How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It

by Leland Ryken

  Psalm 1 as an Example of Poetry

  What, then, is poetry? We can best begin with an actual example, Psalm 1:

  1Blessed is the man

  who does not walk in the counsel of the

  wicked,

  or stand in the way of sinners,

  or sit in the seat of mockers.

  2But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

  and on his law he meditates day and

  night.

  3He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

  which yields its fruit in season

  and whose leaf does not wither.

  Whatever he does prospers.

  4Not so the wicked!

  They are like chaff

  that the wind blows away,

  5Therefore the wicked will not stand in the

  judgment,

  nor sinners in the assembly of the

  righteous.

  6For the Lord watches over the way of the

  righteous,

  but the way of the wicked will perish.

  Pattern and Design in Psalm 1

  Even the external arrangement of the material strikes us as more highly patterned than expository prose. This portrait of the godly person alternates between positive and negative descriptions. The opening beatitude, strongly positive, is followed by three lines that describe this person negatively, in terms of what he does not do. This is followed by the positive description in verse 2. Verse 3 has a positive–negative–positive sequence. Verse 4 balances a negative construction with a positive one. Verse 5 consists of two negatives, while verse 6 culminates the whole movement with balanced positive and negative assertions.

  Parallelism of Lines

  The individual lines, as well as the overall movement of the poem, are also highly patterned. Virtually the entire poem falls into pairs or triplets of lines that express the same idea in different words. This is the verse form known as parallelism and is an obviously poetic way of speaking. Poetry like this is more concentrated and more artistic than prose.

  A Language of Images

  Psalm 1 also shows that poetry is a language of images. It puts us in touch with such tangible realities as pathway, seat, tree, water, leaf, chaff, and law court. Poets are never content with pure abstraction, though they usually include enough conceptual commentary (words such as “blessed,” “the wicked,” “the righteous”) to allow us to know what the images mean.

  Figurative Language

  Psalm 1 is also figurative rather than literal much of the time. The second line speaks of walking in the counsel of the wicked. The wicked do not literally walk down a path called “The Counsel of the Wicked.” They do not literally pass legislation or conduct legal seminars entitled “The Counsel of the Wicked.” Nor do people literally stand together on a platform called ‘‘The Way of Sinners.” People in a scoffing mood do not take turns sitting in a chair with a sign over it that reads ‘‘The Seat of Scoffers.” Verse 1 is thoroughly metaphoric rather than literal.

  Poetic License

  Poetry, it is clear, uses what is commonly called poetic license. Another example occurs in verse 2, which states that the godly person meditates on God’s law “day and night.” There are several possible interpretations of this statement, none of them literal. No one consciously reflects on God’s law twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps the statement is a hyperbole—an exaggerated way of showing how thoroughly the godly person is controlled by God’s law. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is the word “meditates” that is used figuratively to mean “is influenced by” rather than “consciously thinks about.” Or perhaps “day and night” is a colloquial expression meaning “in the morning and in the evening.”

  Comparison as a Poetic Device

  Another poetic tendency illustrated by Psalm 1 is the strategy of comparing one thing to another. The poetic imagination is adept at seeing resemblances and using one area of human experience to cast light on another area. The productiveness of a godly person is like that of a tree beside a stream. Wicked people are like the chaff blown away during the process of winnowing. The long-term, cumulative nature of a person’s lifestyle is like walking step by step down a path.

  SUMMARY

  What is poetry? Psalm 1 supplies some good initial answers. Poetry is a language of images. It uses many comparisons. It is inherently fictional, stating things that are not literally true or comparing one thing to something else that it is literally not. Poetry is also more concentrated and more highly patterned than ordinary discourse. In short, poets do things with language and sentence structure that people do not ordinarily do when speaking.

  Poetry as a Special Language

  From the specific example of Psalm 1 we can make some generalizations that will apply to all biblical poetry. Poetry is above all a special use of language. Poets speak a language all their own. The poetic idiom uses the resources of language in a way that ordinary prose discourse does not, at least not with the same frequency or density.

  Let me say at once that parallelism, the verse form in which virtually all biblical poetry is written, is not the most essential thing that a reader needs to know about biblical poetry. Much more crucial to the reading of biblical poetry is the ability to identify and interpret the devices of poetic language.1

  Thinking in Images

  The most basic of all poetic principles is that poets think and write in images. By “images” I simply mean words that evoke a sensory experience in our imagination. Poetry avoids the abstract as much as possible. The poets of the Bible constantly put us into a world of water and sheep and lions and rocks and arrows and grass. Virtually any passage of biblical poetry will illustrate how consistently concrete poetry is.

