Thank you for visiting. This article is one installment in a series that explains the “original texts” of the world’s myths and religions — the third of eight articles dealing with the Christian Bible.
So far I have explained the 5 books of the Old Testament’s “Law (Pentateuch)” and the 12 books of the “History.” If you haven’t read those yet, reading them first will make the flow easier to follow.
In this article, I will explain the Old Testament’s third section, the “Poetry & Wisdom Literature,” 5 books. Unlike the History, which was a record of events, from here we enter a realm of the Bible that is especially literary, dealing with the inner life and the living of human beings.
The Scope of This Article
First, let’s confirm which part of the Bible’s 66 books this article covers.
- Poetry & Wisdom Literature: treats the inner life and living of human beings — life, suffering, love, happiness — through song and proverb (this article)
- Prophets: the prophets speak warnings to a people who turned from God and the promise of salvation (the Messiah) (next, Article 4)
Now let’s look at the five books of the Poetry & Wisdom Literature.
The World of the Bible Through 50 Masterpiece PaintingsView on Amazon →
What Exactly Is Christianity? (a beginner’s primer)View on Amazon →
What Is the “Poetry & Wisdom Literature” (5 Books)?
This section is five books that treat the fundamental questions of human living not as narrative but in the form of poem, song, and proverb.
| Book | Name | Chapters | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | Job | 42 | Why do the righteous suffer? |
| 19 | Psalms | 150 | A songbook of praise, lament, and prayer to God |
| 20 | Proverbs | 31 | Proverbs of wisdom for living daily life |
| 21 | Ecclesiastes | 12 | The vanity of life and its meaning |
| 22 | Song of Songs | 8 | A song of love between man and woman |
Book 18: Job
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 42 |
| Main figures | Job, three friends, Satan, God |
| Central theme | Why must a sinless, righteous person suffer? |
A book especially philosophical even within the Bible, it confronts head-on the universal question of “the suffering of the righteous.” The story is structured so that a prose “prologue” and “epilogue” enclose a long poetic “dialogue.”
The Heavenly Wager and the Disasters That Strike Job
The story begins not on earth but in a heavenly scene. When God praises, “There is no one as righteous as Job,” Satan (the accuser) counters, “Job is devout only because you bless and protect him. Take it all away, and he will surely curse you.” God accepts this and permits Job to be tested.
Then disasters strike Job, a devout and wealthy man, in quick succession. First he loses all his property, including his livestock, and all ten of his children in a single day, and then his whole body, from head to foot, is covered with terrible boils. Even so, Job did not curse God, and when his wife said, “Curse God and die,” he answered, “Shall we accept good from God, and not also accept disaster?”
The Argument with the Three Friends
There, three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar) come to comfort Job. But they assail him with the “retribution” view common at the time: “To meet with such misfortune, you must have secretly sinned. Repent.”
Against this, Job pleads his innocence, that he is aware of no such sin, and keeps questioning God fiercely as to why he, who has done no wrong, must suffer. This poetic exchange with the friends, repeated again and again, is the heart of the book. Further, a young man named Elihu appears and adds his own argument.
God’s Answer Out of the Storm
At last, God himself speaks to Job “out of the whirlwind (the storm).” But God does not answer Job’s question directly. Instead he asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” and shows in turn the grandeur of his creatures — the sea, the stars, the light, and “Behemoth (the great beast)” and “Leviathan (the sea monster).”
This showed that “the wisdom of the God who made and governs the world far exceeds human understanding.” Job realizes, “I am far too small a being,” repents of his presumption, and falls silent.
Epilogue — Job’s Restoration
Finally, God rebukes the three friends who blamed Job, saying they “did not speak rightly of me,” and acknowledges Job’s righteousness. He restores Job by giving him twice the property he had before, and granting him seven new sons and three daughters.
Rather than giving a clear answer to the question “why do the righteous suffer,” this book presents the posture of faith — “trusting a God beyond comprehension” — before the providence of God that humans cannot fathom.
Book 19: Psalms
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 150 psalms |
| Main author | David (traditionally, for many) and others |
| Central theme | A culmination of praise and prayer, singing every emotion toward God |
The Psalms is the Bible’s largest “songbook of prayer and praise,” gathering 150 psalms. About half are attributed to King David, and the whole is edited into five books (Book 1 to Book 5).
Its contents are very wide-ranging, singing every human emotion toward God. Broadly classified, there are the following kinds.
| Kind | Content |
|---|---|
| Psalms of praise | Praise God’s greatness and the work of creation (e.g., Psalm 104) |
| Psalms of lament | Seek God’s help from amid suffering, illness, enemies. The most numerous in the Psalms |
| Psalms of thanksgiving | Offer thanks for being saved |
| Psalms of repentance | Confess one’s sin and seek forgiveness (e.g., Psalm 51) |
| Royal / Messianic psalms | Sing of a king’s accession or the coming savior (e.g., Psalms 2 and 110) |
Let me introduce a few especially famous psalms.
