I’ve been studying Jesus’ use of figurative language, and I’m not very surprised to discover that He employs almost every known figure of speech—and there are a lot of them! Metaphor and simile are common in Jesus’ teaching, as in His phrase, “The kingdom of God is like …” But now here are some other literary devices that may be less familiar.
One we all know is prosopopoeia, commonly known as personification, in which an immaterial object is portrayed as if it were human. A good example is, “Tomorrow can take care of itself” (Mt 6:34). Tomorrow, of course, has no personal volition, but the power of the figure comes from imagining that it does, and that it’s capable of relieving us of worry if only we’ll transfer our cares to it. We might say that ‘tomorrow’ stands in for God, on whom we can “cast all our cares because He cares for us” (1 Pet 5:7).
Another figure of speech we’re familiar with is hyperbole, or exaggeration, as in, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off” (Mt 5:30). But less familiar is the opposite, tapeinosis, or understatement, as when Jesus says, “Are you not much more valuable than the birds of the air?” (Mt 6:26) Comparing human beings to lowly birds emphasizes our immense worth in God’s eyes.
In the literary device of ellipsis, words are left out, as in, “For John came neither eating nor drinking” (Mt 11:18). Of course John ate and drank; he just didn’t eat lavish food or accept dinner invitations.
One thing I love about rhetorical devices is their lovely Greek names. Consider apizeuxsis, which is repetition of the same word. The phrase “Verily, verily I say unto you” appears often in the KJV, reflecting the original Greek, but this emphatic apizeuxsis is lost in the simpler NIV version, “I tell you the truth.”
Polysyndeton is the use of many conjunctions (usually ‘and’) to connect clauses, as in the Great Commandment in Mark 12:30: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” The repeated ‘and’ (which again reflects the structure of the original Greek) slows down the pace to create emphasis and solemnity.
Asyndeton, by contrast, omits the ‘and’s’ that would normally connect the items in a list, as in Luke 14:13: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.” The omission, while still conveying the sense of a crowded banquet, allows the sentence to move more quickly to its vital conclusion: “you will be blessed.”
Anaphora is repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences. This occurs most famously in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5: “Blessed are the poor in spirit … Blessed are those who mourn.”
Paradiastole is repetition of negatives, as in, “About that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36).
Metonymy is the use of a simple word (often a concrete noun) to refer to a larger concept, as when Jesus speaks of His suffering as a “cup” (Mt 26:39).
A particularly beautiful figure of speech is chisamus, in which ideas in a sentence are repeated in reverse order, creating a symmetical X-shaped pattern that is rhythmic and memorable. One fine example is, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
Well, I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Is it really any wonder if the Son of God, “The Word,” should be at least as great a master of language as Shakespeare? The magisterial book on this subject is a big doorstopper, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible by E.W. Bullinger. Much more fun and relaxed treatments (though not specifically relating to scripture) are Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase by Arthur Quinn, or The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth. Learn the Greek names and confound (or irritate) your friends!
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