Bibliotheca Sacra 147(July 1990) 259-69
Copyright © 1990 by
The Bible
as Literature
Part 3 (of 4 parts):
"I Have Used Similitudes": The
Poetry of the Bible
Leland Ryken
Professor of
English
This article explores some of the dynamics of
biblical poetry and
inquires into implications of the prevalence of
poetry in the Bible for
Bible teaching and preaching. Before launching into
that inquiry,
however, the high proportion of poetry in the
Bible should be noted.
Poetry is identifiable chiefly by its being
written in verse form
rather than prose, and by its use of a poetic idiom.
Whereas English
verse depends on regular meter and rhyme, the verse
form of biblical
poetry is parallelism-two or more lines in which the
thought and
usually the grammatic
structure as well are at least partly parallel.
It
has often been observed that this verse form survives in transla-
tion, while meter and rhyme
do not.
The importance of parallelism has been
overemphasized in re-
cent scholarship on the poetry of the Bible. Verse
is not the primary
touchstone of poetry. If a poet has not expressed
his or her content in
a poetic idiom, the result is versified prose,
not poetry. The essence
of poetry is a reliance on concrete imagery,
metaphor, simile, and
other figures of speech. These can characterize prose
writing as
well, but the higher the incidence of such an idiom,
the more claim a
piece of writing has to be called poetry. Literary
people sometimes
speak of poetic prose-discourse that is not written
in verse form but
employs a high concentration of the techniques
of poetic language.
Given the combined presence of parallelism and a
heavy re-
liance on figurative language,
how much of the Bible ranks as po-
etry? One-third of the Bible
is not too high an estimate. Whole
259
260 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July-September 1990
books of the Bible are poetic: Job, Psalms, Proverbs,
Song of Solomon.
A
majority of Old Testament prophecy is poetic in form. Jesus is one
of the most famous poets of the world. Beyond
these predominantly
poetic parts of the Bible, figurative language appears
throughout
the Bible, and whenever it does, it requires the
same type of analy-
sis given to poetry.
It is obvious then that when in Hosea 12:10 God
stated, "I have
...
used similitudes" (AV),
the statement expresses a principle that
extends to the whole Bible. Equally obvious,
biblical expositors and
readers must learn to feel comfortable with
handling biblical poetry.
But
this is not generally true.
The Primacy of the
Image in Biblical Poetry
As stated in an earlier article, a literary
approach to the Bible
is one that rests partly on an awareness of the
concrete, experiential
content of literature.1 Given this
criterion of concreteness of expres-
sion, there is a sense in
which the Bible is not narrative, as recent
scholarship has asserted, but poetry. The first
principle of poetry is
the primacy of the image. "Image" here means
any word that names
a concrete object or action. Poets think in
images. This is the most ba-
sic rule of poetry.
This is not as widely recognized as it should
be. When I ask stu-
dents to assemble a list of the subject matter found
in the Book of
Psalms,
the resulting list is typically abstract and theological: God,
providence, trust, guilt, forgiveness, suffering,
joy. Once the list is as-
sembled, I proceed to write a
second list on the board: honey, thunder,
broken arms, razor, snow, dog, horse, grass, butter.
The second list
represents the language actually used by the
writers of the Psalms,
confirming my point about the primacy of the image
in poetry.
In the language of current brain research,
poetry is right-brain
discourse. The two hemispheres of the brain
perform specialized
functions and respond differently to stimuli.2
In general the left side
of the brain responds more actively to language
and abstract con-
cepts. Its forte is analysis,
reason, and logic. In keeping with this
tendency toward analysis, the left hemisphere
processes information
sequentially and is dominant in the
perception of rhythm.
1 Leland Ryken, "'Words of Delight': The Bible as
Literature," Bibliotheca Sacra
147
(January-March 1990): 8-9.
2 A summary of right brain/left
brain theory can be found in these sources: Sid J.
