A Two-fer

Ever hear someone say, “That doesn’t make any rhyme or reason”? Would you recognize something if it had both, rhyme and reason? Two for one! The Book of Psalms is a collection of songs, laments, and praises. The Jews referred to it as, “The Book of Praises”. The book was the hymnal of the Jewish people. The titles to the Psalms are related to several people; King David is credited with writing 73 of them, Asaph 12, Solomon 2, and others. Western poetry is based on rhyme and meter. Hebrew poetry is based on rhythm and parallelism. The rhythm is achieved by stress or accent on important words. In parallelism, the poet presents an idea in the first line then reinforces it by various approaches in the succeeding line or lines. There’s antithetic parallelism, synthetic parallelism, and emblematic parallelism. Psalms 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. It is also a didactic and wisdom psalm. It is an alphabetical acrostic in which each stanza of eight verses is devoted to successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This great psalm presents the thought that the Word of God contains everything man needs to know. The general supposition is that we cannot have God without knowing His Word. It’s elementary that it’s reasonable, and that it rhymes!

One of my favorite Psalms is found in chapter 1, verses 1-3:

“Blessed [is] the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight [is] in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”