"What Kind of Likeness?": The Aesthetic Impulse in Biblical Poetry

Abstract:While the Hebrew Bible may lack a sustained reflection on the nature of literary art, some biblical poems nevertheless appear to be self-conscious of their own literary production. This article investigates how the texts themselves conceptualize the nature and potential of the aesthetic word. One situation in which self-consciousness of aesthetic production is evident is use of the verb dalet-mem-heh ("to make a likeness") in Song of Songs, Lamentations, and prophetic poetry. This essay explores how poets self-consciously used poetic language to create verbal images that have the ability to escape rhetorical and theological purposes. These images can evoke surprising, even paradoxical experiences, such as spaces of beauty and consolation in the midst of terror and destruction. These passages, along with other prophetic texts that characterize and critique poetry, reveal that some ancient Israelite poets already recognized that poetry can function not just as mere ornament or illustration but as a creative act that retains a productive power all its own.