Segalowitz, Two
Sides of the Brain (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983);
Michael
C. Corballis and Ivan L. Beale, The Ambivalent Mind (
Hall,
1983); and Sally P. P. Springer and Georg Deutsch, Left Brain, Right Brain, rev.
ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1985).
"I Have Used Similitudes": The Poetry of the Bible 261
The right side of the brain largely complements
these functions.
It
responds intensely to visual and other sensory stimuli. It domi-
nates in nonlanguage
functions involving visual and spatial pro-
cesses, and in seeing
whole-part relationships. The right hemi-
sphere is also more active than the left in the
hearing of music
(though not in analyzing it), and it dominates in the
exercise of emo-
tion and humor. It is also
the part of the brain that grasps
metaphor.
These distinctions also extend to people and
vocations. In one
test of college students, those in literature and
the humanities
showed right-brain dominance, with the reverse being
true for more
analytic science and engineering students. But
within the humani-
ties group, English majors showed more left brain
preference than ar-
chitecture majors, confirming the
equation of verbal with the left
hemisphere and visual with the right.
The implications of this data for how people
should preach and
teach the Bible are immense. Evangelical preaching
has largely
followed the model of Paul rather than Jesus. The
discourses of Jesus
are predominantly concrete, poetic, anecdotal. The
writings of Paul
tend toward theological abstraction. Evangelical
preaching and
teaching are overwhelmingly oriented to the left
side of the brain.
They
are heavily conceptual and theological in vocabulary and con-
tent. They often starve the right side of the brain.
They have ap-
pealed to the minds of churchgoers. In some traditions
they have
also appealed to the emotions. But they have not
captured the
imaginations of people.
What does all this have to do with the poetry of
the Bible?
The
prevalence of poetry in the Bible, not only in its poetic books but
also by virtue of figurative language in the
narrative and epistolary
sections, is an open door to do justice to the
whole person. The poetry
of the Bible stands as proof that people can know
the truth through
image as well as through abstraction. The truth about
godliness can
be pictured as a productive tree by a stream as
well as by means of
logical discourse. Knowing this should influence
both the selection
of biblical passages for teaching or preaching and
the way the pas-
sages are handled.
The Bible is filled with images as well as
theological ideas.
Life
is a journey down a path, God is a shepherd, depression
is a val-
ley, salvation is a feast.
These images, and not only doctrinal ideas,
should be prominent in biblical teaching and
preaching. Tracing
them through the Bible is as valid an approach to
doctrinal content
as is systematic theology. God trusted such images
to communicate
the truth people need to know.
The church I attend sponsored a Sunday evening
series on
preaching that included films on famous preachers
from history. Be-
262 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July-September 1990
fore showing the film on John Bunyan, a colleague
stated that the
sermon would not be as thoroughly an exposition of a
biblical passage
as one might wish. In the film, scriptwriter Denis
Shaw had Bunyan
preach a specimen sermon in which he expounded on a
master image
of the Bible. Taking as his point of departure a passage
from an
epistle
that compares the Christian life to a race, Bunyan in effect
explicated that image instead of a specific text
from the Bible. He
spoke about the conditions under which the race is
run, the course,
the goal, the actions required, and so forth. The
approach was re-
freshing and I was left with the
impression that I had in fact heard
an expository sermon based on the Bible.
The language of the Bible is much more concrete
and imagistic
than one would guess from most sermons and from most
modern trans-
lations of the Bible. It is as
though the Bible itself tries to do justice
to the right side of the brain, while scholars
today translate the
images into abstractions. A good antidote to the love
of abstraction
is to choose poetic parts of the Bible for
teaching and preaching. But
the usual tendency to impose a framework of
conceptual generaliza-
tions on the passage must be
resisted. Poetic images should be expe-
rienced as images first of all.
Among other things more photo-
graphic commentary on the poetic parts of the
Bible is needed.
