There are several books in the Old Testament that are composed primarily or even exclusively of poetry-Psalms being the obvious example, but even some of the historical and prophetical books launch into poetry on occasion. For example, as he is dying, Moses blesses the twelve tribes of Israel in Deuteronomy 33 using poetry. Nehemiah chapter 9 also has poetry in it. Lamentations is Jeremiah's poem about the desolation of Israel because of her people's sinful ways.
Different editions of the Bible present its words in different ways. Many editions differentiate between poetry and prose by presenting the poetry in shorter lines and the prose in paragraph form. Some editions don't differentiate, which is too bad because poetry requires a different set of reading skills from prose.
Poetic language tends to use comparisons, and Hebrew poetry is no exception. There are two forms of comparisons, as your tenth grade English teacher may have told you. One is called a simile and it involves a comparison that includes the words “like,” or “as.” For example, Psalm 42 begins: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God” (Ps 42:1, NKJV). We have all seen thirsty animals and how relieved they are when they find water. Water is a desperate need.
The Psalmists (the sons of Korah in this case) present our need for God as something as critical as the body's need for water. Deer are prey animals, and the time it takes for them to look for and drink from a brook means that they may be distracted from watching out for their lives-so their thirst must be powerful indeed to override the need to be watchful. That's how much we need God.
A second form of comparison is the metaphor, and that is a comparison that does not use “like” or “as.” The most famous Psalm, 23, is a metaphor. “The Lord IS my Shepherd.” That means I am like a sheep. What are sheep like? Kind of stupid, actually. In dire need of someone to watch out for them. Worse off than the deer as a prey animal. “The Lord IS my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters…” (Ps. 23:1-2). In other words, I might be a sheep but He is the Good Shepherd-He takes care of me even in ways that I do not understand.
The Bible is a book about something close to unimaginable by human beings-the eternal. We are so tied down to our fleeting, trivial lives and to the idea of time because of our physical mortality. Yet God is not a slave to time and the reality His being is far beyond our weak mental capacity to understand (remember? We are sheep).
So, metaphors allow us to compare what we don't know with things we do. Psalm 18: 2 says, “The Lord is my rock.” To our minds, nothing is more permanent than a huge rock, too big to be moved by mere human power. Through knowing a physical thing, a rock, we learn a little more about God. And that is the purpose of metaphor.
