficult for, I guess, a westerner to imagine singing. But, you probably have the experience if you travel internationally and you hear other cultures like traditional music and sometimes it sounds off to somebody from another culture sounds like it's not in harmony or and it's just well it's just not your culture. So it doesn't seem like the biblical authors

experienced this as a problem because they had vocabulary for poetry. Well, I can understand it feeling weird because the melodies in a different, I don't know what you're gonna call it, but keys. But isn't it that if I'm gonna introduce a new poem to you and I want you to be able to sing it Either I have to give you a new melody that you're gonna know it by or I just say hey We're gonna use this commonly known melody and we're gonna use my new song

I guess I was imagined that because that's a lot of the way that Some are famous hymns were put together, there were common melodies that we just changed the words to. At least that's what I've been told. Yeah, yeah, interesting. And that just makes it a lot easier for people to go, oh cool, I could sing in on this because I know the melody already. But if you're going to do that, you have to adhere to the structure of the meter of that

melody. Part of the challenge is, yeah, the poetry in the Bible represents a long history. Some of these are very ancient poems, but some of them are poems that have been taken up into literary texts and then edited or new parts are composed to make them fit into the written medium. And so even the book of Psalms is a great example of this. It's not a hymn book. It's very much now in the form that it's in a written literary composition that's meant to be read. And you can see it by the editorial structures, the headings. There's really interesting. There's like poems like Psalm 14. Half of it gets

repeated in half of another Psalm, I think it's 70. And so you can tell there was there was a mode at which the stopped being sung and were studied and treasured and written and and and reflected on as written text. In which case the meter thing like maybe way back when in most of the day they were singing this, but by the time they've reached the stage they are at in the Bible, the meter doesn't matter, which makes sense of the lack of any syllable rhythms. So the point is in Hebrew poetry, the meter and the syllable count. Yeah, meter and rhyming.

And rhyming. It roses a red, violets are blue. Yeah, they're not rhyming. I remember being told, in Hebrew, you don't rhyme where as you rhyme thoughts. Right, I've heard that too. But that's not helpful. I don't think that's helpful. You don't think that's helpful. I want to

head a different direction in how we guide people. Okay. Forget us at that. All right. So, so the first thing is that rhythm. There is a rhythm. There's a whole bunch of Bible nerds who are using the phrase free verse to describe the rhythm. Mm- rhythm. And free verse means essentially, my goal is to write short, dense lines. And there is some guiding rules. The line consists almost always of three to five words in Hebrew. Oh, not in English. Oh yeah, this is interesting. If I write a sentence in English, he picked him up. He picked him up. Or he picked it up. Okay.

Subject, verb, direct object. Yeah. Those are always in English at least three separate words. Well, forwards, he picked. He picked him up. Oh yeah, okay, four words. There you go. In Hebrew, that's one word.

Woop! How? Vayekacheho. So the he is built into the verb. Okay. And then you have the verb. And then you can attach the direct object to the verb itself. This is like German, you're just like cramming words together. Yeah. Yeah. So words can have many syllables, but you can have a whole sentence in one word in Hebrew. And the word and attaches itself to the beginning of a word. So you can have the sentence and he picked him up. Fa'ekachehu, one word in Hebrew. So it's the perfect language to make dense statements in.

You can pack a lot of meaning into one word. And if you got three of those suckers to work with, then you could have three sentences in a single line. Well, it's one word, but it's really a word that's four words. Correct. Yeah, in terms of, it's like grammatical makeup. It's four. Because in English, grammar is... We can can make he picked him up one word. He picked him up

You can say it quickly. He picked him up. Yeah, I can write it without any Andy picked him up any It kind of sounds like yeah, yeah, so there's something so so in in Hebrew poetry a poetic line usually it's pairs of lines, pairs of short lines, three to five words. Usually the first line is a complete sentence or a complete clause, and the second line is either a subordinate clause, a parallel clause, but you've always got a complete sentence in the line. In the complete sentence in the line.

In the line, in the line, please set. And usually they're in pairs, so people call them the A line and the B line. So this is universal, but very often, the A line will be a main clause or a complete sentence, and then the B line is either a full parallel clause or it's subordinate on the first one. Subordinate meaning? Ah, so the A line and he picked him up with strong arms of might.

