When Psalms Were Spoken
Cassandra Sieg
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The Twenty-Second Psalm of David
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me,
and from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou answerest not;
And in the night season, and am not silent.
But thou art holy,
O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Our fathers trusted in thee:
They trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
They cried unto thee, and were delivered:
They trusted in thee, and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised of the people.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn:
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
Commit thyself unto Jehovah;
Let him deliver him:
Let him rescue him,
seeing he delighteth in him.
But thou art he that took me out of the womb;
Thou didst make me trust
when I was upon my mother’s breasts.
I was cast upon thee from the womb;
Thou art my God since my mother bare me.
Be not far from me;
for trouble is near;
For there is none to help.
Many bulls have compassed me;
Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
They gape upon me with their mouth,
As a ravening and a roaring lion.
I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint:
My heart is like wax;
It is melted within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd;
And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws;
And thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
For dogs have compassed me:
A company of evil-doers have inclosed me;
They pierced my hands and my feet.
I may count all my bones;
They look and stare upon me.
They part my garments among them,
And upon my vesture do they cast lots.
But be not thou far off, O Jehovah:
O thou my succor, haste thee to help me.
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My darling from the power of the dog.
Save me from the lion’s mouth;
Yea, from the horns of the wild-oxen thou hast answered me.
I will declare thy name unto my brethren:
In the midst of the assembly will I praise thee.
Ye that fear Jehovah, praise him;
All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him;
And stand in awe of him, all ye the seed of Israel.
For he hath not despised nor abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted;
Neither hath he hid his face from him;
But when he cried unto him, he heard.
Of thee cometh my praise in the great assembly:
I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
The meek shall eat and be satisfied;
They shall praise Jehovah that seek after him:
Let your heart live for ever.
All the ends of the earth
shall remember and turn unto Jehovah;
And all the kindreds of the nations
shall worship before thee.
For the kingdom is Jehovah’s;
And he is the ruler over the nations.
All the fat ones of the earth shall eat and worship:
All they that go down to the dust shall bow before him,
Even he that cannot keep his soul alive.
A seed shall serve him;
It shall be told of the Lord unto the next generation.
They shall come and shall declare his righteousness
Unto a people that shall be born,
that he hath done it. 1
We often interact with poetry in the written form. When modern poets compose, many characteristics of their poetry depend on a print approach, such as enjambment—breaking a thought or sentence into more than one line—or extended metaphors—building up a comparison of two things over the course of the entire poem. When the Psalms are read, the wording and structure frequently seem clumsy to the modern reader. The Psalms depend on repetitive phrases and imagery, and often use only the simplest line breaks. However, the Psalms were not crafted in a print society. They are entrenched in oral tradition. As such, the characteristics governing the form are very different than those of a poem from the print tradition. 2 If we look at the Psalms from the perspective of oral tradition, using Psalm Twenty-Two as an example, we will find they are much more advanced than they first appear.
The basic compositional approach is different for oral poetry than it is for print poetry. While a print poet might write the first few lines, toy with them later, change a single word here or there, and work over them for a long time to make the ideas build subtly on each other, an oral poet does not have that luxury. He is composing a poem more as someone would give an improvisational speech. He has a general idea of the structure and content he wishes to convey, but because he is improvising, he does not have time to be innovative. Thus the oral poet uses a guiding structure, or formulaic composition, to craft his poem cohesively. All forms of oral poetry share some traits of their formulaic composition, while each culture also employs a few unique rules. 3
Every formulaic composition uses the adding style. The poet composes the oral poem one line at a time, so each line is simply added to the one before. The following lines are often influenced by the previous ones, but these lines cannot depend on what will come next because the poet cannot be sure exactly what will follow. This leads to the rare use of enjambment in the Psalms. 4 Looking at verse twenty-five of the Twenty-Second Psalm:
Of thee cometh my praise in the great assembly:we can see that each line is its own statement. The second line continues the poem, but each essentially contains its own thought. This differs from most poetry composed in a print culture, such as the first four lines of “To Althea From Prison” by Richard Lovelace:
I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
When Love with unconfined wingsLovelace was able to continue the thought from line to line, because by the time he finished his final draft, he knew what each line would say. Oral poets do not have that luxury.
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
The formulaic composition for oral poetry also contains stock images and metaphors. The specific stock images differ from culture to culture. 5 In the Psalms, common images for enemies are dangerous, wild beasts, like dogs or bulls. Conflict or suffering is often expressed as sickness. The protection of God is usually invoked as a shield and His strength as a rock. While the use of stock images may keep each Psalm from seeming unique, they fulfill a very important purpose. Developing images that distinctly capture the experience of the poet requires more time than improvisation allows. Few people could improvise imagery at the level of Thomas Lovell Beddoes in “Wolfram’s Dirge”:
Lie still and deep,The stock images provide a ready phrase for the improvising poet, such as:
Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o’ the sun to-morrow,
They gape upon me with their mouth,which is more evocative than simply, “Enemies threaten me.”
