Homer tells his stories in poetry, as do Israel’s neighbors. Biblical storytellers mainly use prose, and I have explored that genre in Elements of Biblical Narrative. Even so, narrative shapes some of the Bible’s poetry, and so I want to provide a foundation here for that. 

Narrative or story is a sequence of events moving from tension to a resolution, which a narrator tells. Unlike the drama where the characters present their story directly, here the storyteller mediates the story. Though this definition may not fit every modern story, sometimes focused completely on character, this definition works well for the Bible.

12.1. Plot

A narrative or story has a plot with a sequence of actions beginning with a tension and ending with a resolution. The concrete expression of the tension and resolution tells us something important about the themes of the story.

The middle typically raises the tension while putting in place the means for resolving the problem. Sometimes those with the problem must find, call, and commission a hero.  Typically, the characters must overcome various trials that bar the way out, or they must overcome temptations that would cause them to abandon the project. All the while, they must put in place the means that will bring about the resolution. The storyteller often delays the resolution to explore the problem more fully.

Typically, narratives are told sequentially—that is, told as the events unfold, one after the other. A storyteller may include a flashback or flashforward to fill in the necessary information. Prophecies sometimes function as flashforwards.

As a rule, audiences demand closure—that is, they demand the story resolve the overriding tension and the questions. Audiences do not like to be left hanging, but, as we shall see, the psalms do not always come to closure.

a. basic plots

Christopher Booker has outlined seven basic plots, which I have explored in my article, “Basic Plots in the Bible.” There I show how the Bible uses these basic plots extensively, if with its own twist.

• Overcoming the monster or the battle narrative, which moves from physical threat to triumph
• Rags to riches, which moves from poverty and powerlessness to riches and power
• Journey quest, which moves from search to fulfillment
• Journey of voyage and return, which moves out from the known to the unknown and back again
• Comedy, which moves from confusion and separation to identity and union
• Tragedy, which moves from sin, flaw, or fate to destruction
• Rebirth, which moves from a deathlike situation to rebirth

Booker also names three recurring subplots:

• Call narrative, in which someone calls and commissions another to carry out a task, or they call for commission themselves
• Test, in which characters must overcome an external obstacle
• Temptation, in which characters must overcome the temptation of appetite (food, sex, pleasure, wealth) or animus (anger, pride, envy, ambition) lest they abandon the task

The psalms of petition, both communal and lament, are call narratives petitioning God to be the hero to save them from some enemy (battle narrative) or from death-like affliction (rebirth narrative). We shall look at them more closely in Chapter 13.

b. implied narrative

Lyric, as discussed above, does not present a story, but some biblical poetry builds on a traditional story, or it requires us to reconstruct the implied narrative.

Several psalms tell the story of Israel’s history and depend on the audience already knowing it. Both Psalms 105 and 106 tell a version of Israel’s early history, but they do not tell it in great detail. Rather, they expect the audience to know the story which they need only evoke.

The poetry in the prophetic books often addresses a specific tension in need of resolution. Much of it has a historical context that functions as an implied story, and we may also know its ending. Jeremiah warns Judah to repent lest Jerusalem be destroyed. We know that they did not repent, and Jerusalem was destroyed. For these texts, the book as a whole or sources from the ancient Near East can help to fill out that story.

The prayer psalm calls upon God to be the hero and deliver the psalmist from some kind of tension. In lyric fashion, these prayers juxtapose tension, emotions, pleas, and the hoped-for resolution. The reader must reconstruct the implied story from the piece given in the speech, and we shall see below.

History is sometimes told with a beginning, middle, and end, but unlike fiction, should correspond to what happened and so should be verifiable. However, we cannot verify many things in the Bible. We only have the narrative.

12.2. Characters: Flat & Round, Traditional & Realistic

E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel famously divided characters into “flat” and “round.” Flat characters “are constructed around a single idea or quality.” If more than one factor becomes involved, then the reader sees the “beginnings of curves” that make them into round characters, but “the really flat character can be expressed in one sentence” (103-104).

Round characters, on the other hand, have complex emotions and motivations like human beings. According to Forster, “the test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way” (118). Being a modern novelist, Forster favors round characters, and much modern storytelling follows this path. However, as Forster suggests, these are not two isolated categories but opposites along a continuum.

Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in The Nature of Narrative make a similar distinction between traditional and realistic characters.