Hmm, would be the B line. Okay. So it could be any picked him up, he lifted him high. That's correct. That would be like a parallel line. That would be, yep, that's right. But not all lines of parallel. But not all lines of parallel.

That's why it's thought rhymes aren't helpful. Got it. So rhythm. There's the cadence and rhythm, but it has to do with number of words. And there's a pretty big freedom. Three to about three to five words on average. Hebrew has a way of removing unnecessary words. They'll remove the words the like in English, the word the or a or and there's a way they have of stripping the speech down of what are called pros parts of speech. So they can do that in Hebrew, strip the thing down and some English poetry works like that too.

Sure. So this is just one writing poetry or is this also in speaking in Hebrew? It's a characteristic of biblical poetry. Oh. So rhythm, that's the first thing. There is a rhythm. Yeah. But it's a free verse rhythm.

This is a free verse is a technical category that literary nerds use. Yeah. Where you have in mind some basic parameters. Yeah. But within those parameters, do anything you want. It's free form, free jazz. Yeah, totally. And it's anything you want free form free jazz. Yeah, totally and

It's a it's a thing there are many cultural traditions that have a free verse. Okay tradition. Yeah for us It's more like spoken word poetry. It's very free verse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great example. Yeah, good job It's a great example Which means just because it doesn't rhyme Yeah, which means just because it doesn't rhyme with meter the way English does. It doesn't mean there isn't word play and rhyming going on just not in a metered way. Okay. So he's a poetry totally. There's lots of rhyming, there's lots of, yep, yes, words that sound similar.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they'll have whole poems that play with certain letters, repeating certain letters and so on. Got it. One of my favorite poems in Isaiah is Isaiah 5, called the Song of the Vineyard. And he met a four of God planting Israel. And so it says that God waited for the vineyard to produce grapes, but all it produced

with stinky grapes. Stinky grapes. Rotten grapes. Yeah grapes that are immediately rotten. Oh it's the grapes that it produces. Gross. Are there are grapes that are already rotten? Yeah, it sounds like a bad dream. Oh and you'll get this because of the justice video. So God says he was looking for Mishpat, but what he saw was Miss Pach. Bludged. Miss Pach. Miss Pach. Is Bludged. Yeah. Looking for Mishpat, what do you see? Mishpach. He was looking for cedaka, but what he saw was cedaka, the cries of the oppressed. So that's a great example. It's straight up rhyming.

It just doesn't follow meter. It's a type of rhyming. It's a type of rhyming. Yeah. You're using words that sound very similar. That rhyme. Oh, it's sound. Mishpach, mishpach.

Oh, yeah. It's not rhyming like English. I understand. It's. Oh, it's sound. Mishpoth, mispoth. Oh, yeah. It's not rhyming like English. I understand. It's not rhyming by our standards. No. And Hebrew. The poets do that. We understand that kind of rhyming totally.

It's not the classic rhyme. Yeah, I actually, I wasn't taught to look for this a ton when I learned Hebrew, but, man, I've just worked through a couple studies recently on wordplay in the Hebrew Bible. It's off the charts. They're doing it everywhere. I had no idea. It's really remarkable. And it's just one of those things you can't quite translate.

Rhyming doesn't translate. Oh, we're playing being rhyming of words and stuff. Yeah. It's with Tohuv of Ohoobie, an example of that. Oh, yeah. Sure, that's an example. Or there's a whole story, the building of Babylon in Genesis. There's all the vocabulary centers around words that have the letters B and L. Oh really? Yeah, tooi. You just read a lot of the Hebrew, the whole thing's like Havu, Nivle, Lano, year.

Lots of Ls and Bs. Ls and Bs. Yeah, all leading up to him calling him Balaleng, B-L-L, the language and calling it B-L-B-B-L. Yeah, that's my favorite thing about poetry is when there's a repetition of sounds. Mm-hmm, yeah. Super common.

Yeah. Super common. Yeah. Super common. In many kinds of poetry. And it's not rhyme. It's the how of the speech that it creates the surplus, the overabundance of meaning. Right. That isn't it. About it.

