There are three ways in which we may read the Bible.
We may come to it as the divinely inspired rule of faith and conduct.
This is the point of view from which it appears most precious to
religion. It gives us the word of God to teach us what to believe and how
to live.
We may consider it as a collection of historical books, written under
certain conditions, and reflecting, in their contents and in their
language, the circumstances in which they were produced. This is the
aspect in which criticism regards the Bible; and its intellectual
interest, as well as its religious value, is greatly enhanced by a clear
vision of the truth about it from this point of view.
We may study it also as literature. We may see in it a noble and
impassioned interpretation of nature and life, uttered in language
of beauty and sublimity, touched with the vivid colours of human
personality, and embodied in forms of enduring literary art.
None of these three ways of studying the Bible is hostile to the others.
On the contrary, they are helpful to one another, because each of them
gives us knowledge of a real factor in the marvellous influence of the
Bible in the world.
The true lover of the Bible has an interest in all the elements of
its life as an immortal book. He wishes to discern, and rightly to
appreciate, the method of its history, the spirit of its philosophy, the
significance of its fiction, the power of its eloquence, and the charm of
its poetry. He wishes this all the more because he finds in it something
which is not in any other book: a vision of God, a hope for man, and an
inspiration to righteousness which seem to him divine. As the worshipper
in the Temple would observe the art and structure of the carven beams of
cedar and the lily-work on the tops of the pillars the more attentively
because they beautified the house of his God, so the man who has a
religious faith in the Bible will study more eagerly and carefully the
literary forms of the book in which the Holy Spirit speaks forever.
It is in this spirit that I wish to consider the poetical element in the
Psalms. The comfort, help, and guidance that they bring to our spiritual
life will not be diminished, but increased, by a perception of their
exquisite form and finish. If a king sent a golden cup full of cheering
cordial to a weary man, he might well admire the two-fold bounty of the
royal gift. The beauty of the vessel would make the draught more grateful
and refreshing. And if the cup were inexhaustible, if it filled itself
anew as often as it touched the lips, then the very shape and adornment
of it would become significant and precious. It would be an inestimable
possession, a singing goblet, a treasure of life.
John Milton, whose faith in religion was as exalted as his mastery of
the art of poetry was perfect, has expressed in a single sentence the
spirit in which I would approach the poetic study of the Book of Psalms:
“Not in their divine arguments alone, but in the very critical art of
composition, the Psalms may be easily made to appear over all kinds of
lyric poetry incomparable.”
I
Let us remember at the outset that a considerable part of the value of
the Psalms as poetry will lie beyond our reach. We cannot precisely
measure it, nor give it full appreciation, simply because we are dealing
with the Psalms only as we have them in our English Bible. This is a real
drawback; and it is well to understand clearly the two things that we
lose in reading the Psalms in this way.
First, we lose the beauty and the charm of verse. This is a serious loss.
Poetry and verse are not the same thing, but they are so intimately
related that it is difficult to divide them. Indeed, according to certain
definitions of poetry, it would seem almost impossible.
Yet who will deny that the Psalms as we have them in the English Bible
are really and truly poetical?
The only way out of this difficulty that I can see is to distinguish
between verse as the formal element and imaginative emotion as the
essential element in poetry. In the original production of a poem, it
seems to me, it is just to say that the embodiment in metrical language
is a law of art which must be observed. But in the translation of a poem
(which is a kind of reflection of it in a mirror) the verse may be lost
without altogether losing the spirit of the poem.
Take an illustration from another art. A statue has the symmetry of solid
form. You can look at it from all sides, and from every side you can see
the balance and rhythm of the parts. In a photograph this solidity of
form disappears. You see only a flat surface. But you still recognize it
as the reflection of a statue.
The Psalms were undoubtedly written, in the original Hebrew, according to
a system of versification, and perhaps to some extent with forms of rhyme.
The older scholars, like Lowth and Herder, held that such a system
existed, but could not be recovered. Later scholars, like Ewald, evolved
a system of their own. Modern scholarship, represented by such authors
as Professors Cheyne and Briggs, is reconstructing and explaining more
accurately the Hebrew versification. But, for the present at least, the
only thing that is clear is that this system must remain obscure to us.
It cannot be reproduced in English. The metrical versions of the Psalms
are the least satisfactory. The poet Cowley said of them, “They are so
far from doing justice to David that methinks they revile him worse
than Shimei.”[5] We must learn to appreciate the poetry in the Psalms
without the aid of those symmetries of form and sound in which they first
appeared. This is a serious loss. Poetry without verse is like a bride
without a bridal garment.
The second thing that we lose in reading the Psalms in English is
something even more important. It is the heavy tax on the wealth of its
meaning, which all poetry must pay when it is imported from one country
to another, through the medium of translation.
