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Bible Dictionaries
Poetry
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Poetry, Hebrew. Poetry was the delight of orientals. About one-third of the Old Testament is poetry, the oldest, the purest, and the most sublime in the world. Strictly there is neither epic nor dramatic poetry in Hebrew. The reason is obvious. Epic poetry springs from an effort to glorify human greatness—the heroic in man; the Hebrew was taught to glorify God. Hebrew poetry is almost wholly lyric and didactic, and some add also gnomic. There are no lyrics in the world comparable with the Psalms of David, no gnomic poetry equal to the Proverbs, and no didactic poem so perfect in form, so profound and majestic in thought or so exalted and spiritual in conception as the book of Job. Rhyme and metre, common in modern poetry, are seldom found in Hebrew. Hebrew poetry consists chiefly of parallelisms and a certain swing and balance in the sentences which give an indescribable charm to their poetic compositions. The parallelisms in Hebrew have been roughly divided into three kinds: 1, Synonymous, that is, where each line of the distich or tristich has the same thought, but in varied expression; 2, Antithetic, where the thought of the second member of the parallelism is in contrast with that of the first; and 3, Synthetic, where the thought is cumulative upon the same topic. There are five so-called poetical books in the Old Testament: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. But beside these, large portions of other books are in poetic language. The prophetical books except Daniel are largely in poetry. See Rice: "Our Sixty-six Sacred Books."
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Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Poetry'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/p/poetry.html. 1893.