A concept. It's about a feeling that you get when you hear it. Now, it gets discouraging to know that this is happening in the Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew or read it. And I can see that being discouraging to other people. Yeah. Well here's another thing. God knew it same way. God knew that this was going to be the poetry and language in which for many people groups throughout history we're going to use as their scriptures. They're basic instructions before leaving.

No, not even that though. Like, they're a way to understand the story of God. I see. And for their imagination to be shaped by what God's doing in the world and who he is and who we are. Yeah, you know? Sure. Yeah, so much of this now is then buried to be shaped by what God's doing in the world and who he is and who we are. Yes. You know?

Sure. So much of this now is then buried in the Hebrew, which... Well Greek. Did God think everyone was learning Hebrew and Greek? Or just like... Well, those little treats are extra for the people who want to do extra work. Well, after all we've talked about in terms of the sophistication and the multi-layers of depth to these stories, that is for sure going on, whether you read it, even if you

read it in Hebrew, that a story is in these stories and poems full depth, isn't it available to somebody on the first reading? Yeah. So that's built in to just the style of communication. I can get there. I can get there. Yeah, yeah. But the first reading. Yeah. So that's built in to just the style of communication. I can get there. I can get there. Yeah, yeah. But the Hebrew thing.

Here we're back to, I don't know, a core thing that we keep coming around that the Christian Jewish confession is God chose to reveal Himself through a historical medium of the people and a culture and their language and their... Like the poet, he a culture, and their language, and their... Like the poet, he restrained himself to certain limitations. Yeah, God's the poet, accepting limitations to communicate through humanity. I mean, what is the incarnation? You can make the same questions in principle come with the incarnation of Jesus. I never got to hear Jesus speak in Aramaic.

I only get to hear him in Greek translation through the apostles. I am nowhere near Israel Palestine right now. And so that's more of a theological reality that's built into the Jewish and Christian tradition is that this God weaves himself into human history, which means that when he reveals himself, it's in the categories of the people he's communicating through. Do you think every Christian community needs the resident Bible nerd to read the Bible with? Oh, I think a healthy Christian community, yeah, it needs Bible nerds.

At least if that community is interested in keeping itself anchored in something other than just what perpetually needs. So how many Bible nerds do we need per capita then? That's a great question. And Bible nerds, I don't mean degrees, but somebody who's really... Yeah, someone who I could sit down with and they can tell me... They can tell me.

And they can say, hey, you won't see this, but look at the rhyming of the words here. Yeah, that's right. I would, I mean, here's a thing, is I would love to be able to do that. But I just know I'm not going to be able to, I would love to play the violin. I'm not going to.

Yeah, sure. But the more we have these conversations like this, I'm like, oh, maybe I do able to. I would love to play the violin. I'm not going to. Yeah, sure. But the more we have these conversations like this, I'm like, oh, maybe I do need to. No, I don't think so. We read, look how much we did on that poem, in Psalm 29, just in English. Yeah, but you had to tell me about Cole. I had to tell you about one Hebrew word

that helps unlock the word play. But that's it. That's all I'd say. That's all you need. Somebody who, I mean I'm with you, but this is just the reality. The Apostles knew this, this is why Paul said, a healthy, complete body of the Messiah has an Apostle, Prophet, Pastor, teacher, and other things. Yeah, there are many parts, right? And the spiritual gifts, all that.

And teacher, a nerd, is on the list. And of course, of course he needed to teach us. Look at our sacred texts. Really hard to understand. A lot of the time. Thank you for raising that important question, John. You're welcome. So the companion to rhythm in biblical poetic style is a phenomenon that's come to have

the term parallelism. Okay. You gave it another phrase earlier, thought rhyming. Thought rhyming. And it's a, I mean, we saw it in Psalm 29. You always voice, shatters the trees, it twists the oaks. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It makes the mountains skip like a young calf, it makes another mountain skip like a wild ox.

So... Two similar thoughts one after another. Yeah. Though, look at the opening, the opening four lines of Psalm 29. It's a triple repetition with a fourth variation. It's a triple repetition with a fourth variation. So give to Yahweh, of sons of God, give to Yahweh, glory and strength, give to Yahweh, glory, worship the Lord.

Those are three subordinate ones. Well, you'd say it's three parallel lines with the last one coming in as a little twist. Oh, those are three parallel lines with the fourth subordinate. Correct. Kind of. Yep, that's right.