The most subtle charm of poetry is its suggestiveness; and much of
this comes from the magical power which words acquire over memory and
imagination, from their associations. This intimate and personal charm
must be left behind when a poem passes from one language to another. The
accompaniment, the harmony of things remembered and beloved, which the
very words of the song once awakened, is silent now. Nothing remains but
the naked melody of thought. If this is pure and strong, it will gather
new associations; as, indeed, the Psalms have already done in English,
so that their familiar expressions have become charged with musical
potency. And yet I suppose such phrases as “a tree planted by the rivers
of water,” “a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of the house,” “the
mountains round about Jerusalem,” can never bring to us the full sense of
beauty, the enlargement of heart, that they gave to the ancient Hebrews.
But, in spite of this double loss, in the passage from verse to prose and
from Hebrew to English, the poetry in the Psalms is so real and vital and
imperishable that every reader feels its beauty and power.
It retains one valuable element of poetic form. This is that balancing
of the parts of a sentence, one against another, to which Bishop Lowth
first gave the familiar name of “parallelism.”[6] The effect of this
simple artifice, learned from Nature herself, is singularly pleasant
and powerful. It is the rise and fall of the fountain, the ebb and flow
of the tide, the tone and overtone of the chiming bell. The two-fold
utterance seems to bear the thought onward like the wings of a bird. A
German writer compares it very exquisitely to “the heaving and sinking of
the troubled heart.”
It is this “parallelism” which gives such a familiar charm to the
language of the Psalms. Unconsciously, and without recognizing the nature
of the attraction, we grow used to the double cadence, the sound and the
echo, and learn to look for its recurrence with delight.
O come let us sing unto the Lord;
Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation,
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving;
And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
If we should want a plain English name for this method of composition we
might call it _thought-rhyme_. It is easy to find varied illustrations of
its beauty and of its power to emphasize large and simple ideas.
Take for instance that very perfect psalm with which the book begins—a
poem so complete, so compact, so delicately wrought that it seems like a
sonnet. The subject is _The Two Paths_.
The first part describes the way of the good man. It has three divisions.
The first verse gives a description of his conduct by negatives—telling
us what he does not do. There is a triple thought-rhyme here.
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor standeth in the way of sinners,
Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
The second verse describes his character positively, with a double
thought-rhyme.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord;
And in his law doth he meditate day and night.
The third verse tells us the result of this character and conduct, in a
fourfold thought-rhyme.
He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water:
That bringeth forth his fruit in his season:
His leaf also shall not wither:
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
The second part of the psalm describes the way of the evil man. In the
fourth verse there is a double thought-rhyme.
The ungodly are not so:
But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
In the fifth verse the consequences of this worthless, fruitless,
unrooted life are shown, again with a double cadence of thought, the
first referring to the judgment of God, the second to the judgment of men.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment:
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
The third part of the psalm is a terse, powerful couplet, giving the
reason for the different ending of the two paths.
For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous:
But the way of the ungodly shall perish.
The thought-rhyme here is one of contrast.
A poem of very different character from this brief, serious, impersonal
sonnet is found in the Forty-sixth Psalm, which might be called a
National Anthem. Here again the poem is divided into three parts.
The first part (verses first to third) expresses a sense of joyful
confidence in the Eternal, amid the tempests and confusions of earth.
The thought-rhymes are in couplets; and the second phrase, in each case,
emphasizes and enlarges the idea of the first phrase.
God is our refuge and strength:
A very present help in trouble.
The second part (verses fourth to seventh) describes the peace and
security of the city of God, surrounded by furious enemies, but rejoicing
in the Eternal Presence. The parallel phrases here follow the same rule
as in the first part. The concluding phrase is the stronger, the more
emphatic. The seventh verse gives the refrain or chorus of the anthem.
The Lord of hosts is with us:
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
The last part (verses eighth to tenth) describes in a very vivid and
concrete way the deliverance of the people that have trusted in the
Eternal. It begins with a couplet, like those which have gone before.
Then follow two stanzas of triple thought-rhymes, in which the thought is
stated and intensified with each repetition.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth:
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder:
He burneth the chariot in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted among the heathen:
I will be exalted in the earth.
The anthem ends with a repetition of the refrain.
A careful study of the Psalms, even in English, will enable the
thoughtful reader to derive new pleasure from them, by tracing the many
modes and manners in which this poetic form of thought-rhyme is used to
bind the composition together, and to give balance and harmony to the
poem.
Another element of poetic form can be discerned in the Psalms, not
directly, in the English version, but by its effects. I mean the curious
artifice of alphabetic arrangement. It was a favourite practice among
Hebrew poets to begin their verses with the successive letters of the
alphabet, or sometimes to vary the device by making every verse in a
strophe begin with one letter, and every verse in the next strophe with
the following letter, and so on to the end. The Twenty-fifth and the
Thirty-seventh Psalms were written by the first of these rules; the One
Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm follows the second plan.
Of course the alphabetic artifice disappears entirely in the English
translation. But its effects remain. The Psalms written in this manner
usually have but a single theme, which is repeated over and over again,
in different words and with new illustrations. They are kaleidoscopic.
The material does not change, but it is turned this way and that way, and
shows itself in new shapes and arrangements. These alphabetic psalms are
characterized by poverty of action and richness of expression.