Why Does the Old Testament Contain Poems in the Middle of Stories?

The Know

Reading Judges in translation may give the impression that the underlying Hebrew of the entire book is the same throughout. However, this is not quite true. In Judges 5:1, the text suddenly shifts from the more common Classical Biblical Hebrew into an older form called Archaic Biblical Hebrew, as the text moves from a story about Deborah, in Judges 4, to a poem or song about Deborah. This is significant because of what it tells modern readers about the importance of older material among Israelite authors.  

To fully comprehend this, one must first understand something about the evolution of language over long periods of time. Anyone who has recently read something by William Shakespeare will notice that Shakespeare’s English is different from the way people speak English today. Shakespeare was writing in Early Modern English, not modern English, making his writings difficult to understand at times.1 Middle English is even older, making authors like Chaucer even more difficult to understand.2 Old English texts like Beowulf, centuries earlier still, are basically incomprehensible to modern English readers.3 Similarly, Biblical Hebrew has changed over time.4 The latest period of this language is known as Late Biblical Hebrew. Books from after the Babylonian Exile—such as Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles—are written in this stage of the language. The books from before the Babylonian Exile, comprising the rest of the Bible, are written in Classical Biblical Hebrew.5

However, small portions of these Classical Biblical Hebrew books contain segments written in the oldest stage of the three: Archaic Biblical Hebrew. The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15), the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), the Blessings of Jacob (Genesis 49) and of Moses (Deuteronomy 33), the Oracles of Balaam (Numbers 23–24), the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), and some of the Psalms (such as Psalm 68) are all written in this earliest stage of the language.6

Some Hebraists have proposed that Archaic Biblical Hebrew is not very old, and dates from a comparatively short time before the Babylonian Exile. However, there are reasons for thinking that Archaic Biblical Hebrew predates 1000 BC.7 One reason is its similarity to an older language called Ugaritic. Ugaritic is a language which is related to Hebrew and dates from before 1200 BC.8 There are a number of similarities between these two languages. Both have similar grammar and syntax, but there are even more unusual similarities between the languages.9 Archaic Biblical Hebrew lacks certain kinds of determiners (for example, words that get translated into English as “a” and “the”) that are also missing in Ugaritic.10 Both languages also have an unusual kind of parallelism, known as “staircase parallelism,” in which the first half of a line is repeated in the next line, with the second half of each line being different.11 Genesis 49:22 contains one such parallelism: “A fruitful bough is Joseph, a fruitful bough by a spring.” Some Archaic Biblical Hebrew texts such as Exodus 15 even contain phrases and word pairs that are the same as what one finds in Ugaritic.12

Ugaritic is not the only early Semitic language Archaic Biblical Hebrew is like. The Amarna Letters written by Canaanites to Egyptians around 1350 BC, also contain similarities to Archaic Biblical Hebrew.13 All this evidence suggests that Archaic Biblical Hebrew is much older than some might suppose, likely dating from 1000 BC at the latest.14

In the Bible, Archaic Biblical Hebrew often appears in songs or poems which were likely held in high regard as some of the earliest material known from ancient Israel. Thus, if a scribe knew that such material existed, they would likely incorporate it into their contemporary material, especially if it reflected similar themes. It is also possible that authors wrote using older stages of the language (archaizing their words) when creating such things as poetry to set it apart from the other text and to give it more beauty—like someone writing a poem today but in the style of Shakespeare’s English.

The Why

A desire of scribes to preserve more ancient songs and poems from their tradition can teach modern readers something about the importance of similar material in more modern times. Poems and songs, such as those contained in modern hymnals, might not always be the source for much modern teaching or preaching, but such material is worthy of attention.

The ancient Israelite habit of preserving these ancient poems and songs, sometimes in the middle of other material, suggest that they truly valued this material. Members of the church today can similarly value the hymns and poems of our pioneer founders and preserve them for future generations. This might take the form of preserving old poems or songs from the journals of ancestors or simply valuing the current hymns in the hymnal more than one currently does. Regardless, Judges 5 reminds readers of the importance of such material and invites readers to take more time to appreciate them.