Fresh Ways to Enjoy Your BiblePrimjer

Poetic Diamonds

Growing up, I had a paper route that required that I get up early seven days a week to deliver the local newspaper to residents in my neighborhood. Every once in a while, I would bribe a friend of mine to deliver the paper on Saturdays so I could sleep in. My mother was not always aware of this arrangement, and one Saturday morning, she came into my bedroom while I was taking advantage of a little bit of extra sleep and said, “Jim, it is time to wake up.” She would then proceed to sing the line from the musical "Oklahoma!": “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’, oh, what a beautiful day.” My mother was heightening the implied message of “it’s time to get up and get to work” by pairing it with a song to accentuate the message. When something is set to music or poetry, the result typically heightens the message of the surrounding content. The same phenomenon occurs in Scripture when embedded poetic insets (“Poetic Diamonds”) are placed within narrative accounts to accentuate the text’s thematic context.

Hannah’s Song/Prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1–11 is a great example. This passage functions as a poetic diamond that contains key thematic and theological truths to which the rest of the narrative portions of the book attest. Hannah exclaims that “the Lord . . . brings low and he exalts” (2:7). This perfectly summarizes within the books of Samuel the raising up of faithful Saul and David and also how the Lord humbles both of them when they exhibit pride (2:3). This poetic diamond further serves as a bookend to David’s song found in 2 Samuel 22. The many verbatim parallels between Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2:1–11 and David’s song in 2 Samuel 22 (e.g., references to horns, rocks, thunder, and the anointed) are clearly intentional and show the function of poetic diamonds in illuminating themes of the surrounding narrative and adding an emotional punch to what the author is stressing.

Simeon’s Song in Luke 2:29–34 is another instance of a poetic diamond. The bold words in this passage punctuate Luke’s key themes from his gospel just as Simeon’s lyrical prayer foregrounds the salvation of both Jew and Gentile through Jesus and zeroes in on the notion that the Messiah will be the catalyst for blessing and stumbling to His people.

Look for when biblical authors switch from narrative mode to lyrical mode within the body of the text. Understanding these nuances pays dividends for readers by allowing us to experience the text not only in a cognitive way but also with the emotional heartbeat that the biblical authors sought to weave into their inspired work. Identifying poetic diamonds is a way we can enjoy the Bible as we use our “ears” to listen to the interplay between narrative and embedded poetry and lyrical content. So turn up the volume on the musical interludes, and let those lyrical pieces amplify the text’s core message!

Digging In:

1. Genesis 1 and 2 contain epic poetic diamonds that foreground key themes of those chapters (Hint: The diamonds are found in Genesis 1:27 and 2:23). What important themes are introduced in those chapters through the poetic diamonds? Why was it important for the author to express them lyrically instead of just as part of the narrative?
2. Luke 1 contains another poetic diamond. See if you can discover how it summarizes the surrounding narrative portions of Luke and clues readers in on significant theological themes in the book.