Table of Contents
Last week we saw that the first distinguishing feature of Hebrew poetry is that it repeats itself (synonymous lines of poetry). There are two further distinguishing features of Hebrew poetry, but they are less obvious to the English reader because the process of translation tends to whittle it out of our perception. It really only emerges if we read footnotes or read a new Bible translation from our familiar ‘old faithful’ ones.
The second distinguishing feature is that Hebrew poetry leaves verbs behind. It still has them, but it has them far less frequently than it does in prose. In fact, there was a period of time in Hebrew translation where, at a loss to know if parts of Jeremiah were poetry or not, some scholars resorted to a statistical analysis of verbs in ratio to nouns to make their decision!
While this is not something the average reader needs to worry about, there is one consequence for us that we will encounter from time to time. Translators quite often have to make a decision about the tense of the verb with very little contextual help. Sometimes, a verse may well be legitimately translated in several different ways. For example, in the most extreme of examples, the following could all work:
‘The Lord saves you’
‘May the Lord save you’
‘The Lord has saved you’
We see this in our psalm for today (Psalm 18) in verse 3. The ESV and the old NIV (1984) say:
‘I call to the Lord … and I am saved from my enemies’
Whereas the new NIV (2011) says:
‘I called to the Lord … and I was saved from my enemies’
Which is correct? Careful exegesis can usually whittle out a reasonable answer, but it may also confront us with the reality that our dualistic thinking (either / or) may need refinement: perhaps we need synthetic thinking (both / and). In this example from Psalm 18, for instance ... aren't they both true? Presumably, when David prayed Psalm 18:3 it was very much a present tense! But afterwards, after the fact: past tense. This touches on another question we need to pay careful attention to: who the speaker is, and we'll think more about that next week. But, at the very least, we are called to read the text more carefully.
The third distinguishing feature of Hebrew poetry is that it has a really high instance of rare and unusual words – at least, rare and unusual to we who live thousands of years later. Hebrew prose has a very simple set of words, but Hebrew poetry has a whole set not normally used, especially because it’s trying to find all these synonyms to fit with its habit of repetition. The consequence of this is that a lot of these Hebrew words only occur once or twice in the Bible, and only in poetic (metaphoric) contexts. So how do we know what the words mean? Is it just guess work? Thankfully, for the most part, no. We are able to rely on Greek translators from the 2nd century BC to know what they might mean. But if you have an older Bible, you’ll notice that the Psalms have that ubiquitous footnote, ‘The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain’.
Why is it good to know these things? It’s good to know because when we pick up a new(er) translation of the Psalms compared to what we’re used to, it can be quite unsettling. This is probably most obvious for those who’ve recently bought an NIV (2011). It sounds really foreign! Leaving aside whether it’s a better or worse translation, it’s worth you knowing so that you don’t become unduly unsettled. They’re still the same psalms, even if they are translated a little differently in tenses and vocabulary! And maybe – just maybe – the change from what we’re used to will jar with us enough that we see afresh what God is saying in these verses. And that’s something truly to be thankful for.
