It might
be safe to say that few of us like to write
poetry, especially if it is a class assignment.
But many of us love to read poetry. It is a unique expression of the heart. I
shared recently a poem written by Jewell on the power of poetry over prose. God
apparently agrees with Jewell since He included quite a bit of poetry in His
word. It is not just limited to the books of poetry but is most easily
identified there. Consequently, I have found the study of biblical poetry to be
an exciting enterprise.
To that
end, I recommend for your use a book written by Leland Ryken, titled Sweeter Than Honey, Richer than
Gold: A Guided Study of Biblical Poetry. Ryken was a professor of
English, before retirement, at the Protestant Wheaton College. He has written a
number of books dealing with Bible study including the massive tome Dictionary of Biblical Imagery.
This
particular work on poetry is aimed to assist Bible students in mining the
depths of wisdom contained in biblical poetry. Some works are written for the
academic but this one is easily accessible to the average person.
Ryken
begins by examining the nature of poetry itself. Poetry is the “language of
images.” He contrasts abstract
concepts with concrete
images that are used to convey those concepts: godliness, mercy, forgiveness
versus honey, thunder, or a razor. What do images convey? How do you interpret
these images? Ryken discusses poetic images on two levels: the affective level
(emotions) and the logical level. Each chapter has a separate section marked:
“Learning by Doing.” In this section, Ryken encourages the reader to do his/her
own work on a selected passage, trying to apply the principles taught in that
chapter.
There are
a few major types of figures of speech that are used in poetry and Ryken deals
with them in an extended discussion. In chapter two, he deals with metaphors
and similes. How do you recognize these figures of speech and, more
importantly, how do you draw the proper lesson from the figure? Ryken provides
principles to guide the way.
In chapter
three, he discusses some less-frequently used figures: hyperbole,
personification, apostrophe, paradox, metonymy, synecdoche, merism, symbols,
anthropomorphisms, and allusions. One key to interpreting poetry in the
Scriptures, brought to our attention at least as early as the 1700s by a
scholar named Robert Lowth, is that of parallelism.
There is a lot of parallelism in the psalms and proverbs. Ryken leads us
through a discussion of synonymous,
antithetic, synthetic,
and climactic
parallelism in chapter four.
The author
gives some unique aspects of biblical poems in chapter five while teaching how
to teach a biblical poem in chapter six. In the final chapter, Ryken presents a
brief discussion of some of the main types of psalms.
Sweeter than Honey, Richer than Gold
is not a long book; it has only 128 pages. Yet, if we learn how to better probe
the depths that are packed into poetic language, it can add meaning to our own
studies of the poetic portions of God’s inspired word.
You might want to buy the book before you teach another class on biblical
poetry.--Paul Holland