And here it's following the classic like one, two, three twist. Yeah. You set the pattern? Actually, the classic is one, two twist. Oh, one, two twist. That's right, this is the one, two, three twist. This is the one, two, three twist. And in biblical poetry, oftentimes it's the one, two twist.

Or it's just the one to. Yeah, the one to push. This is called parallelism. So there was a guy named Robert Loth, an Englishman who was a divine. A divine? Yeah, it's like an old English term for scholar. Oh, okay.

And he's credited with writing the first systematic dissertation on biblical poetry. It's called lectures on the sacred poetry of the Hebrews. Hmm, nice. In the year 1753. And here's how he put it. What do you notice? The speech of parallel repetition. He says, there is a certain conformation of the sentences, which is chiefly observable in those passages, which frequently occur in Hebrew poetry, in which they treat one subject in many different ways. Perilow. And dwell upon the same sentiment.

So the voice of Yahweh in Psalm 29, when they express the same thing in different words, in Psalm 29. When they express the same thing in different words or different things in the similar form of words, and since this artifice of composition seldom fails to produce inagreable and measured cadence, we must scarcely doubt it must have imparted to their poetry an exquisite degree of beauty and grace. That was all one sentence. Grimitically. His sentence has a lot of beauty and grace. Yeah, yeah, right. So his other major contribution was he wrote a commentary on the whole book of Isaiah

just commenting on the nature of the poetry. So it's not theological commentary. It's just a commentary on poetic style. When people, when I read like Old English like this or older English, it sounds like the people are so much smarter than we might know. Like they were. Like this is. Artifice of composition. Would that be something that just a normal Englishman would say? It's a great question. Or is he just like, Yeah. He is writing.

Yeah. Like literary, when you write, you tend to be a little more articulate. The people write. Yeah. Sure. Except texting. I don't know. Nowadays, when someone writes and they're doing that, and almost feels like they're trying

to show off. They're being fancy. That's true. That's a good point. But that's just our becoming acclimated to the email texting, scratch out your thoughts in bad grammar. Right. And just add an emoji so everything's fine. It's the idiocracy.

Okay. So he's got his thumb on something and pretty much everybody writing on poetry since him has been just developing and filling out what he intuited and tried to he wouldn't be the first one to notice that No, I mean, it's not like I have no hitting feature. No, he's the he's the first one who wrote a systematic dissertation And he created categories of parallelism. Oh, okay, so we called some synonymous of parallelism. So we called some synonymous, basically the same idea through multiple lines. He called some antithetical, where it's a contrast. And that would be, it says, express the same thing in different words synonymous, or different things in similar form of words. Correct. Yep, something to opposites. Which is, well, most of the, we'll look at a couple of proverbs. That's what most of the proverbs are cast. But he also created a big middle default junk drawer, which he just called synthetic parallelism,

which just means the second line doesn't say the same thing, doesn't say the opposite thing. It's just another thing. And what most of biblical scholarship has tried to figure out is how many of those things are there and why and there's been lots of debate. And now there are people who are just saying, let's just stop trying to categorize them, let's just paint a spectrum. They just have, it's free verse. So they can do virtually anything they want with these two lines. And the point isn't to categorize it, the point is to just experience it.

So this is something interesting. This is down at the bottom of page four. Almost all the proverbs in the book of Proverbs are cast in these little parallel, mostly two liners. And the word for Proverb in Hebrew is Michelle, and it means to compare a comparison of two things. Proverbs means to compare. A comparison. No, interesting.

Yeah. So I can rename Psalms in my Bibleist song and Proverbs as compare. People will just compare. Yeah. Proverbs as comparisons. Comparisons. Comparisons. Yeah. Through this poetic medium, the two lines put two things together.

Because carbs are generally just two lines, often times. Yep, sometimes a triple comes along, but they're most often too. So here's just some classics, and you can just see the potentials of the form here. Psalm six, excuse me, Psalm Proverbs 1632. Being slow to anger is better than being a warrior. form here. Proverbs 1632.