Traditional characters are “stylized and stipulative, highly dependent on artistic tradition and convention” (84). They are stereotypes or stock characters that draw on conventions to reveal their character. One detail can evoke a whole world for an audience who knows the tradition. Therefore, when an old man with a grey beard or an old woman with a cane arrives on the scene, those who know the tradition recognize that wisdom has arrived.

In contrast, a realistic character “seeks continually to reshape and revitalize ways of apprehending the actual, subjecting convention to an empirical review of its validity as a means of reproducing reality” (84). The realistic character is mimetic, a word dear to the heart of Aristotle, who saw all art as mimesis, that is, as an imitation or rep-presentation of real life.

Again, the traditional and the realistic are not isolated categories but poles on a continuum. While the Bible tends to present traditional characters, it adds a sense of realism by breaking with traditional expectations or by leaving gaps that the audience must fill in. A number of the psalms give us very realistic characters who speak their mind to God.

Characters can be as complicated as people, and in the second edition of the Nature of Narrative, James Phelan discusses some of the more recent explorations of this topic (310-314; also, Fotis Jannidis).  The above provides a basic framework for our discussion, but more is possible.

Interpreters of biblical narrative get themselves in trouble when they try to make characters rounder than they are. Pharaoh is the king of the land of slavery and oppression. The story does not ask us to feel sorry for him because he is a flat character whose destruction represents the end of slavery and oppression.

12.3. Other Entities: Literal and Significant

Stories also contain other entities: the road, a staff, the temple—in short, anything that does not speak or act. Readers tend to overlook these entities, but everything in a poem counts. We must always ask whether it is a just literal detail or whether it carries some larger significance.

Details expand their literal meaning in the standard ways discussed above: metaphor, metonymy, irony, and ambiguity. Some images or motifs like “shepherd” and “sea,” have a rich literary tradition. Those connections and connotations may or may not be relevant, but they are always available. They cannot be dismissed, as some have tried to do.

We must be ready to see these entities as more than literal elements.

12.4. Time and Place in the Story

In her fine essay, “The Psalms and Poems of the Hebrew Bible,” Susan Gillingham points out that the Psalms have been notoriously difficult to date. During the nineteenth century, scholars tended to date many of the psalms in the late exilic period, while by the mid-twentieth century scholars favored a date during the monarchy. Gillingham deals with this question by looking for characteristics of the main periods. Some psalms reflect the Canaanite world and religion as well as the emergent state religion of the monarchy with its focus on the king. These elements point toward an origin during the monarchy before Jerusalem’s fall to the Babylonians in 587 BC. A few psalms reflect the great tragedy of Jerusalem’s fall and the pain of the exile before the rebuilding of the temple in 515 BC. A number of psalms reflect the Torah theology that marks the post-exilic period under the Persian and Greek empires. These three periods—the monarchy, the exile, and the post-exilic period—serve as a basic frame. Since the Book of Psalms comes together during the post-exilic period, that time serves as a first lens for viewing the psalms (2016, 206-217).

Though often difficult to date, some psalms provide key temporal and geographic details where that is important. Ps 72 celebrates a human king and calls for a historical context within the monarchy. Psalm 73 is a wisdom psalm and fits into the theology of the post-exilic period. Psalm 74 vividly remembers the destruction of Jerusalem and reflects the experience of exile in Babylon. If the historical context plays an important role in the psalm, then the text provides clues, which a good commentary will fill out.

Many psalms, however, presume only a general life context of sickness or human conflict. Some psalms propose a link to David’s life, but, as Gillingham points out, these links come in the post-exilic period with the idealization of David (2016, 206-207). The problem in many psalms could fit the experience of many people in many different periods and places. This universality allows a psalm to transcend the time and place of its composition. Even so, the temple, Jerusalem, and the Promised Land, in contrast to the lands of the nations, represent not just physical geographical spaces but also imply a spiritual geography with important thematic dimensions. Likewise, the time of Moses and Abraham take on a theological significance in the post-exilic period.

For prophetic texts, historical context and geography often play a crucial role because these poets speak directly to their historical situation. Unlike the psalms which are separate pieces, prophetic texts belong to a larger body of work that provides a context for the individual poems. Here too, geography plays an important thematic role. Interestingly, the times of Moses and Abraham play a minor role in the prophetic books.