Metaphoric Thinking in
Biblical Poetry
If the primacy of the image is the first rule of
poetry, the second
is the importance of comparison. The specific
forms that such com-
parison takes are metaphor (an
implied comparison, as in "the Lord
is my shepherd") and simile (an explicitly
stated comparison, as in
"he is like a tree planted by streams of waters"). In
keeping with
current practice, the term "metaphor"
is used in this article to cover
both.
The nature of metaphor has been the object of
enormously de-
tailed academic study during the last two decades.
What has
emerged from the discussion is that metaphoric
thinking is more
than a poetic phenomenon. Metaphoric thinking is a
form of knowl-
edge that extends to all the intellectual
disciplines. It plays a key
role in scientific theories and models, for example.
Metaphor is used
to organize, explain, and illuminate reality. For
example many
aspects of good teaching fall into place the moment
a teacher is de-
fined in terms of a metaphor like the travel guide.
The most impressive finding of research on
metaphor in preach-
ing is not that audiences
found metaphoric statements more emo-
tional, imaginative, and
appealing than propositional statements.
This
could be predicted. What is truly informative is that people
taking a test found metaphoric statements from sermons
clearer than
"I Have Used Similitudes": The Poetry of the Bible 263
propositional statements.3
For example they praised the clarity of a
metaphor comparing the Christian life to surfing,
whose basic prin-
ciple is that one has to get
out where the white water is instead of
playing around on the shore.
Not every biblical expositor has the gift of
discovering.
metaphors, but every one has an obligation to deal
responsibly with
those found in the Bible. What hermeneutical
principles underlie a
proper handling of the metaphors and similes of the
Bible?
Correspondence is the essential ingredient of a
metaphor. A
brief comment in Aristotle's Poetics remains the basic text: "to make
good metaphors implies an eye for
resemblances."4 Metaphors are
bifocal utterances that require looking at two
levels of meaning.
They
are a form of logic in the sense that the comparison between A
and B can be validated by ordinary means of logic
or observation.
What demands does the bifocal nature of metaphor
impose on a
reader or expositor? The first is to identify and
experience the lit-
eral level of a metaphor.
Metaphors are images or pictures first of
all. Their impact depends on letting the literal
level sink into one's
consciousness before carrying over
the meaning to a figurative or sec-
ond level. If this is not
done, the whole point of speaking in
metaphor evaporates.
Much biblical commentary is unhelpful at the
level of identify-
ing the literal picture.
Here are specimen passages from commen-
taries interpreting a metaphor
that occurs seven times in the
Psalms-the
image of raising up a horn: God's "nearness and
pres-
ence convey to the people of
God both assurance of salvation and new
vitality (this is the meaning of the image of the
'exalting of the
horn')."5 This is
"figurative for granting victory or bestowing pros-
perity."6 "Among His people His
glory is redemptive love, in raising
up a horn
for them, i.e., a strong
deliverer."7 "Horn here symbolizes
strong one, that is, king."8
The commentators' whole energy is poured into
telling what the
metaphor of the horn means or symbolizes. Not one
of these sources
3 Michael P. Hilcomb, "An Examination of the Use of Metaphor in
Preaching"
(MDiv thesis, Bethel
Theological Seminary, 1982), pp. 116-17.
4 Aristotle Poetics
XXII.
5 Artur
Weiser, The Psalms: A
Commentary (
1962),
p. 838.
6 Mitchell Dahood, Psalms, 3
vols., The Anchor Bible (
day &
7 Derek Kidner, Psalms
73-150 (London: InterVarsity Press, 1975), p. 451
(italics
his)
8 New International
Version of the Bible note on Psalm 148:14.
264 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July-September 1990
tells what kind of horn the psalmists were talking
about at a literal
level. Information about that comes from a series of
pictures in an is-
sue of the National
Geographic that shows animals defending them-
selves by means of their horns.
Some bold new photographic commentaries on the
Bible are
needed, especially on the poetry of the Bible. I make
extensive use
of slides when teaching the poetry of the Bible.