  Reading Poetry with Imagination

  This is yet another evidence that the Bible is a work of imagination (the image-making capacity we have). The corresponding ability that is required of readers is that they allow the images of poetry to become as real and sensory as possible. Readers of poetry need to think in images, just as poets do. Poetry is affective in nature, and it affects us partly through its sensory vividness.

  Conveying the Universal Through the Particular

  Poetry offers us a series of experiences of whatever topic the poet is writing about. If we continually translate the images into abstractions, we distort the poem as a piece of writing and miss the fullness of its experiential meanings. It is true that the Psalms are not about grass and horses and rocks, but the approach of poetry to the universal or conceptual is always through the particular and concrete. Traditional approaches to biblical poetry have been entirely too theological and conceptual. When I read some of this commentary I frequently get the impression that biblical scholars are commenting on a theological essay instead of a poem.

  The first rule for reading biblical poetry, then, can be stated thus: poetry is a language of images that the reader must experience as a series of imagined sensory situations. The more visual we can become, the better we will function as readers of biblical poetry. In fact, our experience of biblical poetry would be revolutionized if commentaries made extensive use of pictures such as photographs and drawings.2

  Simile and Metaphor Defined

  Next to the use of concrete imagery, the use of simile and metaphor is the most pervasive element of biblical poetry. The essential feature of both is comparison. A simile draws a correspondence between two things by using the explicit formula “like” or “as”:

  He is like a tree planted by streams of water (Ps. 1:3).

  As the deer pants for streams of water,

  so my soul pants for you, O God (Ps. 42:1).

  Metaphor adopts a bolder strategy. It omits the “like” or “as” and asserts that A is B: “The Lord is my shepherd” (Ps. 23:1); “their throat is an open grave” (Ps. 5:9); “men whose teeth are spears and arrows, / whose tongues sharp swords” (Ps. 57:4).

  Correspondence as the Essential Element

  Both metaphor and simile oper
ate on the premise of similarity between two things. When the psalmist writes that God’s law “is a lamp to my feet / and a light for my path” (119:105), he is drawing a connection between the properties of light used to illuminate a pathway for walking and the moral effect of God’s law on a person’s behavior. When a nature poet says that God “makes the clouds his chariot” (Ps. 104:3), he intends us to see a correspondence between the swift movement of clouds across the sky and that of a chariot over a road.

  Comparisons Require a Transfer of Meaning

  Several corollaries follow from the fact that metaphor and simile are based on comparison. They both secure an effect on one level and then ask the reader to transfer that meaning to another level (in this they are like the New Testament parables). The word “metaphor” itself implies such a transfer, since it is based on the Greek words meta, meaning “over,” and pherein, meaning “to carry.” When the psalmist speaks of someone “who dwells in the shelter of the Most High” (91:1), the first task of the reader is to reflect on the human experience of living in a home. These domestic associations of security, safety, provision, protection, love, and belonging must then be transferred from a human, family context to the realm of faith in God.

  The Indirection of Simile and Metaphor

  It is also obvious that metaphor and simile work by indirection. This is what Robert Frost had in mind when he defined poetry as “saying one thing and meaning another.”3 The psalmist says that “the LORD God is a sun and shield” (84:11), but he means that God is the ultimate source of all life and provision and that God protects people from harm. The poet says that he lies “in the midst of lions” (Ps. 57:4), but he means that his enemies’ slander inflicts pain and destroys him in a number of nonphysical ways.

  The Twofold Nature of Simile and Metaphor

  The importance of this indirection is that it disqualifies the usual tendency to talk about the theology of the Psalms as though the text were expository prose or a theological outline. Metaphor and simile are bifocal statements. We need to look first at one half of a comparison and then transfer certain meanings to the other half. The exposition of biblical poetry needs to do justice to the richness of meanings that metaphor and simile convey, and this means not quickly reducing the two-pronged statement of metaphor or simile to a single direct statement. There is an irreducible quality to metaphor and simile that we should respect, both as readers and expositors.

  The Logic of Simile and Metaphor

  Another aspect of metaphor and simile is that they are a form of logic rather than illogic. The connection between the two halves of the comparison is a real connection. It can be validated on the basis of observation and rational analysis. When the poet asks God to “set a guard over my mouth” and “keep watch over the door of my lips” (Ps. 141:3), we need to explore by what logic care in one’s speech can be compared to a soldier or prison guard watching the door of a house or prison. If the threat of death on the battlefield can be described as the rope of a strangler and the water of a flood (Ps. 18:4), we must look for a logical explanation behind the poet’s assertion.