12.5. The Narrator or Storyteller, Author, and Worldview

During the last fifty years and more, literary critics have given much careful attention to the narrator or storyteller because this voice mediates the story. Though people often assume that the narrator and author are the same, this need not be the case. Huckleberry Finn tells his own story, but Mark Twain wrote it.

There are two main types of storytellers: the omniscient third person narrator and the first person narrator.

The third person omniscient narrator stands outside the story, knows everything, but typically does not tell everything. The storyteller of Genesis 1 tells us: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void ….” Clearly the narrator is not God, but the narrator speaks with an omniscience like that of God. This storyteller knows what happens in the very beginning, knows what God says, and then what happens. This narrator seemingly knows everything but chooses what and when to tell us. Because this voice is hidden, we hear it as an authoritative voice. However, we do well to ask what its theology might be. The voice of Genesis 1:1-2:4a belongs to the Priestly tradition, and its emphasis on the Sabbath fits into that larger theological context.

In the historical psalms, omniscient narrators retell the biblical stories in Psalms 78, 105, and 106, but the stories they tell are not the same. Psalms 78 and 106 emphasize Israel’s sin while Psalm 105 sings of God’s faithfulness without reference to Israel’s sin. Psalms 78 and 105 have an omniscient narrator who stands outside the story, but in Psalm 106 the psalmist identifies with the people of his day: “Both we and our ancestors have sinned” (106:6).

In many psalms, a voice sometimes speaks directly and commands us, as in Ps 96:1

O sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.

As with the voice of Genesis 1, this voice speaks with authority and expects us to give ourselves to its word. Our reading of the text will be shaped by whether we accept the authority of this voice, or not. We also hear this voice in wisdom literature. A voice full of confidence delivers the various wisdom instructions. Sometimes, it addresses the disciple directly, but, except for old man Ecclesiastes, these wisdom voices are disembodied teachers. Likewise, the proverbs seem to drop from the sky, unconnected to any voice except the ethereal Solomon.

Unlike these authoritative, seemingly objective voices, the first person narrators offer us their own personal understanding from inside the story. Their understanding depends on what they know. Many psalms have a first person speaker who is also a character in the implied story. These speakers do not tell the story in a linear progression. Rather, they pour out their hearts to God in a mix of emotions and insights as happens in lyrics. Some are flat characters who react in an expected way according to a standard theology. Others, however, are complex round characters with their own very personal theology and understanding of events, and we can only construct their character from what they say. They demand close attention, and we may ask whether they really understand their own situation.

The Book of Job comes as close as the Bible does to drama, and there the different characters speak for themselves. The prophetic literature gives us God speaking in the first person. Though the speaker is the same person in these books, the emotions and reactions cover a vast range, and their differences make God into a complex character that eludes our demands for clarity.

Every story also has a worldview, that is, its understanding of how the world works. Some scholars call this “the implied author” because it represents the mind and sensitivity responsible for the narrative. The narrator presents rather than explains this worldview. Therefore, the audience must reconstruct this understanding from what the narrator presents. For a biblical story, the worldview could also be called its theology—that is, its understanding(s) of God, humanity, creation, and their relationship to each other.

12.6. Duration or Narrative Time

Narrative time refers to the amount of time the storyteller devotes to the various parts of the story. A storyteller cannot tell everything or tell it fully, and so they select. Therefore, time is an indication of importance. The more time the narrator gives to an element, the more we should pay attention.

Some biblical poems depend upon the audience already knowing the story, and so the poets can pick and choose what to tell and rearrange the order for their own purposes. We see this, particularly in victory hymns and the psalms recounting Israel’s history.

Just as these narratives achieve a complexity of character by presenting them in different ways, so also a retelling of the same story in its many versions creates a complex story in our minds. The story of the Exodus is told many times in the Scriptures both in the book of Exodus and beyond. When we remember the story, we remember it as an amalgam—remembering some versions better than others. The many versions give depth and possibilities to the story and preserve the mystery of God’s action.

12.7. The Performer and the Audience

In oral cultures, storytellers told their stories to live audiences, and the living voice was there to bring the text alive. This live performance still goes on in churches and synagogues. Too often people read these texts as if they were dead serious, and the texts sound dead. This betrays their vitality. Like a musician playing Bach, the performer must make decisions about the interpretation of the text and then bring that interpretation to life in a different way with every performance. This takes both skill and insight.