When the literal
picture of a metaphor is grasped, the utterance
is experienced in more
than verbal ways. This is one of the powers of
metaphor: it para-
doxically uses words to express
meanings that go beyond the verbal
level. People have feelings and experiences
surrounding green pas-
tures or still waters or home
that cannot be wholly expressed in
words. These are part of the meaning of the images
and comparisons
that appear in biblical poetry-proof that people
assimilate the
truth with the right side of the brain as well as the
left. Biblical
readers and expositors need to find ways to
enhance their ability to
assimilate biblical truth in such a way.
Interpreting metaphoric statements in the Bible
begins by expe-
riencing the literal level of
the comparison. The second task is in-
terpretation, which consists of
carrying over the meaning(s) from
level A to level B. The very word
"metaphor" speaks volumes in
this regard. It is based on the Greek words meta< and ferei<n meaning
"to carry over." To undertake such interpretation is to
accept the
poet's implied invitation to discover the meaning of
an utterance.
Whenever
a biblical poet speaks in metaphor or simile, he entrusts
to the reader the task of completing the process
of communication.
He
leaves it up to the reader to discover how A is like B.
When expositors begin to make the transfer of
meaning from one
sphere to the other, they will almost certainly find
that the mean-
ings are multiple. To
picture God as a father, or to think of God's
providence as a fortress, for example, at once
invites people to see a
multiplicity of correspondences.
Several things are learned about
the godly person, not just one thing, when he or
she is compared to a
tree planted by streams of water, which yields its
fruit in its season
(Ps.
1:3). Again, what types of restoration are contained in the pic-
ture of sheep cresting in an
oasis at midday (23:2)? The answer is, as
many as the types of restoration that believers
experience.
It might seem that a literary approach to the
Bible is on a colli-
sion course with the biblical
scholar's concern for controls on interpre-
tation. To some small extent
this may be true. The more literary a
text is, the more likely it is to retain the
complexity and multiplic-
ity and many-sidedness of
actual experience. A literary text is more
open to misinterpretation than an expository text.
Its strategy is
first to portray human experience, and everyone knows
how many-
sided real life is. Yet cults frequently quote the
propositional parts
"I Have Used Similitudes": The Poetry of the Bible 265
of the Bible, and not the literary parts, in
support of their aberra-
tions. So it would be wrong
to suppose that even the most exposi-
tional and nonliterary texts
are free from being misinterpreted.
The multiplicity that literary critics find in
biblical texts is
likely to be at the level of human experience. For
example the
meanings that one attributes to the psalmist's
metaphor comparing
slander to swords are likely to depend on an
interpreter's experience
with swords and slander. In a sense the literary
parts of the Bible
will yield their meanings to the degree to which a
reader's experi-
ence of life equips him or
her to meet the text. It is in this regard
that a Jewish scholar's theory of foolproof
composition seems useful.
Sternberg
explains this theory:
By foolproof composition I mean that the Bible
is difficult to read, easy
to underread
and overread and misread, but virtually impossible to
...
counterread.... The essentials are
made transparent to all comers: the
story line, the world order,
the value system. The old and new contro-
versies among exegetes,
spreading to every possible topic, must not
blind us (as it usually does
them) to the measure of agreement in this
regard.9
Applying
this to biblical poetry, even when a given expositor or
member of a Bible study group finds slightly too many
or too few cor-
respondences between the two halves
of a biblical metaphor, the ba-
sic meaning of a passage remains intact.
The
"Fictional" Element in Biblical Poetry
A third principle of poetry (including biblical
poetry) is its
"fictional" (i.e., metaphorical) and even
"fantastic" nature. Poets
are always busy playing the game of make-believe,
asserting what
is not literally true.
At a semantic level, for example, a metaphor is
not literally
true. Omitting the formula "like" or
"as," it makes an assertion that
is false at a factual level. God is not literally
a rock, for example.
