Torah Song: The Theological Role of Torah Poetry

Torah Song seeks to grasp the seemingly impenetrable mechanism of biblical poetry and to access the essential theological function that it plays in the Torah. Mining the poetry of the Torah for its theological gems necessitates that we acknowledge Torah poetry and prose to be fundamentally distinctive literary forms. Poetry, unlike prose, precludes the possibility of pinning it down in an absolute sense. Its allure derives from a certain indefinable harmony between articulation and intimation, best expressed in the language of the fine arts as impressionism. The shift in genre from ‘realism’ to ‘impressionism’ calls for an interpretive approach that relinquishes the insistence upon restrained exactitude, thereby allowing for analytical spontaneity. Torah Song articulates a groundbreaking interpretive methodology specific to the unique needs of biblical poetry and demonstrates the poetry of the Torah to function as a loosely connected, broad meditation on Israel’s unmitigated acceptance of God’s earthly domain,

, within their role as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,

, caretakers of the divine covenant.