“Poem” 23

            The joke goes like this: “What do you call a college graduate who majored in Humanities?”  Answer: “Waiter.”  When my students ask me what they can do with a degree in Humanities I tell them, “It’s the Swiss Army Knife degree; you can do anything with it you want.”  A Masters degree in Humanities got me a job as a college professor, but it did something even more important: it taught this Bible college graduate with a major in Bible, two years of Greek, a semester of Hebrew, and a near perfect GPA how to really read the Bible!

The Lenses We See With

            What I learned most from studying the Humanities is that people look at life through lenses.  People in business look at life through the economic lenses.  Scientists look at life through scientific lenses, doctors through medical lenses, lawyers through legal lenses and so on.  We see the world from the perspective of the things we learn.  A Bible major taught me how to read the Bible.  But it didn’t teach me how to read a book, how to read story or poetry, and eighty percent of the Bible is either story or poetry.  I knew, for example, how to read the Psalms for the theological truths they teach, but I didn’t know what they (and all poetry) were really for.  Studying the Humanities taught me an important truth: the more lenses you have to see the world with, the better your vision.

The Poetic Lens

            A great way to improve your Bible reading is to pick up lots of lenses to see it with.  Good preachers and Bible teachers tend to focus on three lenses: a historical lens, a theological lens, and a practical lens.  I want to talk about the all important but often missing literary lens.  If we can’t read stories and poetry well, we’ll never read the Bible well.  Let’s focus on poetry.

            Most people hate poetry.  It’s too bizarre, too obscure, and they just plain don’t get it.  But remember that the largest book in the Bible is the Psalms, a collection of poems, and if you can’t learn how to read a poem, you can’t learn to read the Psalms.  Here’s the good news: I’m going to teach you how to read a poem in seven easy steps:

1.  Avoid false expectations.  In high school and college, we get inundated with long prose readings in our history, science, and even English text books and so we start expecting to read everything in large, immediately understandable chunks.  That’s why your junior high kids are better at programming your VCR than you are.  They understand that you don’t read a VCR manual like a 400 page novel.  Different kinds of writing require different kinds of reading.  Poems are not meant to be read at a quick glance like long sections of a history book or a novel.  Poems are like an over-stuffed suitcase: they take time to unpack.

2.  Read a poem more than once.  Poetry is a kind of writing that requires multiple readings.  The single greatest tip I can give you about reading a poem is to read it several times. 

3.  Read a poem from whole to part.  Another mistake people make with poetry is reading it line by line.  A line of poetry is hardly ever a complete sentence, and so it won’t give you a complete thought.  Before you get caught up in one part (a line or a verse) of a poem, it’s important to read the whole thing and try to get a sense of what it’s about.

4.  Read a poem for its symbols and metaphors.  We hesitate to say we want to read the Bible symbolically because people have used the phrase, “the Bible is symbolic” to deny that the Bible is historical.  But history and symbol are not absolute opposites.  Jesus really did say, “I am the door” (John 10:9), but we don’t go looking for a knob.  When you see language in poetry that is symbolic (where an object stands for something else) or metaphorical (where two objects are compared to show some unique truth), ask what the symbol stands for or what the metaphor is saying.

5.  Ask about the speaker.  The speaker in a poem is not the same thing as the author.  An author may be the speaker, or he may invent speakers for his poem.  Sometimes in a poem the speaker even changes.  In Psalm 82, verse one has the author, Asaph, as the speaker.  But in verses two through seven, the speaker is God (see especially verse six).  Then in verse eight, Asaph is the speaker again.

6.  Ask how the poem makes you feel.  More so than any other kind of writing, poetry communicates feeling as much as ideas.  You can’t read the Psalms and not pay attention to the feelings being expressed.  In Psalm 13:1 David asks, “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?”  Does God forget people?  No.  David is not making a statement about God but is expressing how he feels at a moment in his life.  So much of what poetry says is emotional and must be read as such.

7.  Don’t worry if you don’t get it all.  Poems aren’t meant to be conquered; they’re meant to be surrendered to.  The Psalms should be a life time reading project; every time we read them we’ll learn something more.

The 23^rd Psalm

            Sometimes the best way to teach is by example.  How would I, with a background in Bible and in literature, read Psalm 23.

            One thing I notice is that the psalm is divided into two metaphors or controlling images: a sheep and his shepherd (verses 1-4), and a banquet in the house of God (verses 5-6).

            Sheep are particularly helpless creatures, needing not just protection but constant care.  A sheep that wants for nothing (verse 1) is very well cared for.  David is saying something like, “Though sheep may go without food, water, and safety if their human shepherds are irresponsible, I will never want for anything because my shepherd is God.”

            In verse two, David is the sheep whom God takes to “green pastures” and “quiet waters” for food and rest.  David packs a triple image into the verse: there is food and water; there is abundant blessing (the pastures are green); and there is peace and safety: the waters are still and the pastures safe enough to lie down in.

            Now a good reader of poetry notices peculiarities that don’t seem to fit.  In verses three and four, David continues the sheep/shepherd image.  But verse three begins with the line, “He restores my soul.”  What’s so peculiar?  Sheep don’t have souls.  But people do.  David is saying that God gives him spiritual food and drink, reviving his soul.  David wants us to see how his sheep/shepherd image connects to our man/God relationship.

            Verse three continues the comparison: sheep must be guided along safe “paths,” but, for people, those paths are not physical; they are moral and spiritual.  They are “paths of righteousness.”  God does these good things “for His name’s sake,” that is, to show that He is indeed “the good shepherd” (John 10:11).

            The “valley of the shadow of death” (verse 4) is one of the most well known phrases in scripture.  To find green pastures, a shepherd might have to take his sheep through dangerous terrain, but David fears no evil in this world since the Shepherd’s crook (the “rod” and “staff”) guides him safely through.

            In verse five a new image arises of a banquet or feast in which David is being honored by God.  A “cup” that “overflows” means the host is generous with his blessings.  To “anoint” the guest’s “head with oil” is to honor him, to announce that he is the most important person at the banquet.  But the phrase, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (verse 5) is another peculiarity.  I can understand being invited to a party in my honor.  But to have my enemies invited as well so they can see me being honored?  That’s unusual.  But it shows just how important David is to the host.  He has been invited to the banquet for no other reason than to be celebrated.

            In verse six we learn that he is more than an honored guest; he has come to “dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  More than a guest, he is likely a son being honored by his heavenly Father.

            The last peculiarity I notice in Psalm 23 is how different the sheep/shepherd image is from the guest/host image.  Why would David fit these contrasting images together?  The answer is for the contrast.  Though we are to God as dumb, helpless sheep are to a shepherd, yet He also exalts us and calls us His children.  Psalm 23 is, at once, David’s greatest statement of human humility and of human importance.  As poetry, it is beautiful.