The
opening verse of Psalm 1 states that the godly person "walks not
in the counsel of the wicked" and does not
sit "in the seat of scoffers"
(RSV). Wicked people do not literally walk down a path
called "the
counsel of the wicked." Nor do they have
legislatures that issue
handbooks of evil behavior called "the
counsel of the wicked." Peo-
ple who are in a cynical
mood do not take turns sitting in a chair
with a sign over it that reads "the seat of
scoffers." Metaphoric
statements, while not true literally, are means of conveying literal
truth in a striking way.
9 Meier Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (
University
Press, 1985), pp. 50-51.
266 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July-September 1990
The same is true of other figures of speech that
biblical poets
employ. Hyperbole, for example, always exaggerates the
literal
truth of a situation: "My tears have been my
food day and night"
(Ps.
42:3); "By my God I can leap over a wall" (Ps. 18:29); "If your
right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw
it away" (Matt.
5:29,
RSV). Equally "fantastic" is the poet's use of apostrophe, in
which he addresses someone or something absent as
though it were
present and capable of responding: "Lift up
your heads, 0 gates" (Ps.
24:7);
"Away from me, all you who do evil" (Ps. 6:8, NIV). Personifi-
cations are yet another
example: "Their tongue struts through the
earth" (Ps. 73:9, RSV); "Let the rivers
clap their hands" (Ps. 98:8).
This element inherent in all poetry becomes
openly fantastic in
the visionary or apocalyptic sections of the Bible.
Here we are
transported to a world where a river can overflow a
nation (Isa. 8:5-
8),
where a branch can build a temple (Zech. 6:12), and where a great
red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns can sweep
down a third of
the stars of heaven with his tail (Rev. 12:3-4).
It is with good reason that the world has
evolved the phrase
"poetic license." There are several lessons to be
learned from the
metaphorical nature of biblical
poetry. Chief among them is the
need for a moratorium on the cliché that "we
always interpret the
Bible literally." No one interprets
poetic license literally. Even the
staunchest literalist does not believe that Jesus
is really a door, or
that following Him literally involves building a
house on a rock.
Why
then do expositors mislead the public by advertising a princi-
ple they do not in fact
practice? What is meant by that misleading
statement is that evangelicals believe that the
historical narra-
tives of the Bible record the
facts of events that really occurred.
Evangelicals
also believe that the Bible includes figures of speech,
especially in its poetry.
The presence of metaphor in the Bible should
also lead believ-
ers to respect these modes
as a vehicle for expressing and assimilat-
ing truth. In the Bible God
used the imaginary to express reality.
God
gave people capacity for imagination and creativity for a pur-
pose. Francis A. Schaeffer was right when he said
that "the Chris-
tian is the one whose
imagination should fly beyond the stars."10
How Poems Work
Thus far this article has discussed poetry, a
distinctive type of
discourse. To handle the poetic parts of the Bible
competently one
also needs to know something about
poems-self-contained works
10 Art and the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1973), p. 61.
"I Have Used Similitudes": The Poetry of the Bible 267
that employ poetic language. This has to do with how
poems are
unified and structured.
The basic principle is theme and variation. A
working assump-
tion must be that a poem is
about one thing. It might be an idea, an
emotion, a mood, or a human situation (such as
the psalmist's re-
sponse to his crisis in the
lament psalms). This theme must be formu-
lated in broad terms that
sufficiently cover the entire poem. For
most readers of the Bible, an individual psalm is a
collection of iso-
lated fragments instead of a
unified whole.
Having identified the "umbrella" for
the entire poem, the sec-
ond task is to lay out the
poem into its constituent parts. These are
the variations on the theme. The basis for dividing
one section from
another will be one of three things: changes in
imagery; in idea or
topic, or in emotion.
Applying the scheme of theme and variation works
wonders
with poems. It is the necessary framework for
tracing the progres-
sion of a poem. It allows an
expositor or reader to follow the actual
path of a poet's utterance and to experience that
utterance as a uni-
fied and coherent whole. It
solves the problem of knowing what to
"do" with a psalm when using it as the basis of a sermon
or Bible
study. When people read or analyze a psalm, they
should begin
with the premise that they are sharing the thought
process of the
poet from beginning to end. The whole poem is the
meaning. The
model must be resisted that treats the poem as a bag
into which the
expositor dips to illustrate three points. Readers
and expositors must
trace an ongoing arc of thought and feeling.
