I N D E X
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The `poetry' of the book of Job
We have seen something of the fundamental character of this most ancient of books, and have sensed something
of the place it occupied in the preparation of Moses for his life's work. We have seen, moreover, that lying as it
does at the very threshold of revealed truth, it forms a link with the earliest methods of divine communication that
have now passed into disuse. We must now devote some time to the composition of the book itself.
The bulk of the book is written in poetic form, but it is essential that we should use the word `poetic' with
understanding. There is neither `rhyme' nor `rhythm' in Hebrew poetry, if it be judged by Greek or modern
standards. There is rhythm, but it is not of a mechanical nature and cannot be measured by any set rule. No one
however who reads even a translation of Hebrew poetry - like the Proverbs, or the Song of Solomon - can miss `the
peculiar cadence of its antithetic style'. In Hebrew poetry, the rhyme of thought takes the place of the rhyme of
sound, that we associate with more modern verse. Mere `sounding rhyme' can be a fetter, and the reader will
probably call to mind Milton's apology for not using sound rhyme in `Paradise Lost', calling it as he does `the
invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre', and Shakespeare, the greatest poet in
English and perhaps in any language only occasionally drops into `sound rhyme', using rather the nobler instrument,
blank verse.
If we use the word `rhythm' to mean `the admeasurement of the lines of poetry by feet and numbers' we shall
discover that the noble method of writing adopted in the book of Job refuses to be thus `cribbed, cabined and
confined'.
Josephus, indeed, writing of the Song of Moses, in Exodus 15 says:
`Moses composed a song unto God, containing praises, and a thanksgiving for His kindness, in hexameter verse'.
(Ant. Bk. ii. xvi. 4).
Again, writing of the Psalms of David, Josephus says that he:
`composed songs and hymns to God, of several sorts of metre; some of those which he made were trimeters, and
some pentameters' (Ant. Bk. vii. xii. 3).
Whiston, the translator of Josephus, says `what that hexameter verse in which Moses' triumphant song is here
said to be written distinctly means, our present ignorance of the Old Hebrew metre or measure will not let us
determine'. It is possible that Josephus was commending the poetry of his own nation to the Greeks, and used their
notation with a certain amount of freedom, being unable to use any other terms when writing to a people who had no
acquaintance with the Hebrew language. Suffice it, for our present purpose, to say that many have sought to
ascertain the laws of metre in Hebrew poetry, but such an enquiry makes more demands upon us than we can meet
or is necessary for our present purpose.
Dr. Bullinger has rendered the book into metrical verse, and this is good, but the English reader must not
imagine that the cadence of the Doctor's metrical version, represents something similar in the original. Hebrew
poetry depends upon the balance of thought with thought, or with the antithesis of thought over against thought,
rather than with the more artificial methods of metre and rhyme, and this peculiar feature is expressed by the word
`parallelism'. One form of parallelism has been called `The rhythm of gradation' (De Wette). Here is an example:
`I lift up mine eyes unto the hills;
From whence will my help come?
My help cometh from Jehovah,
The Creator of heaven and earth.
He suffered not thy foot to be moved;
Thy Keeper slumbereth not,
Lo, He slumbereth not, nor sleepeth' (Psa. 121),
and so on throughout the Psalm.
Lowth reduced the parallelism of Hebrew poetry to three kinds, the synonymous, the antithetic, and the
synthetic. We give examples of each: