Poetry in the Hebrew Bible
 

Hebrew Parallelism (Chiasmus)

As Hebrew poetry is written much differently than our own Western style of poetry, many do not recognize the poetry which can cause problems when translating or interpreting passages written in poetry.

Approximately 75% of the Hebrew Bible is poetry. All of Psalms and Proverbs are Hebrew poetry and many other books, such as the book of Genesis, are filled with poetry. The reason much of the Bible was written in poetry is that it was originally sung, as stories that are sung are much easier to memorize that when simply spoken. There is much more poetry in the Bible than most realize because most people do not understand it and therefore do not recognize it when they see it.

The most common form of poetry in the Hebrew Bible is parallelisms, which is the expression of one idea in two or more different ways.

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." (Psalms 119:105)

The above example of a simple parallel and can be written in this manner;

Your word is;
   1. a lamp to my feet
   2. a light for my path

Here we see that the words "lamp" and "light" are paralleled as well as the words "my feet" and "my path".

 

Here is another example of this style of poetry.

"My son, my teachings you shall not forget and my commands your heart shall guard." (Proverbs 3:1)

In this verse the words "my teachings" is paralleled with "my commands" and "you shall not forget" is paralleled with "your heart shall guard" and can be written as follows.

My son;
   1. my teachings you shall not forget
   2. my commands your heart shall guard

 

 

Here is Psalm 15:1-3 broken down into its poetic sequences. In this example each thought is represented by the letters A, B, C and D. Each expression of a thought is represented by the numbers 1 and 2.

​

A1. Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary?
A2. Who may live on your holy hill?

B1. He whose walk is blameless
B2. and who does what is righteous.

C1. who speaks the truth from his heart
C2. and has no slander on his tongue.

D1. who does his neighbor no wrong
D2. and casts no slur on his fellow man.

​

While the book of Psalms and Proverbs are the most recognized as being poetical in nature, it is found throughout the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

 

For example:
Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me and a young man for injuring me." (Genesis 4:23) Let's break down what Lamech says. First he says; "Adah and Zillah, listen to me." This sentence is a paralleled with the following sentence; wives of Lamech, hear my words. Then he says that he has killed; a man for wounding me, which is paralled with; a young man for injuring me. Lamech did not wound one person and injure another, he killed one person and we are told of this one incident in two different ways.

​

Here's another example:

Isaiah 6:10

A. Make the heart of this people fat,

    B. and make their ears heavy,

        C. and shut their eyes;

        C1. lest they see with their eyes,

    B1. and hear with their ears,

A1. and understand with their heart, and return, and be healed.".

 

Another common form of parallelism is the use of negatives, where two opposing ideas are stated as we see in Proverbs 11:19-20.

A1. Righteousness brings one to life

    B1. Pursuit of evil brings one to his death

    B2. a twisted heart is an abomination of YHWH

A2. a mature path is his pleasure

​

Is the Ten Commandments written in Chiastic form?

Many people have considered how to divide or group the Ten Commandments (In the Hebrew the 10 "sayings").

Some divide them up by saying the first five are in regards to God and the last five are in regards to man,

But another way to look at the grouping of the Ten commandments is Chiastic in nature.

Commandments:

A. 1 & 2 are in regards to the "Heart and Mind"

    B. 3 is about "Speech"

       C. 4 & 5 Is about "Action"

       C1. 6, 7 & 8 are about "Action"

    B1. 9 is about "Speech"

A1. 10 is about "Heart and Mind"

 

Let us consider the Chiastic Structure of Genesis 1:1 to 2:3:

​

A. Elohim filled the sky and the land because it was empty and it was all in chaos so the wind of Elohim settled upon the water (1:1 to 1:2)

    A1. Day 1 - Elohim separates (1:3 to 1:5, Day one)

    a. light

    b. dark

          A2. Day 2 - Elohim separates (1:6 to 1:8, Day two)

          a. water

          b. sky

              A3. Day 3 - Elohim separates(1:9 to 1:13, Day three

               a. land

               b. Plants spring up from the land

 