In contrast to such an "organic" view
of a poem, the usual han-
dling of biblical poems is
too conceptual, too mechanical, too selec-
tive. People get the
impression that expositors have translated the
poem, with all its concrete details and progressive
development, into
a static outline of theological ideas. Expositors
need instead to
think in terms of reenacting a drama that took place
within the
poet's mind. It also helps to approach a poem with the
assumption
of the poet's self-conscious composition, which
means that the poet
carefully constructed the parts of the poem to fit
together and flow
from one part to the next. In passing it may be noted
that the frame-
work of theme and variation works equally well with nonnarrative
prose passages, such as paragraphs in an epistle.
Implications for
Preaching and Teaching
The thesis of this series of articles is that
the Bible is mainly
literary in form and that this should govern how
Christians treat
the Bible in their reading, teaching, and
preaching. This is another
way of saying they should aggressively choose the
literary parts of
268 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July-September 1990
the Bible for exposition, and should approach them
with the ordi-
nary tools of literary criticism.
Whereas ordinary writing is transparent,
pointing beyond itself
to a body of information, a work of literature
invites readers to enter
a whole imagined world and to get inside it. The
whole story, the
whole poem, the whole vision is the meaning.
Therefore the whole
story, poem, or vision needs to be experienced.
Reliving the text is
the first task of the expositor. Many of the
meanings embodied in a
literary text get communicated indirectly and in
mysterious ways.
Literature
can be trusted to convey its meanings by literary means.
The
corollary is that expositors must be willing to talk about aspects
of a text that may seem on the surface to be far
removed from any-
thing "spiritual."
In view of this, a concluding plea is that
preachers rethink
what constitutes a three-part sermon. What it means
to most
preachers is to list three propositions, to impose
that framework of
generalizations on a biblical text, and
to reach into the text to sup-
port the generalizations. Much evangelical preaching
is so topical,
moreover, that excursions into the text are
bypassed almost com-
pletely. An entirely different
version of a three-part sermon is pro-
posed in the following paragraphs.
Part one is to interact with the text itself in
terms of its literary
genre. If the whole story or the whole poem is the
meaning, then it
is entirely legitimate to interact with the
passage fully as a com-
plete entity. By
"text" is meant the whole story or poem, not a single
verse. I am at a loss to understand how the single
isolated verse
could ever have become the customary basis for a
sermon. This perni-
cious convention of
contemporary preaching must go. Preachers need
to live inside the "world" of a complete
passage, in the process talk-
ing about matters that seem
far removed from any spiritual princi-
ples but that are part of
the total impact of a passage. This interac-
tion with the passage might
take as much as half the time allotted
to a sermon.
Part two of the proposed three-part sermonic
approach is stat-
ing the themes or
principles that emerge from the passage. Stating
these principles will not take long. The process of
entering fully into
the world of the passage will have prepared the
way. The princi-
ples, when stated, will come
as a moment of insight that illumines or
explains the meaning of the passage. They will
cast a retrospective
interpretive light on the passage.
The third part of the sermonic
pattern consists of application of the
principles. The principles de-
duced from a text and their
application to the lives of people have
more impact if they are isolated by themselves
instead of being in-
termixed with the analysis of
the text.
This proposed three-part scheme allows a
biblical passage to
I Have Used Similitudes":
The Poetry of the Bible 269
communicate first by literary means. It resists the
usual tendency to
substitute three abstract generalizations for the
passage. The power
of Scripture rests partly in the forms in which it
speaks. Those forms
are prevailingly literary. Biblical passages must
be allowed to
speak in their own voice, to unfold according to
their own inner dy-
namics.
The idea that the Bible is in large part
literary in nature is
more than the latest fad among scholars, though it
is certainly that