As a ravening and a roaring lion. 6
Like other forms of oral poetry, the formulaic composition of the Psalms depends on a set of culturally specific rules. While Greek oral poetry is strictly directed by meter and Anglo-Saxon oral poetry by alliteration, the Psalms depend upon the concept of parallelism. 7 As rhyming matches sounds, parallelism matches concepts. With parallelism, a thought, idea, grammatical pattern, or key word of the first colon—the unit in parallelism—is continued in the second part. Parallelism is completely responsible for the seemingly heavy repetition people often notice in the Psalms of David. Parallelism is more complex than simple repetition and serves a fundamental role in the psalmic oral tradition. By breaking down the different forms of parallelism in the Twenty-Second Psalm, we can see how the techniques are responsible for the effectiveness of the Psalms as oral poetry.
Synonymous parallelism forms the most basic building block for the Psalms. It repeats the thought of the first colon in the second, but using different words. The Twenty-Second Psalm has numerous examples of synonymous parallelism, as found in verse twenty-eight:
For the kingdom is Jehovah’s;The repetition helps to balance the Psalm. In the midst of metaphors—such as in verse thirteen, “They gape upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion,” 8—the synonymous parallelism emphasizes one thought with simple language. If the psalmist relied on increasingly elaborate metaphors, any impact created by a single metaphor would be lost. Using synonymous parallelism, the psalmist is able to simplify the language without sacrificing the impact of the thought.
and he is the ruler over nations.
Chiastic, or inverted, parallelism is closely related to synonymous parallelism. The second colon is a mirror image of the first: the same in content, but backwards in order. Verse twenty-two of the Twenty-Second Psalm demonstrates this form of parallelism:
I will declare thy name unto my brethren:In the first line the order is action-place, while the second line is place-action. On the most basic level, this form continues the repetition of the synonymous parallelism, while varying the presentation in order to maintain the listener’s interest. On a more subtle level, this form allows the psalmist to control where the emphasis falls. The opening and ending thought naturally receive the most emphasis. In using the chiastic form of parallelism in the twenty-second verse, the psalmist, David, emphasizes the action—praising God—over the fact that he is not alone in his worship.
In the midst of the assembly will I praise thee.
Staircase parallelism also relies on a technique similar to synonymous parallelism, but with one important difference. While synonymous parallelism restates the same thought in each colon, staircase parallelism builds upon each colon, expanding upon the subject of the first colon. The relationship of the colons in staircase parallelism is not always as clear as with other forms of parallelism, because it relies more on semantic and grammatical repetition. This form is seen in verses twenty and twenty-one:
Deliver my soul from the sword,In this verse, “soul” parallels “darling,” as “the sword” parallels “the power of the dog.” As found in the Twenty-Second Psalm, the staircase form is often used to separate cases of synonymous parallelism. The staircase form reads similarly to synonymous parallelism because it shares the line-by-line use of repetition for emphasis. This similar use of repetition allows the psalmist to maintain the same tone, while varying the structure with lines that do not restate the identical meaning. Using staircase parallelism, the content of the Psalm is able to progress at a quicker pace, but without giving extra emphasis to the staircase colons.
My darling from the power of the dog.
The Twenty-Second Psalm also uses both forms of climactic parallelism. One form of climactic parallelism is closely related to staircase parallelism. In those cases, the climactic parallelism occurs as the final, summary colon to the progression of staircase colons. “Seeing he delighteth in him” in verse eight is one example:
Commit thyself unto Jehovah;In other applications, climactic parallelism is independent of staircase parallelism. In this type, the first colon is repeated in the second colon, but as a more complete thought. One example is verse four:
Let him deliver him:
Let him rescue him,
seeing he delighteth in him.
Our fathers trusted in thee:In the midst of the buildup of synonymous, inverted, and staircase forms that all move the subject of the poem forward, the climactic forms allows a temporary resolution. Instead of continuing the poem, it pauses. Like a caesura in music, it emphasizes the completed thought.
They trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
Finally, emblematic parallelism depends on vivid imagery, taking the opposite route of the previous forms of parallelism. This form combines metaphors with the traditional repetition found in parallelism. The first colon uses a metaphor or figure of speech, while the second is a literal statement. One example is found in verse sixteen of the Twenty-Second Psalm:
For dogs have compassed me:The meanings of the lines are the same, but the way the psalmist joins the two together creates a more visceral impact. The metaphor in the first part is concrete and vivid, eliciting an emotional response. The second ties that image to reality, so the listener can relate emotion with experience.
A company of evil-doers have enclosed me.
Parallelism makes individual psalms effective but why is this relevant? The Psalms are more than expressions of emotions and experiences. They have endured for thousands of years. Studying the technical side of the Psalms reveals their literary value. God communicated to the writers of the Bible through literature, showing the communion of God, His worship, and literature.
1. All Scripture from The Holy Bible, American Standard Version.
2. Robert Culley, “Oral Tradition and Bible Studies,” Oral Tradition (1986): 15-16.
3. Ibid., 13.
4. Robert Culley, Oral Formulaic Language in Biblical Psalms (Belgium: University of Toronto Press 1967), 14.
5. Culley, OFLBP, 16.
6. Psalm 22:13, ASB.
7. Culley, OTBS, 13.
8. Psalm 22:13, ASB.
DS on Sun May 06 03:19:50 +0000 2007
Very interesting, well written, and helpful. I learned something I never knew before, and I appreciate the Psalms in a new way. Thank you!