(Part 1)

JBTM Jeffrey G. Audirsch
42
2
No doubt you are the people,
and wisdom will die with you.
3
But I have understanding as well as you;
I am not inferior to you.
Who does not know such things as these?
Personification is the assigning of humanlike characteristics typically to plants, animals,
and inanimate objects. 43 One of the most famous examples of personification is Lady
Wisdom and Dame Folly in the book of Proverbs. In Prov 1, wisdom is personified crying
out in the city streets.
20
Wisdom cries aloud in the street,
in the markets she raises her voice;
21
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
22a
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?” (Prov 1:20–22a)
Although this essay does not focus on Hebrew poetics, three literary/structural features
are worth mentioning given their notoriety: chiasms, inclusios, and acrostics. At times,
identifying these structural features is difficult without knowledge of biblical Hebrew—
especially acrostics. Chiasm (or chiasmus) is a structural, literary device where the word
order of a line of poetry is reversed in a parallel line of poetry (a-b / b’ a’). 44 An inclusio, like
a chiasm, is another structural device. As a literary unit (or envelope figure), an inclusio
is framed by “the repetition of the same phrase or sentence at the beginning and end of a
stanza or poem.” 45 Psalm 103 is a great example of an inclusio. Verses 1 and 22 frame the
psalm with the refrain, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”
The last literary feature of note is the acrostic. Describing the acrostic, F. W. Dobbs-
Allsopp says, “The acrostic’s basic formal conceit is that the initial letters or signs of each
line, couplet, or stanza, when read in succession, spell out a name, sentence, alphabet,
or alphabetic pattern.” 46 There are 15 partial or full acrostics in the Old Testament (e.g.,
43
For a concise overview of the various forms of personification in the Old Testament (i.e.,
inchoate, synecdochic, collective, and characterized), see Paul E. Koptak, “Personification,” in
Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry, & Writings, eds. Tremper Longman III and Peter Enns
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 516–19.
44
Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, 298. Additionally, the
parallel elements form an X in the biblical text. The X is representative of the Greek letter chi, which
is where the name chiasm is derived. Chiasms are found in both biblical narrative and poetry; cf.
Bullock, Encountering the Book of Psalms, 42–43.
45
Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, 282–83; cf. Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical
Interpretation, 303.
46
F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Acrostic: Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” in