PARALLELISM IN POETRY?

Parallelism in Poetry

How old is poetry? I don't know myself but in doing my writing I came across some information about poetry that I didn't know. Poetry in Psalms is very interesting. We don't see the normal rhyming that often is in standard poetry writing. It seems that Hebrew poetry, one of the rules is the use of parallelism. It is a kind rhyming of ideas instead of sounds. Three parallelisms used are: Synonymous, antithetical, and synthetic parallelism. In synonymous you will find two lines that say basically the same thing as in, hear me or pay attention to me. In antithetical you will see two lines consisting of opposites. And in synthetic the lines may build on each other as in Psalm 14:2 "The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if there is even one with real understanding, one who seeks for God."

So I have learn another form of poetry and just had to share. It has been wonderful learning about poetry and also revisiting Psalms.




Note: reference The One Year Book of Psalms by Tyndale Publishing