- Psalm 23: a psalm singing trust in God amid suffering, beginning with “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Widely read at funerals and elsewhere
- Psalm 22: a psalm beginning with the cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Known as the words Jesus later spoke on the cross, it is held to be one of the “Messianic prophecies” foretelling the suffering savior
- Psalm 51: a “psalm of repentance” said to have been composed by King David, repenting of the sin of taking the wife of his subject Bathsheba. Known for the line “Create in me a clean heart, O God.”
In this way the Psalms are full of words of prayer that turn the human heart, just as it is — joy and lament, thanks and repentance — toward God, and to this day they remain a wellspring of Jewish and Christian worship and personal prayer.
Book 20: Proverbs
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 31 |
| Main author | Solomon (traditionally) and others |
| Central theme | Practical wisdom for living wisely |
Proverbs is a book of wisdom that gathers short sayings (proverbs) for living wisely, many attributed to the wise king Solomon.
The famous line running through the whole is “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This shows the basic idea of Proverbs: that true wisdom is not mere knowledge or cleverness, but begins from “a heart that reveres God.”
In the first half (chs. 1–9), wisdom is personified as a woman, “Lady Wisdom,” who speaks to the young, admonishing them not to fall into folly and temptation. Much of it takes the form of a father speaking to his child, teaching guidance for not straying from the path of life.
From the middle onward, many independent proverbs line up. Their content is extremely practical and everyday: the use of words (“A gentle answer turns away wrath”), the importance of diligence, a warning against rashly standing surety, how to deal with friends and family, and how to face money.
And the book ends (ch. 31) with a poem praising the “capable wife” who supports the household, works hard, and governs the home with wisdom. Rather than religious stiffness, it has the strong color of practical wisdom for living — “how to live so that life goes well” — a book whose content still holds up today.
Book 21: Ecclesiastes
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 12 |
| Other name | ”The Preacher” |
| Central theme | The vanity of life, and the meaning found beyond it |
Known for the opening words “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity,” this is a philosophical book questioning the meaning of life.
The narrator, “Qoheleth (the Preacher),” gazes thoroughly at the fleetingness of life, that wealth, wisdom, pleasure, and toil are all, in the end, vanity before death.
But it does not simply end in nihilism. In the end this book arrives at the conclusion, “Fear God and keep his commandments — this is the whole duty of man.” The message is: because life is fleeting, live the present with God at the center.
Book 22: Song of Songs
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 8 |
| Central theme | A love poem singing of the love between man and woman |
The Song of Songs is a poem of pure love in which a young man and woman (bride and bridegroom) passionately sing of each other’s beauty and love. With almost no passages directly teaching faith in or doctrine of God, it is a rather unusual presence within the Bible.
Its content proceeds in dialogue form, the two taking turns expressing their feelings for each other. The bridegroom praises the bride’s form, “You are beautiful, my love,” and the bride too sings of her longing. The line “Love is as strong as death” is a famous phrase that symbolizes the Song of Songs.
Taken literally, it praises the joy of human love and marriage, but it has traditionally been interpreted symbolically as “the love between God and the people of Israel,” or, in Christianity, “the love between Christ and the Church.” That is why this seemingly secular poem is included in the biblical canon.
How Strong Are the Characters Here? — The Power Ranking
The monsters appearing in this article (Leviathan and Behemoth from Job) are also introduced in strength order in the “Mythology, Religion & Legend Power Ranking.” Enjoy their depiction in the original texts alongside their “strength.”
To Learn More
Here are some related books. Reading them alongside this series lets you savor this world even more deeply.
Learn with Character Art! An Illustrated Guide to ChristianityView on Amazon →
Christianity from Age 14, Explained with DiagramsView on Amazon →
Conclusion
In this article, I explained the Old Testament’s “Poetry & Wisdom Literature,” 5 books. How was it?
Job, which asks why the righteous suffer; the songbook of praise and lament, Psalms; Proverbs, which gathers everyday wisdom; Ecclesiastes, which gazes at the vanity of life; and the Song of Songs, which sings of love — I hope you could feel another face of the Bible, one that gazes at human life itself in the form of poem and proverb rather than narrative.
In the next article (Article 4), I will explain the Old Testament’s final section, the “Prophets,” 17 books. It is the realm where the expectation of a coming savior (the Messiah) rises higher and higher.
I hope you’ll read the next article too.
📚 Series: Christianity: The Bible (66 Books) Explained (4/9)
