Psalms and Prophetic Poetry
The psalms of David and the prophetic books as the summit of biblical literature, surpassing all secular poetry in power because their source is the love of God and their object is Christ. Lacordaire compares David's Miserere and Isaiah's chapter 53 favorably against Homer, Virgil, Racine, Shakespeare, and Lamartine.
Pope Clement VIII, Jerome's Prefaces, On Worship
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ON THE WORSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE SCRIPTURES.
— At the Psalms and the Prophets, prose gives way to poetry and narrative to enthusiasm; the heart is seized by passionate admiration surpassing Homer or Virgil.
"when you arrive at the Psalms of David and the Prophets, a new world will open before you. Prose will give way to poetry, narrative to enthusiasm"
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ON THE WORSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE SCRIPTURES.
— The power of the psalms comes from their relationship to Jesus Christ. David's Miserere, Jeremiah's Lamentations, and Isaiah 53 surpass all secular poetry because their object is infinite.
"all that is nothing beside the Miserere of David, the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Where, then, is the reason for this difference, if not in the object of the love that inspired these two orders of poetry?"
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ON THE WORSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE SCRIPTURES.
— The psalms are still repeated daily by priests and people with the same faith as the Levites of Jerusalem, at an interval of three thousand years.
"believers, worshippers, supplicants, who every day repeat the psalms of David in the same places and with the same faith as the Levites of Jerusalem, at an interval of three thousand years"
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II. JEROME TO PAULINUS.
— David, Jerome's Simonides, Pindar, Alcaeus, and Horace, sounds forth Christ on the lyre and the psaltery.
"David, our Simonides, our Pindar and Alcaeus, our Horace too, Catullus and Serenus, sounds forth Christ on the lyre, and on the ten-stringed psaltery raises up the risen one from the underworld."