The Poetical Books.
(Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & Song of Solomon).
Poetical formating would seem to be the Hebrew way of conveying God`s word to the nation. Over a third of the Old Testament is written in poetic style. The only books that have no poetic structuring are Leviticus, Ruth, Ezra, Haggai and Malachi.
These five books have a special place in the Old Testament canon for they move quite decidely away from developing the historical record of the nation of Israel to a place of enlightening the nation about personal relationship and spiritual experience with God through His word.
Constantly crucical questions are faced by the contents of these books. Challenging question about life and death, pain and suffering, wisdom and foolishness, life, love and hope, all find their way into the debate and discussion.Life itself is seen as multi relational and right attitude and practice needs to govern our approach to life if we would glorify God.
Each writter has a specific contrabution to make to life and the journey we make, the decisions we take, the attitudes we bread and the results we experience.
- JOB
Suffering is the present experience of Job, he debates the subject as a man of great experience for he has lost his family, fortune and his body is deseased, his friends invite him to curse God and die. The conclusion he comes to, the conversations he has had, the conslusion he forms are recorded for us in his book often in poetic form.
- Psalms
The Psalms are a magnificient set of five books which historically reflect the wisdom of Moses to the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Psalms were written to reflect human relationships with God, the nation and others. They neatly fall into different catagories from worship, praise and thankgiving to Psalms sung by the wandering pilgrims as they walked with God.