    B1. Day 4 - Elohim fills (1:14 to 1:19, Day four)

    a. the light with the sun

    b. the dark with the moon

        B2. Day 5 - Elohim fills (1:20 to 1:23, Day five)

         a. fills the water with fish

         b. fills the sky with birds

             B3. Day 6 - Elohim fills (1:24 to 1:31, Day six)

               a. the land with animals and man

               b. Plants are given as food

B. Elohim Finishes his separating and filling of the sky and the land and respects the seventh day because in it he did his occupation (2:1 to 2:3, Day seven)

​

It must be remembered that modern western thinking view events in step logic. This is the idea that each event comes after the previous, forming a series of events in a linear timeline. But, the Hebrews did not think in step logic but in block logic. This is the grouping together of similar ideas and not in chronological order. Most people read Genesis chapter one from a step logic perspective or chronological, rather than from the block logic so prevalent in Hebrew poetry.
 

 

 

Now let us look at the Creation story Parallels of Genesis chapter one.

Creation Story Number 1
The first story is found in Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The Hebrew word "bara" is a verb and is usually translated as "create" but it literally means to "fill" or "fatten" up. To really understand what this word means let us look at another passage where this word is used.

1 Samuel 2.29 - Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling? Why do you honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by my people Israel?' The word "fattening" in the passage above is the Hebrew word "bara". The noun form of this verb is "beriya" and can be found in Genesis 41.4 - "And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows." The word "fat" is the Hebrew word "beriya".

The word "bara" does not mean, "create" (Hebrew actually has no word that means "create" in the sense of something out of nothing) but "to fatten". If we take the literal definition of "bara" in Genesis 1:1 we have - In the beginning God fattened the heavens and the earth. What does this fattening of the heavens and earth mean? This verse is not showing the creation of the heaven and earth, but rather the fattening or filling up of it. Therefore, Genesis 1:1 can be considered a condensed version of the whole creation story.

Creation Story Number 2
The second creation story paralleling Genesis 1:1 is Genesis 1:2 - "and the earth was unfilled and empty and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Wind (ruach) of God was hovering over the waters." In this passage we see that the earth was formless and empty before it was filled up, then the Wind of God hovers over the waters of the earth. This hovering would be the action of the Wind of God filling up the earth.

The use of the word "and" at the beginning of this verse may cause some confusion due to an understanding of how this word is used in Hebrew. In English the word "and" in between verses one and two means that what happens in verse two occurs after what happens in verse one. In Hebrew, the word "and" is used in standard Hebrew poetry to link two statements as one. In other words, verse one is the same thing as verse two: just reiterated in a different way.

Creation Story Number 3
The third story is found in Genesis 1:3-5. "And God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light and God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness and God called the light 'day', and the darkness he called 'night' and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day".

Hebrew, like English, has a word for one and a different word for first. The same is true for the words two and second, three and third, etc. As an example the Hebrew word for "three" is "shelosh", and the Hebrew word for "third" is "sheliyshiy". Days 2 - 7 use the Hebrew word for second, third, fourth, etc. We would assume that the "first" day would use the Hebrew word "reshon" meaning "first" in order to be consistent with the other six days, but instead we have the word "echad" meaning "one" or " in unity". The author is making a parallel with the "first" day and with all the days of creation. This is because all seven days of the fattening of the earth are being united in this verse. The first day of creation is also a parallel with the whole of creation as the earth was in darkness and the act of filling the earth brought light (which is related to "order"/organization, through it's root word) to the earth.

Creation Story Number 4
The fourth creation story is found in Genesis 1:3-13. In these passages we have the first three days of creation. These are the days of separating. On the first day God separated light and darkness. On the second day God separated the waters above from the waters below forming the sky and the seas. On the third day God separated the land from the water forming dry land.

Creation Story Number 5
The fifth creation story is found in Genesis 1:14-31. In these passages we have the second set of three days of creation. On the fourth day God filled the light with the sun and the darkness with the moon and stars. On the fifth day God filled the sky with the birds and the sea with the fish. On the sixth day God filled the dry land with the animals and man. Notice the correlation between the first set of three days of separation with the second set of three days of filling.

Creation Story Number 6
The sixth story is the whole of Genesis chapter one. Though we have looked at five different stories of creation, they are all combined together to form one complete story of creation.

​