Reasons why the lyric over shadowed all other types of Hebrew poetry The grouping of the Hebrew lyrics the Greek Hercules. The marked epic character of Israel's early narratives, the frequent references to older poetic sources, and the fact that the prose narrators at many points quote from early poetic sources favor, although they do not absolutely prove, that the Hebrews once possessed a great epic which described in connected form the earlier events in their national history and the deeds of their great heroes. Fortunately, we possess the prose (which may have been the original and only) version of that national epic. The most characteristic product of Hebrew poetic genius is the lyric. This type of poetry was originally intended to be sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument, and expresses the individual emotions of the poet or of those for whom he speaks. Like most Semitic poetry, it is highly subjective, although its figures are often exceedingly concrete. The dominance of the lyric note in Hebrew literature is due to a variety of causes. It was primarily owing to the peculiar genius of the race. The Hebrews were pre-eminently individualists. The personal and racial points of view are prominent in all of their early writings. The extremely simple structure of the Hebrew language also favors the lyric rather than the more complex forms of poetry. Furthermore, as has been noted, the chief motive in their life was religion, and the lyric is the most natural expression of religious feeling. The great crises through which the Hebrews passed and the many painful experiences which came to them aroused the deepest personal emotions and intensified their tendency to develop the lyric. While this type of poetry is distinctly individualistic, there is also a strong universalistic note running through the lyric poetry of the Old Testament. It is, in part, because the experiences of Israel's poets were common to the human race. In the psalms many chords are struck which find a quick response in the heart of man in every age and race. The result is that in much of the lyric poetry of the Old Testament there is a timeless quality which expresses the universal experiences and emotions of humanity. The lyric poetry of the Old Testament represents the work of many different poets who wrote under the impulse of a great variety of emotions and in widely separated periods in Israel's history. The oldest as well as the latest poems in the Old Testament are lyrics. In their present form they are either scattered through the historical books or else massed together in the Psalter without any definite system of arrangement. In order to utilize them for reading, study, or even devotional purposes, it is important that they be classified. The primary need is to group together those poems which are written from the same point of view and with kindred aims. The first canon of classification, therefore, is that of authorship. Each of the three great groups of Israel's teachers, the prophets, the priests, and the sages, contributed certain of the lyric poems now found in the Psalter. Most of the lyric poems fall under one of the three heads, prophetic, priestly, or didactic. A still more fundamental canon in the classification of lyric poetry is the dominant emotion, whether it be that of exultation or aspiration, as in certain of the early tribal songs; or of sadness, as in the dirges found in the book of Lamentations; or of thanksgiving, of praise, of THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF HEBREW POETRY adoration, of penitence, or of worship, as in the different psalms of the Psalter. A few psalms reflect a wide variety of emotions, but the great majority may be readily classified in accordance with this canon. trend from the national to the ual point of Before the exile the chief note in Israel's life was either the pride or aspira- The tion of the tribe or nation. After the exile the Jews for four centuries turned from their narrow national ambitions and from trust in their own resources to Jehovah as their one source of joy, glory, and deliverance. individAs the nation went down in ruin the individual for the first time emerged into prominence. The result is that the personal note becomes ever clearer view in the poetry that comes from the four centuries beginning with the Babylonian exile. Adoration, praise, and thanksgiving, expressive of triumph not of the sword but of faith, or else the note of penitence and fervent petition, filled the hearts and found expression through the lips and pens of the faithful who worshipped at the second temple. This unmistakable trend from the national to the individual point of view suggests the canon to be followed in determining the order of the larger groups of poems. Within each group it is also important to arrange the poems, as far as possible, in their chronological order, thus furnishing a basis for an historical study of the different phases in the development of Israel's faith. trium phal The oldest group of Hebrew lyrics are the folk or national songs. These The fall naturally into four general divisions: (1) triumphal odes, (2) traditional oracles, (3) dirges, and (4) love and