Gunkel, Lowth and Childs – these are the voices that have dominated Psalms studies.Footnote 1 Put differently, form criticism, parallelism and canon have overshadowed all else. One would search in vain to find a recent introduction to Psalms that does not primarily (or exclusively) explicate the Psalter in these ways.Footnote 2 It has become standard that publications on Psalms repeat previous introductions with only minor adjustments made to sub-genres, types of parallelism and the state of the canonical readings.Footnote 3
Yet we need to be quite clear: the Psalms, simply put, are poetry.Footnote 4 Crucially, poetry is more than parallelism. More to the point, though, biblical poetry is more than parallelism.Footnote 5 This claim, unfortunately, appears oblique in the eyes of some biblical scholars. Examples are all too easy to cull.Footnote 6
As such, this paper calls for biblical scholars and theologians to attune their ears and set their sights on the poetry of Psalms. This is not to the exclusion of other currents of research, however. Rather, it is a recentring of Psalms literature. It is a pounding of a path that is old and overgrown, not treading on the recent tracks of others. In other words, I am not arguing for (yet) another finely nuanced category of parallelism or genre. To advance this realignment, I proceed with an intentionally indirect argument; I claim that we can become better readers of Psalms via English poetry. This assertion is not novel. New, however, is that my contention does not hinge primarily on the question of metre.Footnote 7
To shine a light on poetry, I offer the writings of three priest-poets over the centuries: George Herbert (1593–1633), R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) and Malcolm Guite (1957-). In doing so, I highlight what is both obvious and common to these poems, such as sounds, structure and images. This particular selection of priest-poets has several advantages. First, these poets, as experts of their craft, give us some of the best of the so-called religious poetry.Footnote 8 Second, they deal both directly and indirectly with Psalms in their reflections.Footnote 9 In the remainder of the article, I take these meaningful aesthetic trends and contemplate possible analogues in the Psalms. We begin with the most basic (sounds) and conclude with theology and themes within poetry.
Sounding poetry
As a way of warding off any similarity between English poetry and Psalms, tropes of rhyme triumph.Footnote 10 English typically rhymes, and Hebrew does not.Footnote 11 Therefore, eschew any thought of rhyme in the Bible; read the lines as A and what's more B. So, the treatments go. This, however, is a reduction of both English and Hebrew.
Poetry presupposes sound – an observation that is both trite and true.Footnote 12 Yet the poet can (and does) leverage sound to serve their purpose.Footnote 13 For example, Malcolm Guite, a poet adept in the music of words, opines, ‘poets are always enchanted by the sound of the language they use’.Footnote 14 He demonstrates his expertise in ‘Whoever Welcomes’:Footnote 15
The alliterative ‘w’ appears throughout. These words swirl joyously in the ear. Yet sound serves not only pleasure (or memory), but stresses the imagery. The reader/listener who is pondering the ‘welcoming’ feels invited by picturing the invitation as anything but cold and narrow.Footnote 16 We also consider Guite's poem, ‘First and Last’ (ll. 9–14):Footnote 17
Each line above has alliteration within it. Perhaps most powerful are the objects of ranging (l. 11) as well as the pair climber and clout (l. 12). In the former, the poet imagines the inane objectifying of people. In the latter, the image of ascending coheres with status, and then both are questioned. The upward metaphor of the ladder is aurally arrested in line 13 with the dropping of the trumpet. The frivolous music connects via sound: best drop our trumpet – still our banging drums. Sounds here are not merely building blocks of words, but part and parcel of poetic rhetoric.
Guite employs sounds that do more than hint at imagery and meaning in ‘Reversed Thunder’ (ll. 1–4, 13–14):Footnote 18
These sounds help anticipate, propel and colour the poem and its meaning. The poem moves from the bilabial nasal ‘m’, giving a clouded image through sonics, to the striking ‘r’ sound that connects heaven and earth.
Bringing us back to biblical studies, Dobbs-Allsopp observes, ‘the play of sound remains an underappreciated dimension of biblical poetics’.Footnote 19 Below is but a sample of how sounds reach rhetorical heights in the Psalms.Footnote 20 Psalm 31:6 reads:
The A line intertwines with the B logically and sonically. The psalmist offers the self over to YHWH (A line), in part, because YHWH has redeemed him (B line). The peh and dalet of the hifil yiqtol (ʾapqîd), which is stressing either a continual or future act, corresponds with the peh and dalet of the qal qatal (pādîtâ), which I find as a completed past-time action of YHWH.Footnote 21 In Psalm 33:10, we read:
The sonic symmetry is easy to hear in this verse. Aside from the vocative (YHWH), both lines begin with hifil qatal (hēpîr; hēnîʾ), signalled consonantally with heh prefix and yod.Footnote 22 It moves then to feminine nouns in construct, both having final tav (ʿăṣat; maḥšĕbôt), and finally to plural nouns, with final mem (gôyim; ʿammîm).Footnote 23 The completeness of thought in the verse is achieved by parallelism and sound.
