You're listening to Tim Bulkeley's 5 minute Bible
This podcast should be the last of the boring stuff for a while
I'm going to lead you through a brief classification of some of the genres of
poetry we find in Scripture. After this we will get on to how some these genres
actually work in practice
much more fun! Biblical poetry tends to get divided into
two main branches poems and songs we will look at the
songs first. Because they are the biggest branch
There are three main kinds of song in Scripture
by far and away the biggest group are the Psalms
in the Book of Psalms and elsewhere, but there are also
other kinds of songs found in narratives and there are love songs
let's look at the Psalms first, I've grouped the psalms in
four main sorts, you can use other numbers for your classification
dividing things up evensmaller you'll notice I put laments and complaints
together
this strikes me as a division which is useful and simple
Let's take those laments and complaints first
there's quite a debate over what exactly you call them
but all of these psalms, whatever you call them
are responses to a perceived wrongness in the world
in some of them the focus is on complaining
in some the focus is on appealing for help
and in some the focus is on confessing one's own sin
which is the wrongness perceived in the world!
So, psalms that perceive a wrongness in the world.
Another major category of Psalms (complaints being the biggest) are hymns
hymns aren't old worship songs with lots of verses
they are psalms that proclaim God's glory and just do that
they don't focus on thanking God for the good things he's given us
but simply proclaiming how great and wonderful God is
and more the most to the other kinds of psalms, hymns a standard form
they begin with either a call to praise
"Let us worship the Lord" or an announcement of praise
"I will praise Yahweh" The call may go on for several verses
or it may just be a line or something in between, it's joined to the body if the psalm
by conjunction: for or because
what follows is almost entirely, almost always
the reasons for praising Yahweh.
Another big category of psalms are the thanksgivings these are psalms that thank God for what he's
done
you also find bits of thanksgiving in psalms of other genres
and that's true of laments and complaints
and of praise too, but
psalms which are predominately about thanksgiving make a useful separate
category
and then, there's the grab bag, wisdom psalms, royal psalms, Zion psalms and
load of other small categories with just a few psalms each
As I said, you can make your classification
more complicated, but this one is fairly simple
and fairly convenient. Now about those love songs
there s one book of love songs, the Song of Solomon and
there is a parody love song in Isaiah 5 Prophets often do that, they take a genre
which works differently and they twist it somehow, we'll come back to that we
talk about the prophets
and then there's the songs in narrative. There are two main kinds of these
'singing the story' and 'singing in the story' are the way way I think of them
there are usually longer songs though sometimes they are very short
that celebrate the story, some of the best-known long examples are the celebration
at the exodus the chapter 15
in song by Miriam and Moses after
we've heard the story of the Exodus in chapter 14
Deuteronomy 32 the Song of Moses
we get a celebration of all that God has done for his people in the story so far
Judges 5 celebrates the story that we read in Judges 4
but there are also shorter songs
that appear as part of the action of the story
so some of the characters will sing work songs or war songs or whatever
so 'singing the story', celebrating
the story that's been told and 'singing in this story'
people in the story who sing,
as well as songs, though, there are poems these are of
two main kinds prophecy and wisdom
prophets used poetry, indeed there are many scholars nowadays who speak of the
prophets as poets
or at least of the people who wrote the prophetic books as poets
I don't want to get into that debate, what I want to notice
is that the prophets regularly
take, and adopt, appropriate genres
to express their message but they often use them
in interesting ways
laments - the singing of a dirge over someone who is dead
they take and use in a fairly appropriate way but they are doing it to imagine
someone who is alive, or the whole nation,
as if they were dead. But on other occasions
they will deform the genre even more
Amos, for example, takes the genre of instruction a priest would give
in ritual duties, he takes it and twists it
to hammer home his message
variety and ingenuity are the spice of prophecy and that's why
or one of the reasons why, so much prophecy is poetry.
Wisdom: there are both longer wisdom poems and there are short sayings
proverbs for example, like the ones in Proverbs 10ff.
are short poetic sayings
but there are also wisdom poems like those in Proverbs 1-9
and in the case of the book of Job, the poems
in the bulk of the book, the speeches of Job and his friends
become almost like a play, that explores the themes of the book
Ecclesiastes is in some ways similar though it's a bit more dubious whether
it is or isn't poetry
and it's a bit less clear exactly what Ecclesiastes is doing
readers of the book really have to think in that way it's just like poetry
So, we've explored the two main branches
What about that little branch off to the right?
Blessings also usually in poetry
So that's the picture
bye for now