wedding songs. The triumphal odes odes were sometimes sung by the warriors but in early Israel more commonly by the women after a great deliverance, like that of the exodus, or a great victory, as that over the Canaanites beside the Kishon. They preserved in this popular, poetic form the memory of the great events and achievements in Israel's history and, therefore, have found a place among Israel's historical records. Out of these triumphal odes there developed, under the changed conditions which resulted from the Babylonian exile, the imprecatory psalms in which the inherited hatred and the burning sense of injustice with which the Jews regarded their heathen persecutors found fervent and often to us repulsive expression. Out of the older triumphal odes also developed the hymns of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration addressed to Jehovah by his afflicted yet trusting people. A third group included the majestic psalms describing Jehovah's leadership of his people in the past and the way in which he had delivered them from their foes. Through many of these runs the spirit of the old triumphal odes, even though the victories which they commemorate took place centuries before. ditional oracles Another early form of Hebrew lyric poetry may be designated as the The tratraditional oracle. In these poems the experiences and aspirations of later generations were put in the mouths of the early fathers and leaders of the race, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. These memories and hopes were cast in the characteristic poetic form of the ancient prophetic oracles. Many such traditional oracles are incorporated in the historical books. Most of them are older than their prose setting. Out of these grew in later times the great oral prophecies of the pre-exilic period and the psalms which embody the messianic hopes of the exilic and post-exilic periods. The The dirge The Hebrew mourn ing customs Their psychological basis Jewish apocalypses, as, for example, those in the second part of the book of Daniel, are still later modifications and expansions (but in prose form) of the earlier oracles. The third primitive type of lyric poetry is the dirge. Public lamentations for the dead may be traced back to the beginnings of Semitic history. In the days of the ancient Sumerian king Gudea professional mourners were employed to sing songs of lament over the bier of the dead. They were probably connected with the temples. One class was known as the wailers, another as the howlers. They included both men and women. These lamentations were usually accompanied by music. The plaintive music of the harp and flute was best suited to the spirit of these dirges. The song of lament and the praise of the departed were voiced by the leader, while the chorus joined in the refrain. In the famous old Babylonian epic the hero Gilgamesh laments over his dead friend Eabani: Thou takest no part in the noble feast, To the assembly they call thee not. What is hit by the bow is not for thee; Thy hand grasps not the club nor strikes the prey, Nor stretches thy foemen dead on the earth. The wife thou lovest thou kissest not, The wife thou hatest thou strikest not. The child thou lovest thou kissest not, Like a deep well thou enclosest him! The Hebrew mourning customs apparently preserved those which had been followed for thousands of years in the ancient Semitic world and still prevail in the lands of the East. The relatives of the deceased, and especially the hired mourners, were clad in sackcloth made from the hair of goats or camels (II Sam. 211o, Is. 153). With dishevelled locks, with bare feet and legs, often cutting their hair and mutilating their features, they threw themselves down beside the dead or else sat on the ground casting dust upon their heads (II Sam. 1530, Is. 326, Jer. 166). Among these Hebrews the majority of these hired mourners were women, although male mourners are mentioned (Jer. 917, II Chr. 3525). Ordinarily, the mourners fasted during the daytime (I Sam. 3113, II Sam. 335). At sunset the funeral feast was held. The wild shrieks and weird cries uttered by the hired mourners in the East to-day make vivid the scenes about the graves of the dead in ancient Israel. In the old Babylonian epic the laments of Gilgamesh secured immortality for his friend Eabani; but this does not appear to have been the original psychological basis of the death dirge. Not until the later Jewish period THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF HEBREW POETRY did the belief in individual immortality gain acceptance even among the Israelites. It is more probable that in earliest days the cries of the mourners were intended to placate or keep away the spirits of the dead. This reason well explains the cutting of the beard and the mutilating of the body. The heathen origin of these rites explains why they were prohibited by the later Jewish law (Lev. 1927, 28). It is possible, however, that, as among many peoples to-day, the belief prevailed that the spirit of the dead lingered for a time near the body of the deceased and that offerings presented to it and songs sung in his honor gave joy to the departed. In modern Palestine the tombs of Moslem