  Simile and Metaphor Are Rooted in Reality

  This is another way of saying that metaphor and simile are rooted in reality. The two halves of the comparison are not illusory but real. In the metaphor that declares God to be “father to the fatherless” (Ps. 68:5), for example, the bond between human fathers and the character of God is real. There are qualities (e.g., love, care, provision, nurture, discipline) inherent in being a good father that are also true of God’s character and acts. The poet is not simply decorating an idea that could as well be stated without the father metaphor. Nor is his attribution of the name “father” to God arbitrary. Poets do not invent comparisons but discover them. They could not create metaphor and simile if they tried; the relationship between the two phenomena joined in a metaphor or simile either exists in reality or does not exist. The poet’s quest is to discover the right expressive metaphors and similes for his particular subject matter.

  The Extralogical Meanings of Simile and Metaphor

  But metaphor and simile, though a form of logic, also go beyond abstract or mental logic. For one thing, they offer an experience of the topic being presented. As a result, the total meaning that is transferred from the one phenomenon to the other is partly nonverbal or extralogical. When a biblical poet pictures God’s provision as God’s making him “lie down in green pastures” and leading him “beside quiet waters” (Ps. 23:2), the poet taps feelings and memories within us that can never be adequately put into words. Metaphor and simile are affective as well as intellectual, experiential and intuitive as well as verbal and logical. A metaphor or simile involves “both a thinking and a seeing,” as Paul Ricoeur has said.4 This is another way of saying that the total meaning of a metaphor or simile can never be fully expressed in intellectual or propositional terms for the simple reason that it speaks to more than our intellect or reason. If a proposition adequately stated the truth the poet wishes to communicate, the metaphor or simile would be unnecessary.

  The Need to Identify the Literal Reference

  What interpretive obligations do metaphor and simile place on a reader? Chiefly two. The reader’s first responsibility is to identify the literal or physical reference that forms the foundation of the comparison. That identification must be specific rather than vague, and detailed rather than superficial. This will be most evident if we consider an example that is unfamiliar to our own experience, such as that found in Psalm 16:5–6 (RSV):

  The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;

  thou boldest my lot.

  The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

  yea, I have a goodly heritage.

  The impact of this extended metaphor describing God’s blessing depends on the reader’s getting the literal picture first. That picture has to do with real estate, and it alludes to the allotment of land when the Israelites settled in Canaan. The individual portions were determined by lot (cf. Num. 26:56 and 36:2). The “lines” are the measuring lines of a surveyor. The metaphor, then, compares God’s favor to receiving a fertile, well-situated piece of land, both for one’s own use and as an inheritance to pass on to one’s posterity.

  The Need to Interpret the Metaphor and Simile

  Having identified the literal meaning of the comparison, the reader’s second task is to interpret what the comparison means. We must accept the poet’s implied invitation to discover the meaning. In keeping with the nature of metaphor and simile, interpretation consists of discovering the nature of the similarity between the two halves of the comparison. More often than not, the connections are multiple. In finding the correspondences, we are exploring the logic and aptness of the comparison.

  What, for example, is the logic of comparing “tongues” (meaning speech) to “sharp arrows” (Ps. 57:4)? The correspondence between slander and arrows is multiple: both are inflicted from a position of secrecy, both therefore render the victim defenseless, both destroy or injure a person, both cause pain. There is even a physical similarity between the flinch caused by an arrow and that caused by an overheard verbal attack on oneself.

  Communicating Total Experience

  We should not be afraid of the fact that the meanings transferred from one half of the comparison to the other are only partly intellectual or ideational. Some of the meanings are affective or intuitive, and some are extraverbal. We all have, for example, certain feelings about green pastures and still waters that can never be fully verbalized. Similarly, when the poet prays “May they be blotted out of the book of life / and not be listed with the righteous” (Ps. 69:28), he awakens within us fears that can never be adequately expressed in words—fears, let us say, of not having a bank deposit credited or of having our name omitted from the official list of passengers on an international flight.

  Readers Must Be Active

  Metaphor and simile place immense demands on a reader. They require far more activity than a dire
ct propositional statement. Metaphor and simile first demand that we take the time to let the literal situation sink in. Then we must make a transfer of meaning(s) to the topic or experience the poem is about. Taking the tasks of identification and interpretation seriously would revolutionize commentary on biblical poetry. Such commentary might profitably include some photographs to enhance a reader’s grasp of the literal level of the comparison.

  The Advantages of Simile and Metaphor

  Why do poets use so many similes and metaphors? One advantage of metaphor and simile is vividness and concreteness. They are one way of overcoming the limitations of abstraction. Metaphor and simile achieve wholeness of expression by appealing to the full range of human experience, not simply to the rational intellect. They also possess freshness of expression and thereby overcome the cliché effect of stereotyped language. This arresting strangeness not only captures a reader’s initial attention; it also makes a statement memorable. The comment that “the Bible tells me how to live” slides out of the mind as quickly as it enters, but its metaphoric counterpart, “Your word is a lamp to my feet” (Ps. 119:105), is aphoristic and unforgettable.