Each of these forms of poetry, as the}- appear in the Bible, requires a more distinct notice separately.
(1.) Lyrical Poetry. — The literature of the Hebrews abounds with illustrations of all forms of lyrical poetry, in its most manifold and wide-embracing compass, from such short ejaculations as the songs of the two Lamechs, and Psa. xv, cxvii, and others, to the longer chants of victory and thanksgiving, like the songs of Deborah and David (Judg. v; Psa. xviii). The thoroughly na- tional character of all lyrical poetry has already been alluded to. It is the utterance of the people's life in all its varied phases, and expresses all its most earnest strivings and impulses. In proportion as this expres- sion is vigorous and animated, the idea embodied in lyric song is in most cases narrowed or rather concentrated.
One truth, and even one side of a truth, is for the time invested with the greatest prominence. All these char- acteristics will be found in perfection in the lyric poetry of the Hebrews. One other feature which distinguishes it is its form and its capacity for being set to musical accompaniment. The names by which the various kinds of song were known among the Hebrews will supply some illustration of this. (See above.)
(2.) Gnomic Poetry.— The second grand division of Hebrew poetry is occupied by a class of poems which- are peculiarly Shemitic, and which represent the near- est approaches made by the people of that race to any- thing like philosophic thought. Reasoning there is none : we have only results, and these rather the prod- uct of observation and reflection than of induction or argumentation. As lyric poetry is the expression of the poet's own feelings and impulses, so gnomic poetry is the form in which the desire of communicating knowl- edge to others finds vent. There might possibly be an intermediate stage in which the poets gave out their experiences for their own pleasure merely, and after- wards applied them to the instruction of others, but this could scarcely have been of long continuance. The impulse to teach makes the teacher, and the teacher must have an audience. It has already been remarked that gnomic poetry, as a whole, requires for its develop- ment a period of national tranquillity. Its germs are the floating proverbs which pass current in the mouths of the people, and embody the experiences of many with the wit of one. From this small beginning it arises, at a time when the experience of the nation has become matured, and the mass of truths which are the result of such experience have passed into circulation. The fame of Solomon's wisdom was so great that no less than three thousand proverbs are attributed to him, this be- ing the form in which the Hebrew mind found its most congenial utterance. The saver of sententious sayings was to the Hebrews the wise man, t-he philosopher. Of the earlier isolated proverbs but few examples remain. One of the earliest occurs in the mouth of David, and in his time it was the proverb of the ancients, " From the wicked cometh wickedness" (1 Sam. xxiv, 13 [14]). Later on, when the fortunes of the nation were obscured, their experience was embodied in terms of sadness and despondency : "The days are prolonged, and every vis- ion faileth," became a saying and a byword (Ezek. xii, 22) ; and the feeling that the people were suffering for the sins of their fathers took the form of a sentence, " The lathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge" (Ezek. xviii, 2). Such were the models which the gnomic poet had before him fur imita- tion. These detached sentences may fairly be assumed to be the earliest form, of which the fuller apophthegm is the expansion, swelling into sustained exhortatiuiis, and even dramatic dialogue. See Proverb.
(3.) Dramatic Poetry. — The drama, in the sense in which the phrase is applicable to productions such as those of Euripides, Shakespeare, or Schiller, had no place in the literature of the Hebrews. This defect may be owing to a want of the requisite literary cultivation. Yet we are not willing to assign this as the cause, when we call to mind the high intellectual culture which the Hebrews evinced in lyric and didactic poetry, out of which the drama seems naturally to spring. We rather look for the cause of this in the earnest nature of the He- brews, and in the solemnity of the subjects with which they had to do in their literary productions. Nor is it any objection to this hypothesis that the drama of mod- ern times had its birth in the religious mysteries of the Middle Ages, since those ages were only secondary- in regard to religious truth, standing at a distance from the great realities which they believed and dramatized; whereas the objects of faith with the Israelites were held in all the fresh vividness of primitive facts and newly recognised truths. It is impossible, however, to assert that no form of the drama existed among the He- brew people ; the most that can be done is to examine
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