[b-hebrew] Carmel: The Town of David's Abigail

Bill Rea bill.rea at canterbury.ac.nz
Mon Jan 12 15:35:07 EST 2009


Jim wrote:-

> And gladness and joy are taken away out of the fruitful field [or ?garden?
> /KRML];  and in the vineyards [KRM] there shall be no singing, neither shall
> there be shouting;  no treader shall tread out wine in the presses [YQB + YM];
> I have made the vintage shout to cease.

This is poetry and its form needs to be taken into account when
understanding the text. In poetry the writer is using words to paint a
picture. Its the picture that's important so the reader shouldn't get hung
up on the individual words used to construct the image. Hebrew poetry often
employs parallels where you get two versettes which have a closely similar
meaning but where the second versette advances the thought of the first in
some way. Sometimes the demands of the form requires a writer to use a word
or words which if they were writing prose to express the same idea they
would not use. So care must be exercised when attempting to use an
occurrence of a word in a poem to understand its meaning. Poets do all sorts
of strange things with words.

There are some good books around on Hebrew poetry. I have a couple on my
bookshelves. O'Connor's one on Hebrew Verse Structure is quite good.


Bill Rea Ph.D., ICT Services, University of Canterbury \_
E-Mail bill.rea at canterbury.ac.nz                       </   New
Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax  64-3-364-2332               /)  Zealand
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