Opus 2025-114: Poetry and Prophecy

There are two areas of biblical literature that make me want to do somersaults and scream, “No!”  They would be poetry and prophecy.

Poetry whether it is biblical or not always gives me fits.  I do not enjoy poetry as poetry.  When I’m reading a book and the author includes poetry I tend to just skip over it.  This can be in some kind of science fiction or a work of history, it doesn’t matter.  Somehow when things are written in verse my brain shuts down.  So far I don’t think it’s causing me any great misunderstanding of what the author was trying to say.

Prophecy also tends to make my brain shut down.  I am talking here about the kind of prophecy that would be categorized as foretelling rather than forth telling. Forth telling is just good preaching, and I need to learn to listen to that.  Foretelling is different.  It has to do with commenting on future events.  The problem for me is that I have this belief that this kind of prophecy was not written to be understood.  We might understand it, but it will be too late to change anything.

What happens in both of these types of literature is that the mind of the author goes off the deep end as they try to describe the undescribable.  In poetry the creative muse is leading them down paths in their mind that are almost impossible to explain to someone who’s outside their mind.  They use every different type of literary device to try and transfer the emotions and conceptual stews that are raging inside them. The same type of problem comes with divine messages.  In one place Paul specifically calls our attention to this.

2 Corinthians 12:3-4 (KJV) 3 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) 4 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

I ran into this recently in the poetry of David,

Psalms 18:8-10 (KJV) 8 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. 9 He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness [was] under his feet. 10 And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

If you ever had an intimate time of worship with the Lord, do you know how hard it is to describe to someone what you’re experiencing.  David had that problem regularly.

When you go to prophecies, such as Daniel and Ezekiel and Revelation, you encounter the same issue.  How much is to be taking literally?  How much is figurative?  And how much doesn’t fit into either category?

When people tell me that some famous person is a world-class poet, I just kind of nod my head and don’t argue.  When someone tells me that they understand what the book of Revelation is talking about and have it all planned out what God is going to do in the end times I have a similar reaction but it tends more to laughing out loud.

And then I get on with my day, knowing that there are many things that I can grapple with and actually make progress.

homo unius libri