The Poetry in a Psalm

Have you ever tried to write a Psalm or even just thought about it? Years ago I heard a program that dug into this topic and I found it very interesting. The Psalms are actually Hebrew poems that follow certain rules of poetry and there are a variety of styles too. It is also a prayer in the form of a poem.


I thought it would be fun to look into it and learn to wrtie a Psalm. I noticed that a number of Psalms were acrostic poems where each line or verse begins with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 34 and Pslam 25 are two examples of this. I thought this might be a good style to begin with, only using the English alphabet. Then I realized that wasn't the style but the way it was implemented so I needed to make some adjustments. Fortunately it wasn't too far off the mark.

The style I did use is called Synonomous parallelism. In this style the expression of the first line is repeated in the second.

e.g. Psalm 24:1
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness of it,
the world and they that dwell in it."
(Parallel terms share the same emphasis)
The second line often focuses the first line. i.e. "they that dwell in it" is more specific than "the fullness of it."

I'm not much of a poet but I did spend time with God in a new way while doing this.

I will post again with new Psalms in the various styles. Try it yourself. Write a Psalm in the Synonomous parallelism style and post it on your blog. It doesn't have to be an acrostic poem. Be sure to come back and let me know, I would love to read it.