The audience too has an active role. Reader-response theory has emphasized the centrality of the audience, for they complete the performance by finding a connection to the text. We often think of literature as an interior affair because we read books alone and silently. In those moments, we become both the performer and the audience. As with the storyteller, it takes skill and insight to be a good reader. We shall take up the question of finding meaning again in Chapter 16.

While we do not live in an oral culture, most people’s experience of literature today is not just or even mainly silent and alone. We live in an aural and visual culture that comes to us through the multi-media that continues to expand. There too, we are not just detached onlookers but participants accepting or finding challenges in what comes toward us and demands our response.

12.8. Exercises for Chapter 12

Vocabulary

• author: the person who created the text, and distinct from the narrator who tells a story and the poetic voice who speaks in a poem. Though often conflated, the author is not necessarily the same one who speaks. §12.5
• basic plot: a storyline that captures a basic human event. §12.1a
• characters: all those who speak and act in a story. §12.2
• closure: the sense of an ending that resolves the story’s overriding tension and the questions. In general, audiences dislike the lack of closure. §12.1
• drama: a story presented directly by the characters, as distinct from a narrative mediated by the narrator. §12.1
• entities: those things in the story, in addition to the characters, that serve some function in the story. §12.3
• flashback: a narrative scene out of sequence that takes the audience back to an earlier event needed to understand the present action. §12.1
• flashforward: a scene out of sequence that takes the audience forward in time to reveal what will happen. In the Bible, prophecy has this function and helps the audience see the consequences of the present action. §12.1
• flat character: a stereotype that represents an idea or trait. §12.2
• history: an account that corresponds to what happened and so should be verifiable. §12.1
• implied narrative: a text that presumes a story with some tension and a projected resolution, which the audience must reconstruct from what the speaker says. §12.1b
• narrative space: the geography of the story which carries thematic dimensions. §12.4
• narrative time or duration: the amount of time and the number of times something is told. Typically, the more narrative time an element receives, the more important it is. §12.6
• narrative, also referred to as story: a plot with a sequence of events moving from tension to a resolution, told by a narrator/storyteller. §12.1
• narrator, also called the storyteller: the voice that tells the story. §12.1
• narrator, first person: a narrator who tells the story from “my” point of view, usually as a character in the story; many of the prayer psalms are speeches in the first person. §12.5
• narrator, third person: a narrator outside the story, typically possessing an omniscient understanding of the characters and events. This narrator typically gives the impression of impartiality and objectivity but plays a crucial role in shaping the story, its worldview, and the narrative lens.
• plot or storyline: the skeletal events with its characters. §12.1
• realism: a presentation of the world true to our experience with its round characters and complex motives. §12.2
• resolution: whatever brings a tension to an end. Stories typically have a major resolution that brings the whole to an end, but along the way, smaller tensions demand their own resolution so that the story can move ahead. §12.1
• round character: E.M. Forster’s term for a realistic character who possesses the complication and surprise of real human beings. §12.2
• sequence of events: the chronological unfolding of the events of the story which may or may not be the way in which the narrator tells the story. The narrator may add flashbacks and flashforwards to provide the information needed for the story. §12.1
• story: another word for narrative. §12.1
• storyline: the skeletal events with its characters. §12.1
• tension: a problem that the characters must resolve for the story to move forward and come to closure. A story typically has a major tension whose resolution brings the whole to an end. Between them, small tensions arise and demand resolution for the story to move forward. §12.1
• time of the story: the time when the story takes place, in contrast to the time of its composition, the time of its reading, and also its narrative time. §12.4
• voice: the speaker in a poem which may be a disembodied, authoritative voice or a personal voice recounting “my” experiences. Hymns and wisdom texts often have an authoritative voice, while the laments often have very personal voices, whether individual or communal. §12.5
• worldview: the story’s understanding of how its world works. This worldview is largely presented rather than explained. Therefore, the audience must reconstruct this understanding from what the narrator presents. This understanding is also called “the implied author.” For a biblical story, the worldview could also be called its theology—that is, its understanding(s) of God, humanity, creation, and their relationship to each other. §12.5

1. Stories move from tension to resolution. Name the present tension and the hoped-for resolution in Psalm 44 and Psalm 55.

2. Psalms 105 and 106 retell the story of Israel’s history in different ways. What is the difference between the two psalms? Support your understanding with lines from the psalms.

3. Prepare one of the following psalms for public reading: Pss 16, 27,42, 97, 103, or another as directed. Make a close reading, and be ready to explain why you shaped your reading as you did.