Just as it is important to understand how the Hebrews thought and spoke, it is just as important to know how they wrote. Their style of writing is different than what we are used to, yet we attempt to read the ancient Hebrew texts as if it was written by one of our contemporary writers. This will again cause a mistranslation as well as misinterpretations of the text. Therefore, it is essential to learn the unique styles of writing employed by the Hebrews in order to read the texts correctly.

Hebrew Poetry

As Hebrew poetry is written much differently than our own Western style of poetry, many do not recognize the poetry which can cause problems when translating or interpreting these passages.

Approximately 75% of the Tenach (Old Testament) is poetry. All of Psalms and Proverbs are Hebrew poetry. Even the book of Genesis is full of Poetry. There are several reasons the Hebrews used poetry, much of the Torah was sung and was easier to sing too, poetry and songs are easier to memorize than straight texts, parallel poetry (as in Genesis 1) emphasizes something of great importance, as the creation story is. The Rabbis believed that if something is worth saying, it is worth saying beautifully." There is much more poetry in the Bible than most realize because most people do not understand it.

Parallelism

Parallelism is most commonly found in the book of Psalms and Proverbs but is found throughout the whole of the Hebrew Bible. Parallelism is the expression of one idea in two or more different ways.

The above example of a simple parallel and can be written in this manner;

Here we see that the words "lamp" and "light" are paralleled as well as the words "my feet" and "my path". Below is another example of this style of poetry.

In this verse the words "my teachings" is paralleled with "my commands" and "you shall not forget" is paralleled with "your heart shall guard" and can be written as follows.

Below is Psalm 15:1-3 broken down into its poetic sequences. In this example each thought is represented by the letters A, B, C and D. Each expression of a thought is represented by the numbers 1 and 2.

Another common form of parallelism is the use of negatives where two opposing ideas are stated as we see in Proverbs 11:19.

In Genesis 12:1 we can see the poetry of God's command to Abraham to leave his hometown in three different ways.

And

In the Western style of writing, an account is broken up into sentences. Each thought is written and closed with a period. The Eastern style of writing on the other hand continues a sentence dividing each thought with the word "and". Below is a translation of Genesis 1:3-8 retaining the "and" as found in the Hebrew.

The use of the word "and" within the text must be kept in mind when reading Biblical accounts as it may influence the interpretation of the story. For example, in Exodus 17:7 we read;

In most translations this verse ends the paragraph and a new paragraph begins with verse 8.

The format of these two passages implies two separate events. But, if the word "and", as found in the Hebrew, is inserted between the two, the passages become related, as we see here.

When read the passage in this manner, it appears that Amalek came and attacked as a result of their "chiding" and "tempting" of God.

While the removal of the word "and" can cause some misinterpretations of the text, misinterpretations can also be made when it remains in the translation.

The use of the word "and" between "Cherubims" and "a flaming sword" suggest two objects guarding the tree of life. Hebrew, on the other hand, will frequently use the word "and" between two identifiers of the same thing such as in the following passages.

In this passage, the words "king" and "God" are two names for one person. In the same manner the words "Cherubim" and "flaming sword" are two words for the same thing. It should also be noted that the Hebrew for Cherubim and sword are almost identical. This use of the word "and" will be discussed further in the section "Hebrew Poetry".

Block logic

A Western writer records his story or account in a chronological fashion where time is always viewed as a series of consecutive events that occur one after the other. This style of writing is called "step logic" as events are recorded step by step.

As an example, the following story is written in step logic.

The story traces the events of the day from morning to evening in a chronological order. We have no difficulty reading or comprehending this style of logic as we use it every day.

Now let us read the same story written in block logic. Not one word or sentence has been changed, only the order in which the sentences are recorded.

The first thing we notice in this story is that we cannot determine the chronology of each event and our minds are attempting to do this as we read it. But the author is not trying to place the events in a "step by step" chronology but instead grouping all like events in a series of related "blocks". The first block of events is those that occurred at home. The second block describe the actions of reading and working while the third are those events that involve driving.

Several examples of this block logic style of writing can be found in the creation story. The western mind reads this account of the creation assuming that the author is describing events in a precise chronological order. We can clearly see that this is not the authors intention when we compare the events of the first day of creation with the the fourth day.

If God created light to separate light and darkness on the first day, why do we read of the creation of light to separate day and on the fourth day?

If we compare the first three days of creation with the last three days of creation, we discover that the author has divided the six days into two separate blocks. The first block of three days describes the act of separating the heavens and the earth while the second block of three days describes the act of filling the heavens and the earth.

Another example of block logic is the different Creation stories recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis. The first block (Genesis 1:1-2:3) describes the "Creation" of the skies and the land, of which the creation of man is only mentioned. The second block (Genesis 2:4-25) describes the "Creation" of man, of which the creation of the skies and land are only mentioned. In essence, these two different stories are of the same event but from differing perspectives.

Word Parallels - puns

In our modern style of writing, we would never write something like, "The painter painted a painting," or "The painter fainted from the pain." However, in the Ancient Hebrew style of writing, this is the exact style of phrasing an author looks for. Here are just a few examples of word puns that can found in the book of Genesis.