Being slow to anger is better than being a warrior. And one who rules their passions, then one who captures the city. So the slow to anger is compared to somebody who can rule their passion. And then the advantages of being a warrior, being able to chop someone's head off, is compared to somebody who can capture a city. That's pretty simple. So you would say there's two corresponding elements being compared here. Actually, it's multiple. There's one thing, somebody who has self-control. Yeah. Actually, it's multiple. There's one thing, somebody who has self control. Yeah.

This makes you think that to the author of the proverb here, your passions, dealing with your passions, is like a brawl. It's like a fight. It's like a war in and of itself. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. the metaphor creates this surplus of meaning that you now reflect on. Yeah. Yeah, your anger and your passions can make you powerful, but if being able to control your passions of some degree is better, then it means

that your that strengths can be really destructive. So here it's a warrior where somebody who captures a city, I guess that can be good, of course that can be good if it's a few of the ones who wins. It's capturing a city? Yeah. Yeah. Seems like the point is capturing a city is hard, but takes a lot of passion. Well yeah, it takes a lot of passion. Well, yeah, I mean it takes a lot of warring. And the same degree of the fight you have to put up to capture a city is a fight you have to put up to rule over your own passions. And so the city that you are controlling is your own internal passions. Yes, that's right.

Yes. And so, in the same way, if you want to capture city, you need to be a warrior. But if you want to capture your passion, you've got to be slow to anger. Yeah, you need to be more than a warrior, almost, saying, better, more powerful. Yeah. It's going to control the chaos inside of you than it is to capture a city. So what's great about this example is this isn't just thought rhyming in terms of you're just... I just want to add an extra line to this. Like the second line really enriches the meaning and the depth of this proverb.

Yeah. You know, being slow to anger is better than being away. Well, if I could stand, right there. I know of itself, that line makes you think, oh, it wants me to not to be this crazy guy who runs around and tries to control things with my power. It wants me to be a subdued, thoughtful, slow, and intentional kind of person. And that by itself, you're like, okay, that makes sense. Yeah. But then the second line makes you realize doing that is

actually a lot more warring. Yeah. It's, you know, it's a battle involved. There is a battle involved. You need to rule something that's chaotic. Yeah. And if you're able to do that, you're actually better than warrior, better than somebody who can capture a city. Yeah. And I can imagine that capturing a city is not easy. I've never had to do it. Never had to do it. Never been in a situation. And I certainly never will. Well, you know, not too many generations ago are yeah. Yeah. ancestors were capturing cities.

You could take that for granted. Oh, Okay, so that's a good example. These are two parallel lines, but they're not just saying the same thing, though they are exploring one core idea. Yeah. Again, overabundance. When you pair, slow to anger and ruling passion with warrior and city, right?

Yeah, four components there. And it's like an example where one plus one plus one plus one equals 18. Right? It's just all of a sudden you put those four things next to each other. The poetic form, we call that synergy. Yeah, it's poetry.

It's the nature of poetry. It's the art that you can communicate more by choosing these limitations to say less. It's such a good to go awesome, it's great. Here's one where there are opposites, Proverbs 13, 3. One who guards his mouth, preserves his life. One who opens wide his lips comes to ruin. It's another self-control proverb.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. One who guards his mouth preserves his life, one opens wide his lips, comes to ruin. So it's saying the same thing in the opposite way. Yes. Yeah. This is what Loth was saying. You can say different thing with similar form of words,

or the same things with different form words. But each one begins with one. There's two contrasting ones. One guards his mouth, one opens his lips with opposite outcomes. And it's obviously not promoting opening wide your lips. And also, notice just opening your lips is a metaphor for talking to you. Talking with no. It's not talking about eating. For me though, these kind of problems are hard for me because I'm the guy who will guard my mouth but it's not because of self-control,

it's because of fear. I need to be more like, I don't know. Like Peter just kind of part of this thing. Yeah, this is a good point. This proverb aimed at more at certain temperaments. I'm the same. I would rather observe what's going on in a room than contribute to it.

