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In this next in a series of brief articles about Isaiah, we’ll demonstrate the value of the last of the five columns in the new resource, Opening Isaiah: A Harmony, available at https://rsc.byu.edu/opening-isaiah. In addition to the NRSV column, discussed in this article, the other columns contain the King James Version, the Joseph Smith Translation, the Book of Mormon, and the Dead Sea Scrolls versions of Isaiah.
Isaiah was a gifted poet, delivering his message of promised blessings and cursings in elegant words and phrases and meaningful metaphors, “word pictures.”
Why is there a column in this harmony written in poetic form?
NRSV Column—The NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) column is helpful to the reader because it uses modernized English. It also takes advantage of the best scholarship gleaned from the discoveries of additional manuscripts since the 1611 edition of the KJV. The NRSV has been printed in poetic form to show the parallelism of Hebrew poetry in Isaiah’s writings. This column may be used frequently to clarify the older texts.
Isaiah’s Literary Style
The language of Isaiah was Hebrew, which belongs to the same family of Semitic languages that includes Arabic. Each has its unique alphabet and is read from right to left. When Isaiah wrote Hebrew, it contained no punctuation or capitalization. It would appear to us as one long sentence, similar to the manuscript of the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith dictated.
The book of Isaiah is written almost entirely in poetic form, [as are most of the prophecies in the Old Testament,] in what Nephi may be referring to as “the manner of prophesying among the Jews” (2 Ne 25:1).
Parallelism
Parallelism is the name of the way Hebrew poetry is written. Parallelism compares a keyword or idea in a first line that repeats in the second line in similar words. Sometimes the idea repeats over several lines. Learning to read in two-line sequences is a great help in understanding Isaiah’s writings. Some translations are formatted to show the short lines of poetry in Isaiah in order to make this process easier. The NRSV is one of these.
In the following example, notice that the KJV does not show the poetic lines, but the NRSV does.
The poetic rendering of the verse in the NRSV makes it easier to recognize that the ox and the donkey are parallel, as are the owner and the master. Similar parallels are more easily recognizable in the next two poetic lines, the second half of the verse.
Studying Isaiah in poetic form, one can readily see the stacked words’ relationship.
In English poetry, the last words in a line are often rhymed. In Hebrew poetry, “idea rhymes” are used instead, while the words themselves seldom rhyme.
The most interesting aspect of searching Isaiah’s words in this way is the meaning that each comparison adds to the first line’s “idea.” The description is augmented in sometimes-subtle ways to color in the details that one word leaves in black and white outline. So now you can begin “coloring” Isaiah! Enjoy!
Paul RobertsMay 31, 2018
I agree. But even better is to download a section of Isaiah to your computer then with the Enter and Tab keys discover for yourself the poetic structure of this great prophet. I discovered this when I wanted to quote Isaiah in a libretto for a Musical I am writing from the Book of Mormon. As one tries to discern the poetry you gain a greater understanding of the message.