Dear MaryAnn,

I hope you'll catch my other reply to you -- the one that addresses why I submitted this Psalm as poetry. It covers some of the issues raised here.

Again, no one in the specialties involved -- no one -- doubts that the Psalms (taking just the words alone) are poetry. No one considers them prose or even prose poetry. But biblical Hebrew poetry has particular conventions which distinguish it from what has historically been considered biblical Hebrew prose. One is the use of ideational parallelism between lines (comparison, contrast, or synthesis). Another is the use of short, closely balanced lines or clauses (usually two in Psalms, Proverbs and Job, although there can be up to four clauses per verse). A third is the common use of various poetic devices in the language itself -- archaisms, Aramaisms, local dialectisms, idioms -- which are rare indeed in biblical Hebrew prose. These things don't come across fully in English translation (the most obvious trait in translation is the parallelism).

Biblical Hebrew "poetic" texts comprise Psalms, Proverbs and the body of Job (these three books are the so-called "3 Books"). These texts have their own melodic notation. No one doubts that these are poetic. It is where one goes into the so-called "prose" texts (the prologue and epilogue of Job and all the other books, which other books are the so-called "21 Books"), all having their own more complex melodic notation) that those who study "the Bible as literature" (a hot field in biblical studies) get into debates. They face some of the same questions you are asking, and for the same reasons.

But the whole game is changed by knowing that the Hebrew Bible was meant to be sung, and that the original method can be recovered. We now have a good working definition of the whole spectrum from "prose poetry" to "poetry" (never strictly "prose"), thanks to how the verbal text is punctuated and accented by the melody. There are other indications in other specialties that point in the same direction. Here are some of them.

Biblical Hebrew, no matter what its literary genre, is 1) strongly rhythmic, 2) closely balanced (although not metrical in our sense) in its lines, 3) strictly hierarchical in its cadential structure (on both the verbal and melodic levels), 4) highly euphonic (ditto), and 5) extremely rich in metaphor, simile, and virtually countless other poetic devices as documented by E.W. Bullinger in his The Companion Bible. Every poetic device ever described by the Greeks (hundreds of them) is found in Hebrew Scripture, somewhere (and usually often). So by its own working structure, all of Hebrew Scripture is "poetic" (from prose poetry to poetry, but never merely prose).

So what is the distinction between prose poety and poetry, in biblical Hebrew's "21 Books"? (Remember, the problem does not exist in the "3 Books", even though some of the Psalms are as decidedly "didactic" as are Proverbs and Job.) It is no less fuzzy than in English (so far as I have yet learned), probably because the real distinction in biblical Hebrew is musical -- that between prosodia and psalmodia, that is, between the two different ways of chanting the words. But we do know that there is a spectrum, all poetic, but some having more of the above five factors than others. A text that has all five factors in full expression is unquestionably poetic -- and the Psalms all qualify there (as do Proverbs and the body of Job).

Now we can compare this to non-biblical texts written at the same stage when biblical Hebrew as we have it (meaning the verbal language alone) crystallized -- notably the Lachish Letters in the time of Jeremiah. I can recognize that the language is indeed the same, even to its colorful idioms (the spelling differs a bit, but that's about all), but there is no question that we are dealing with prose by comparison. It simply lacks most if not all of the five factors I deal with above, and it certainly doesn't have a melodic rendition to accompany it. Only sacred and epic texts had that -- for only these were "poetic" (again, prose poetry to poetry).

Different people will gravitate toward different Psalms, for each has its own spiritual and emotional expression. It so happens that Psalms 24 has always resonated with me, even in English (it just about floored me, when I first heard the recording I feature here). My personal favorite was and remains Psalms 96, however (the Hebrew is amazingly reminiscent of one of Heinrich Schutz's hymns). Your preference for other Psalms and their particular expressions is not wrong, provided that you don't treat that preference as if it were based on some truth value. The Psalmists certainly knew (like every poet/composer) that different people would react to the same texts in different ways in different circumstances; yet they manage to communicate in every way I believe great poetry and song should. It would be interesting to see your reactions to other texts as I make them available on YouTube.

I hope this answers your most important concerns.

Best wishes,
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