Yeah. Unless I need a proverb that's like, better is the man who, you know that that, that it's a poem or something of you know dance like no one's watching and love like you'll never get hurt like that's the poem I need not the like don't open your mouth you'll make a fool of yourself. I expect to see on someone's screen say verse totally that's classic that's funny yeah you know Proverbs are Michael Fox my Hebrew advisor at University of Wisconsin he used the metaphor of Proverbs are like a pocket of change no one coin is right for every one situation different ones for different circumstances

and different combinations at different times. So that's totally true. There's probably a visit, the right thing for everyone to hear every moment, but it's probably right for everybody at some moment. So the point is the poetic form. This is an example where it uses the same grammar form, one new guards' mouth, one new opens his lips, but they have opposite points.

Got it. The third proper, just looking at three, it fits into that muddy category in the middle, the Robert Lothal, the synthetic. The synthetic. So here's Proverbs 19, 17. One who lends to the Lord is one gracious to the poor. He will repay him for his good deed.

Hmm. Yeah. This is actually an astounding proverb. Hmm. Also. It's talking about it's promoting being generous. Yeah. Charity.

But it begins by saying one who lends to Yahweh. You're actually donating to Yahweh. One who donates to Yahweh, that's the one who donates to the poor. That's the first line. And in Hebrew, this is one of these things where most of those English words fit into a single Hebrew word. That's like two Hebrew words. It's actually four. It's four Hebrew words.

And then the B line doesn't tell you a parallel thought. Yeah. That would be one who lends to the Lord, is one who's gracious to the poor. Yeah, one who gives to people at the time of need or something like that. Oh, yeah, it would be like that. Yeah, a B is like a super strict.

So here, the B line just comes and gives a result as a consequence. The Lord will repay the one who's gracious. So it's just a consequence. It's the thing that happens because of the reality of that. So you can see this form is really plastic. Poets can use this parallel line. But the things that are always in common are two lines, couple lines, sometimes three. Yep. And sometimes four. Like in the one we rarely really for. Like in the opening of Psalm 29. Psalm 29 is four. Yep. But standard is two. And the relationship of the two can take on all these variations, which is, that's why the free verse, a category I think is helpful. It's just your freestyle.

We're trying to create structure where there is actually little structure. Yeah, that's right. But there is structure. Yeah, there is a, there's a rhythm. And the rhythm is one thing. The next thing. The next thing. Sometimes a third. Sometimes a rhythm. The rhythm is one thing. The next thing. The next thing. Sometimes a third. Sometimes a third.

And there's even a biblical poem that draws attention to this in Psalm 62. This is fascinating. I love this is so good. One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard, that power belongs to God and covenant loyalty is yours O Lord for you'll recompense each person according to their deeds. So the two parallel lines are drawing attention to themselves. God is saying one thing in this little poem but what the poet hears is two things. And then he goes on to give you two parallel lines. They have one thought.

Is that good? That's good. He's just, he's playing with the form. He knows what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. So God's powerful. God's also loyal to His covenant. Two statements, one thing.

And what is the outcome of that thing? If God's powerful and He is loyal to His promises. The those who are loyal to Him, will cease the goodness of His power. Everybody will get what they deserve. Yeah, that's the point. But I love just the opening draws attention to the idea that the poet's aware that he's got a core thing

that he wants to communicate and he's using more than one poetic line to describe it. So there you go. You can just go through and if you start reading these poems slowly, what you'll notice is That this back and forth of usually two lines. Yeah, and the second line is often intensifying Or it's creating some subtle juxtaposition of some thing that's kind of like what?

Right like a warrior paralleled with capturing a city. Oh, okay, I guess yeah. And then that gets your imagination firing. And that's what this poetry is meant to do. Is put one thing, one line, next to another line, to fire your imagination, to say more than could have been said otherwise. Yeah. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project Podcast. Our show today was produced by Dan Gummel. The intro music is by the band Tenth. If you've been enjoying our show, you might also like Tim's podcast called Exploring My Strange Bible.

It's a collection of Tim Sermon's notes and lectures over the last decade. And speaking of notes, throughout these podcast conversations, Tim and I sometimes reference his notes that we're both going through and people have asked, hey, can I get access to those notes? And the answer is, absolutely. They're actually in the show notes. If you're on an iPhone, just swipe up to find them.

If you're in a different application, click on show notes and whatever device you're using, and you'll get to them. The Bible Project is a nonprofit, crowd-funded project in Portland, Oregon, and you can find all of our resources for free at thebiboproject.com. you