Abstract
Many old-earth creationists cite poetic passages in an effort to convince people that we cannot and should not interpret the creation account literally. Yet the old-earth creationist is quick to interpret poetic passages literally and treat the narrative passages figuratively. This article will provide a survey of the nature of Hebrew poetry and provide examples of the various forms of parallelism exhibited in the six poetic books of the Bible: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Lamentations. The final section of this study will show that Genesis 1 is not poetry, and a brief examination of a popular Old Testament event will readily display the vast differences between narrative and poetry.