Moving now to the ninth and tenth verses of Psalm 141:
The A line above is scattered with yods.Footnote 24 While one might dismiss that observation, the sonic movement of the next two lines challenges us to see intent in the poetic choices. The use of qof and sheen in the qatal (yāqĕšû) finds symmetry in the noun (ûmôqĕšôt) in the B line.Footnote 25 More telling, however, is the appearance of peh and lamed in the construct phrase (pōʿălê ʾāwen) and the yiqtol (yippĕlû) of the following line.Footnote 26 Such sounds tie together the thought: the iniquitous shall not succeed. Such a summary, however reductive, arises from the sonic cohesion of the poem. This brief survey from both English poetry and the Psalms shows that poets throughout the millennia leverage sound to shape not only words, but rhetoric.
On repetition
The use of repetition touches on sound, structure and the craft of poetry. It can help the listener/reader appreciate the cohesive nature of a poem. It may also be a tool to set up expectations for the poet either to resolve the poem or challenge the reader. An example appears in Herbert's poet ‘The Banquet’. In it, he repeats the word ‘sweet’ and its derivatives, beginning with line 1: Footnote 27
The poem saunters through the literal and metaphorical taste of sweets. Tempted by the materials of the world, Herbert contrasts this with his experience with God.
Repetition appears frequently in the Psalter. One well-known example is the opening and closing lines of Psalm 8 (vv. 2, 10) both of which read:Footnote 28
Psalm 29 has consistent and significant repetition. The first is (Ps 29:1–2a):
The repetition above is obvious. Yet, it is possible that the repetition is doing something more than simply repeating. Consider the phrase qôl yhwh in the same psalm:Footnote 29
There is no doubt about the topic of Psalm 29; the poet's choice covers the spectrum: YHWH's voice has power over the trees as well as the animals. Repetition drives the point home in a way that an all-encompassing statement (e.g. the voice of YHWH is over ‘everything’) cannot.
The reverberation of vocabulary is also present in the opening two verses of Psalm 136:
Similarly, Psalm 121 repeats its keyword, šmr ‘to keep’:
Repeating a word or phrase is one tool that poets have used throughout the ages. As mentioned, the mere service to memory is an anaemic supposition for its presence. The poems, while not essays or epistles, are nonetheless making arguments. Repetition aids the speaker in achieving the intended rhetorical end, be it a prayer heard and answered, or the community (the audience) re-establishing their worship to YHWH (e.g. Pss 29, 121, 136).
Shapes of poetry
George Herbert is well known for his artistry of shaping a poem physically.Footnote 30 Yet beyond such poetic architecture, we should observe an oft-used structure of his poetry – the sonnet. This form varies in length, but typically comprises some fourteen lines, often with lines ending in rhyme. The sonnet sustains a number of virtues, including ‘brevity, clarity, concentration, and capacity for paradox’.Footnote 31 Don Paterson, a Scottish poet, states, ‘a sonnet is a paradox, a little squared circle, a mandala that invites our meditation’.Footnote 32 One such example is ‘Peace’ by Malcolm Guite:Footnote 33
The pattern of the lines (ABBA), the overall structure (fourteen lines) and end rhyme are all stock-in-trade of the Italian sonnet.Footnote 34 The form constrains the poet, while being pliable to their prowess. Indeed, Guite explores the concept of constraints in his poem ‘Emily Dickinson's Desk’.Footnote 35 It begins:
On the sonnet form proper, Guite, like many poets, breaks or has a turn (volta) at line 8 (again, usually of fourteen lines).Footnote 36 This volta is a ‘change in feel or mood, a new stage or development in thought and feeling’.Footnote 37 Returning to ‘Peace’ above, we find such a turn in the line: till closed doors open. This move by Guite opens doors linguistically and theologically to consider the path of peace that God provides. Such consideration is made possible by the sonnet, a form that is ‘always ancient, always new’.Footnote 38
Turns in the Psalms
Voltas in sonnets should, at the very least, give us pause when reading the Psalms.Footnote 39 To be sure, scholars are prone to make mention of the change in voice and tone in lament psalms. Much debate has been had, for example, on whether it is the psalmists themselves speaking or the priests. Yet turns, in my reading, are much more pervasive in the Psalter. For example, in Psalm 20, a royal psalm (not a lament proper), the speaker makes a turn in verse 7:
In the following psalm, another royal psalm, the whole of the poem turns on the last line (v. 14), the first occurrence of an imperative:
Psalm 73:13 may be the most well-known turn in the Psalter. Seeing the flourishing of the wicked, the psalmist questions the benefit of his integrity:
Everything changes, however, in verse 17:
Psalms physically structured
Beyond finding an analogy to voltas, the structure of Herbert's poems and the sonnet form mastered by Guite prompts awareness of possible structures in the Psalms. Unlike the sonnet, we have no clear evidence of a precise and repeated form in the Psalter. We do find in Psalms, however, poems that adhere to an artistic edifice, namely, the acrostic psalms.Footnote 41
The absence of attention to acrostics in Psalms studies is startling. True, form, broadly put, receives a heft of comment, but not acrostics.Footnote 42 Objectively, this is odd. Introductions to the biblical book major on forms (e.g. Gunkel) by way of structure and content, including, for example, lament, praise and thanksgiving. The numbers here are telling. Thanksgiving psalms tally up to seven.Footnote 43 Wisdom psalms amount to approximately nine.Footnote 44 Kingship (or royal) psalms account for ten psalms.Footnote 45 Very much in the same vein, acrostics number seven in the Psalter.Footnote 46 Yet, scholars give little to no attention to this clearly structured form as such.Footnote 47
The reason for such an omission remains unclear. Worse still, when acrostics do make the discussion, the form is often reduced to a memory device.Footnote 48 Such an inference, while partially correct, misses what is all too apparent in the English poetry above: structured constraints encourage creative freedom and skill that aid in memory and enhance the content.
Psalm 111 affords us opportunity to consider how form and meaning coalesce in poetry. The psalm is a complete acrostic, in which every line begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in sequential order. In terms of content, it is a thanksgiving song (or hymn). This becomes clear from the first line:
These alphabetic lines are led by grammatical subjects (v. 3b), objects (v. 4a) and verbs (v. 5b). One could say that the acrostic helps provide a fullness to the thanksgiving song. Yet the short lines, the content and descriptions bespeak more. One example comes in the relation of the waw line (v. 3b) to the tav line (v. 10c):
The final, tav, line changes the subject to ‘his praise’:
The placement of this latter line (v. 10c) brings weight to its content. The reader/listener expects tav to lead the last line. The combination of tav with ʿōmedet lāʿad gives opportunity. For the last line, the last word, as it were, the topic is praise. The poem's conclusion, while truth-bearing, is also didactic.Footnote 49 The ways in which that statement could bolster the faith of the speaker as well as the audience (the people listening) are innumerable (and beyond our current scope). Nevertheless, it needs to be underscored that the acrostic form has more significance than a memory aid or thoroughness. It constrains the poet and provokes imagination; as Guite argues, ‘restrictions are precisely what bring out creativity’, and these limits push back against the creator (the poet).Footnote 50
Imaging the imagination
Scholars are apt to note images and metaphors in the Psalms.Footnote 51 Often they place the emphasis on extracting the meaning from a historically distanced metaphor. Such a focus, while appropriate, can still miss the potential of an image extending, its emotional freight and its latent multivalent nature. To illustrate these in non-biblical poetry, I turn to the ‘poet of counterpoint’, R. S. Thomas.Footnote 52 I begin with ‘The Cone’:Footnote 53
The artistry of God is on display in Thomas’ poem. Simplicity is not mistaken for profundity, however. From the image to the mind, from the mind to the imagination, the symbol of a cone captures the human experience. Thomas brings the image out for inspection in the last stanza:
The thought that God created nature does not suffice for Thomas. No, the imprint reifying the Creator will not service. Rather, the image of the cone commends the reader to ponder the living maker at the other side. The cone, now in the sense of soundwaves, curates love – a two-way communication.
One of the most evocative images of Thomas’ appears in ‘Raptor’:Footnote 54
This poem is not for the faint of heart. Thomas combats warped modern imaginations of the God of the Bible. In Thomas’ poem, God is imaged as a combatant, a predator whose flight is lovely. Most abrasively, the prey here may well be the pray-er.
