The Biblical Expositor

Volume 2: Job-Malachi

The Living Theme of the Great Book

Consulting Editor

Carl F. H. Henry

© 1960 by A. J. Holman Company. Database © 2016 WORD search.

The Poetical Books

Andrew W. Blackwood

In our english bible, five books have become known as poetical. All such labels must be arbitrary, and not accurate. The Revised Standard Version and other recent translations, such as Moffatt’s, rightly print as poetry large portions of the prophetical books, and smaller passages elsewhere.

Bible poetry differs from English verse. A Bible poet does not employ rhyme and does not keep his lines uniform in length. He gives a large place to visual imagery: God is “a sun and shield.” The godly man is like a tree; ungodly folk are like chaff. There is also a majestic sense of rhythm, which, in part, carries over into the English Bible, especially in the King James Version. To catch the ebb and the flow, like tides on an ocean beach, read Bible poetry aloud, and deliberately.

Hebrew bards also use parallelism. Often two successive lines, or verses, seem as much alike as an old-time team of matched bay horses. These “and-parallels” (synonymous) abound in Proverbs 16–22. “But-parallels” (antithetic) appear repeatedly in Proverbs 10–15. Truth thus appears in contrasting forms, as in a team with a white horse and a black one. Other forms of parallelism, more complicated, are less common and need not detain us here.

An understanding of parallelism aids in grasping the meaning of many an unfamiliar passage. In a penitentiary, a visiting minister spoke to a prisoner. Reaching out through the bars, the criminal asked the meaning of a verse in Proverbs. The clergyman had never noticed the passage, but he explained that Bible writers often say the same thing twice, for emphasis, as “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18).

I. Approaching the Book of Job

The Book of Job belongs to Hebrew Wisdom literature, which also includes Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and two books of the Apocrypha (or writings not part of the Hebrew Bible), Ecclesiasticus (Ecclus.) and the Wisdom of Solomon. In addition to prophets, who also wrote books of history, and priests, who led in sacrificial worship, God raised up wise men, or sages. The noblest of them all wrote the Book of Job.

Here we shall deal only with practical concerns, and leave to experts all matters relating to authorship, date, and so forth. We shall approach the Book of Job as an inspired poetic discussion of an age-long question: “Why must a saint of God suffer more than other men not saintly?” Some writers prefer to see here a dramatic treatment of the subject: “The Possibility of Disinterested Goodness.” “Doth Job serve God for naught?” Either approach is proper, but if we are to get an unblurred picture of this difficult book, we must keep the camera fixed in one spot.

The first two chapters serve as the Prologue to a dramatic poem. This first part is in prose, full of ...