IV. Style of Writing

The book, with the exception of the superscription (1:1), is written entirely in poetry. The lines of the poems are not uniform in length, but do not exhibit a wide range of variation. While the poems do cover a range of topics, there are few definitive breaks in the development of its thought. Rather, the book presents a unified structure with overlapping themes. An idea may be introduced in one section and expanded or returned to in another. This makes outlining the content of the book somewhat arbitrary.