Images incite the imagination. Metaphors are not merely slides under the microscope. They are worthy of inspection; yet, they burst beyond the bounds of scientific inquiry. Perhaps no poem better illustrates that fact than Herbert's ‘Prayer (I)’. The first four lines read:Footnote 55
Each image is compact and multivalent. David Jeffrey calls the poem ‘a veritable concordance of biblical images’.Footnote 56 Here in Herbert's poem, scientific specificity is on notice. For instance, Helen Vendler finds that last line of ‘Prayer (I)’ (‘something understood’) ‘abolishes or expunges the need for explanatory metaphors. Metaphor, Hebert seems to say, is after all only an approximation.’Footnote 57
In the Psalms, there are numerous texts that imagine YHWH in concrete and metaphorical spaces. It is noteworthy that these images are not always positive for the psalmist. Thus, it is rather infelicitous when a scholar presents metaphors (e.g. Psalms 23, 33, 47, 74, 138) that contain only protection and blessing for the psalmist.Footnote 58 For the Psalter also speaks of YHWH's power directly against the psalmist:
And even in YHWH's protection of the psalmist, the imagery is far from gentle:
This kind of metaphorical language is not infrequent in the Psalms. Reading poets alongside Psalms catechises our attention to the rich complexities of metaphor.
Theology and themes
The Psalms are thoroughly theocentric and therefore theological. Thankfully, theology of (or within) Psalms appears in a number of scholarly introductions.Footnote 59 It is my supposition, however, that theology is more salient than often seen.Footnote 60
The theocentricity of Psalms sharpens the tension between divine presence and absence throughout the poems.Footnote 61 This tension is held tightly by our priest-poets. Unlike modern scientific proclivities, symmetry is not sought. Thomas’ ‘I Think That Maybe’ serves as a case in point:Footnote 62
Sobering themes are perpetual in Thomas’ poetry.Footnote 63 We look in full at his ‘The Absence’:Footnote 64
Prayer, absence, presence and the modern – these are everywhere in Thomas’ poetry. Lest he be deemed one in a modern existential crisis, untethered to the biblical tradition, let us turn to the Psalms:
It is this reality of Psalm 13 that requires divine help:
We again find the hidden God in Psalm 43:
Though it begins with common ground, the psalmist wants explanation for his plight.
The theme of prayer and evading answers is perennial in poetry. Guite demonstrates this in his ‘Engine Against Th’ Almightie’ (ll. 1–5, 9–14):Footnote 66
Guite strikes the note with his questions, and leaves it reverberating. His poem is akin to Psalm 88, which, as is well known, does not end with praise, trust or sacrifice.
Beyond the endurance of prayer, the contrasting themes of grace and wrath are regular in poetry. Let us take Thomas’ poem, ‘You Show Me Two Faces’:Footnote 67
This is also found in the Psalter:
The interconnection of pain and YHWH's presence occurs in Thomas, Herbert and the Psalms.Footnote 68 Consider Herbert's, ‘Bitter-Sweet’:Footnote 69
Similar themes run throughout the Psalms. One example is:
The psalmist recognises the anger applied to the community. Yet he calls for restoration and repair.
Conclusion
We began with the claim that the Psalms are poetry, a fact which can be decentred in much of scholarly literature on the Psalms. In attempting to engage Psalms as poetry, we have read expert poets. This allowed us to skate across the surface of poetry. We felt the ice reverberate through our blades. What is more, these poets privileged us an elevated post where we were able to take in the topography. The landscape of poetry at large was observed. This practice shaped our imagination.
Having grown expectant of the power of sound in poetry, we are now ready to be grabbed and guided by the sonics of Psalms. We have begun to acquire a taste for repetition. We have apprehended an appreciation for architecture, the shape of poetry as purposed content, not merely casing. We have learned to turn where the psalmist turns; we widen our vision and strengthen our neck for shifts to our sensibilities. Our eyes have been practised in seeing the complexities of images. These images have given instruction in the central subject matter of the Psalms, namely, God. In short, we have become acquainted with the creativity and constraints of poets, both modern and ancient. Thus, we can now enter a psalm with poetic expectations.
‘Most emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems’, C. S. Lewis famously opined.Footnote 70 That has in fact been the present project. The typical scientific presentations of Psalms are not wrong. Neither are they right. Lowthian parallelism, Gunkelian genres and Childsian canonical readings simply do not reach the riches of these biblical poems. Poetry is potent and pregnant.
Reading the poetry of Psalms as such is not new. My arguments and observations are merely the grabbing of new garments from the wardrobe. This has been but a practice of Shakespeare's wisdom, ‘So all my best is dressing old words new / Spending again what is already spent’.Footnote 71
