TIMELESS LITERATURE

I guess there are two main characteristics most people might have who reads this website. One, they like to write; two, they like to read. When you develop a respect for books and follow the art of literature, one thing stands out in the back of your mind as readers: the author’s voice. The author’s voice is the key to what one considers good literature. I say this to illustrate a point. Even though there are over dozens of different writers for the books of the Bible, the central author’s voice one hears when reading it is God’s voice. This is how the book becomes recognized as God’s Word. I want to examine the Book of Lamentations as a written literature of art.

After the army of Babylon conquered the last living tribe of Israel, the Tribe of Judah, there were a few Jews left living behind in the desolate, destroyed city. These people wept. These people sang songs of mourning, much as slaves did here in America while working outside in the summer heat in the fields. These songs are the lyrics which we read in the book of Lamentations. Each stanza or verse was written with letters of the Hebrew alphabet used in order starting in the first word. In other words, if we saw the lyrics written base on the English language in order of the alphabet starting the first word of every stanza it would look like this:

As the man walked

Before the dawn of day

Clouds covered over the sky

Days seems to be growing long

Now look at these words in the Bible in chapter on in the book of Lamentations:

All her people groan as they search for bread;

They barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive.

Look, Lord, and consider, for I am despised

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see,

Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me,

that the Lord brought on me in the day of his fierce anger?

See how the words are timeless while the meaning of the passage remains ageless?

The amazing chemistry of God’s Words has a perfectly, good, educated thought followed completely logically, even as the words evolved through generations of languages over hundreds of years. Okay… what’s the point? If you tried to change from one language to another copying each word verbatim base on the concept that the first word follows the orders of the letters in the original alphabet used to create the poem- how do you guarantee the fact that the words continue to flow in a poetic manner? The Words of God does simply that, amazingly hundreds of years after the song is written the song lyrics loses no meaning or reasoning base on the changes of words within the translation.

Nevertheless, other books in the Bible follows this manner of thinking. Psalms is a book of songs lyrics & poetry. Proverb is just what it stands for; proverbs. Look at the love poems found in Song of Song- kind of weird, uh? I don’t know if my wife would like to have a neck like the Ivory Tower (Song of Song 7:4) Less knowing is the message to me to try not using this translation as a method of wooing her while we’re talking.