Biblical Poetry

Definition

Meter refers to the rhythmic structure and cadence of poetry. There is considerable debate over meter in Hebrew poetry. The only consensus among Hebraists is that there is no consensus as to how meter works. For this reason, unless you are prepared to engage in the scholarly debate with a fairly strong grasp of Hebrew, it is probably best to ignore any question regarding the meter of Hebrew poetry.

Below are brief descriptions of the two major theories of meter in Hebrew poetry.

Accent Patterns

One way of analyzing the meter of Hebrew poetry is by counting the number of accents. Consider the following example:

In order to express the meter, one simply counts the number of accents in each colon. In the above tricolon, the first colon has 7 accented syllables and the following cola have 4 each. This metrical scansion can be written as 7 + 4 + 4. Of course, many scholars disagree over how to divide a verse into its cola, as well as some specifics of the accents.

Syllabic Patterns

Another way of analyzing the meter of Hebrew poetry is by counting the number of syllables. We will consider the example from Psalm 1:1, as above: 

The first colon has a total of 15 syllables, followed by 9 in the next colon and 8 in the last colon. This can be expressed as 15 + 9 + 8. The greatest difficulty with this method of scansion is that it requires a certain amount of conjecture over the development of Hebrew orthography.