saints are often covered with gifts presented by their descendants or by the natives who venerate the sacred spot. In the biblical laments that have been preserved the chief motive seems to be to commemorate the achievements of the fallen hero or to express the sorrow of the friends who survive. The emotional Oriental undoubtedly finds great relief and a certain melancholy pleasure in these dramatic expressions of his grief. Two kinds of dirges are found in the Old Testament. In the one an individual hero is the object of the poet's grief; in the other a city or nation. The oldest and in many ways the noblest example of the Hebrew lament is the dirge which David sang over Saul and Jonathan. It opens with a stanza in the quick, two-beat measure which gradually rises to the three and four beat and describes the greatness of the calamity that had befallen Israel. The royal poet David then goes on to describe the bravery, attractiveness, and achievements of the fallen heroes. Through it all runs the recurring refrain: How have the mighty fallen! The dirge which David sang over Abner represents even more closely the popular lament which the hired mourners crooned over the body of the dead. In Jeremiah 2210 the prophet laments in the same way over the exiled Jehoiahaz, whose fate he likens to that of the dead. The late tradition in II Chronicles 3425 states that Jeremiah lamented for Josiah and that all the singing men and singing women to this day speak of Josiah in their dirges. In Ezekiel 322-10 this priest-prophet of the exile sings a dirge, which is in reality a taunt song, over the Egyptian Pharaoh. The earliest example of the lament over the nation is the dramatic dirge sung by Amos over northern Israel whose coming downfall he thus vividly portrayed (Am. 51, 2). Jeremiah, in the same spirit, puts a dirge in the mouth of the singing women of Judah (Jer. 917-22). Later, in 127-12, he laments over the approaching fate of sinful Judah. The prophetic books contain many taunt songs in the form of dirges addressed by the prophet to Israel's hostile foes. Of these the stirring poem in Isaiah 144-20, describing the fall of Babylon, Ezekiel's picturesque dirges over the fall of Tyre in chapters 26-28, and the taunt songs over the Philistines, Moabites, Amonites, Edomites, Damascens, the Arabians and even the distant Elamites in Jeremiah 47-49, are the most important. To this group belong the five songs of lamentation now preserved in the book of Lamentations, which represent the culmination of this strong elegiac tendency in Israel's thought and literature. The two kinds of dirges Aim Authorship III THE STRUCTURE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS THE book of Lamentations is the most conventional and stereotyped of all the Old Testament writings. Four of its five chapters consist of acrostics in which each succeeding verse or group of verses begins with a succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Even though the fifth chapter is not an acrostic, it has twenty-two verses corresponding to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. In the first and second chapters each verse contains three lines, in the fourth a couplet of but two lines. These rigid limitations in structure necessarily impede the free development of the thought. While these dirges lack the freedom and spontaneity of many other Hebrew poems they are not deficient in strong emotion and contain a remarkably vivid portrayal of the incidents and experiences connected with the destruction of Jerusalem. The poet's reason for employing the acrostic structure was evidently to aid the memory. His motive in writing was liturgical, that is, to furnish hymns that might be readily remembered and chanted, probably in connection with the fasts which were observed in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple. In the seventh chapter of Zechariah the prophet refers to such fasts which in his day had already been observed for seventy years, beginning with the destruction of the temple in 586 B.C. In form and content these poems were well adapted to this liturgical use. They kept alive in vivid form the memories of Israel's tragic experience. They aimed to impress upon the minds of the people the lessons taught by their past, "lest they forget." They also aimed to interpret the meaning of those experiences and to justify Jehovah's rigorous dealing with his people, and thus to arouse in the heart of the nation faith and adoration even in the presence of overwhelming calamity. To the historian they are of inestimable value, for they reveal the soul of the race and give contemporary pictures of conditions in Jerusalem in the days preceding and following its overthrow regarding which Israel's historians are almost silent. The position of the book of Lamentations in the English Bible is due to the influence of a tradition preserved in the superscription to the Greek text of Lamentations: And it came to pass after Israel had been led captive and Jerusalem laid desolate that Jeremiah sat down weeping and lifted up this lament over Jerusalem. The tradition that Jeremiah was the author of Lamentations may be traced back to the Greek period in the statement of |