(Part 1)

JBTM 32
Interpreting Hebrew Poetry
Jeffrey G. Audirsch, PhD
Jeffrey G. Audirsch is Associate Professor of Christian Studies
at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia.
Roughly one-third of the Old Testament is poetic in form. 1 Given the prevalence of
poetry in the Old Testament identifying and grasping some general principles of interpretation
is of utmost importance. This is further underscored by the fact that poetry
is found in almost every book of the Old Testament. 2 Several books are completely poetic—Psalms,
Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Similarly, other books contain large portions of poetry: Job,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Joel. That poetry is intertwined with biblical narratives
(e.g., Exod 15; Deut 32; Judg 5; and 2 Sam 22:1–23:7), prophetic texts (e.g., Jer 1:4–10) and
wisdom literature (Eccl 3:1–8) only compounds our task. Thus, creating a universal list
of principles for interpreting poetry across genre lines seems difficult if not impossible.
In this essay, I will discuss a variety issues related to interpreting poetry in the Old Testament.
Since this edition of the Journal of Baptist Theology & Ministry is on expository
preaching from the Old Testament, the main thrust of the essay will be on interpretive
principles that do not necessitate a thoroughgoing knowledge of biblical Hebrew, especially
the nuances of Hebrew poetry. 3
¹Fred W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Hebrew Poetry,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4, ed.
Katherine Doob Sankenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 550.
²Norman K. Gottwald argues that Leviticus, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, and Malachi
did not contain any poetic lines. See Norman Gottwald, “Hebrew Poetry,” in The Interpreter’s
Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 3, ed. George Arthur Buttrick (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 829.
³In many ways, there exists a gulf between interpreting Hebrew poetry and the art of interpretation
typically taught in a hermeneutics class at the seminary level. It should be noted that excellent
resources are available for interpreting Hebrew poetry, which for the most part falls outside the
purview of our task. See F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015); Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008);
Wilfred G. E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques (London: T & T Clark, 2007);
Luis Alonso Schökel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics, trans. Adrian Graffy, Subsidia Biblica 11 (Rome:
Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1988); and Michael P. O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980). For a comprehensive approach to the hermeneutics of biblical poetry,