Punctuation Marks in a Biblical Declaration of Independence and Dependence

Punctuation marks are myriad,

but my favorite is the period.

Commas tend to be divisive,

colons help the indecisive,

both abhorrent when abundant,

somewhat usually redundant.

Colons and the semicolon

mark the pause that you have stolen

from the period you needed,

till by them you were stampeded.

Exclamation marks expressive,

tend, I think, to be excessive;

questions marks like necromancers

tend to fool us with their answers.

Surrounded by parenthesis

words make far less emphasis;

in England where they’re known as “brackets,”

they hide the words in little packets.

Commas, my first subject I

will now try to demystify,

and, commenting on common commas,

call them the enemies of promise,

which, slowing down the sentence flow,

don’t stop it totally, although

the interruptions they provide

often spoil the verbal ride.

If you’re smart you may enliven

apercus with help of hyphen;

like a name that’s hyphenated,

thoughts that follow should be feted. 

Quotation marks are full of lies,

and useful when you plagiarize,

from names to which you don’t allude

and surely by them may be sued,

but let me say now in conclusion:

only periods foil confusion,

better than all other marks

when you’ve concluded your remarks.

Post Scriptum

Without addition to this poem of

what I’ll discuss below, inverted nuns,

I add what parenthetically I love,

fantastically tripping with run-ons,

a punning P. S. to this verse,

referring to the Torah’s only punctuation:

the two inverted nuns that both reverse

the expectations of the Hebrew nation

heading for the Promised Land,

Jews then all doomed instead to wander

in the wilderness, for their demand

for meat more than for Israel fonder.

While taking from the Ark a scroll

we say one verse, and putting back

the scroll one more. The first one’s goal

is scoring Torah, which we lack

the moment that we have returned

the scroll, made suddenly sad Jews,

as we were when we gravely burned

for meat, and Israel’s team would lose,

like teeth with meat that‘s not been flossed.

Inverted nuns tell us despite

bad fortune, goals should not be lost,

and stand like upside nuns, upright,

while bracketing with our dependence

on God a Torah book, its seventh,

denunciating Independence,

dependent on a force that’s heaventh.

Num. 10:35-36 states in a text that is parenthesized by two inverted nuns:

לה  וַיְהִי בִּנְסֹעַ הָאָרֹן, וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה:  קוּמָה יְהוָה, וְיָפֻצוּ אֹיְבֶיךָ, וְיָנֻסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ, מִפָּנֶיך           35nd it came to pass, when the ark travelled  forward, that Moses said: ‘Rise up, O LORD, and let Thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee.’

לו  וּבְנֻחֹה, יֹאמַר:  שׁוּבָה יְהוָה, רִבְבוֹת אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.  36 And when it rested, he said: ‘Return, O LORD, unto the ten thousands of the families of Israel.’

My punning P. S. contains the phrase “gravely burned for meat,” a wordplay on the fate of the Israelites after God fulfilled their desire for meat in Kibroth-hattaavah, Graves of Desire, Num 11:33-34:

.

לג  הַבָּשָׂר, עוֹדֶנּוּ בֵּין שִׁנֵּיהֶם–טֶרֶם, יִכָּרֵת; וְאַף יְהוָה, חָרָה בָעָם, וַיַּךְ יְהוָה בָּעָם, מַכָּה רַבָּה מְאֹד.            33 While the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.

לד  וַיִּקְרָא אֶת-שֵׁם-הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא, קִבְרוֹת הַתַּאֲוָה:  כִּי-שָׁם, קָבְרוּ, אֶת-הָעָם, הַמִּתְאַוִּים.         34 And the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people that desired.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik explained that the reversed nuns in Numbers 10 reflect the reversal of fortune from the preceding era when all the Israelites, including Moses, thought they were about to enter the land of Israel. This era changed tragically into one in which they wandered for forty years in the wilderness. Whereas the two verses are also intriguingly analyzed by Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein in “When Letters Face Backwards: Examining the Parsha of “Vayehi Binsoa ha’Aron ” (see outorah.org/p/71085/), I suggest in my poem’s post scriptum  stanza that the reason that we recite the first of these two verses before we take the Torah scroll from the Ark is because we are happily anticipating  our entry into  an era in which we are fully devoted to the Torah. , Whereas the reason we recite the last verse before returning  the Torah scroll to the Ark is because we feel we need God’s support since we have not yet reached this idyllic era and the entire  Jewish people have failed  to do in most eras of our history. Explaining the parentheses enveloping these two verses, the Talmud in bShabbat 115b-116 identifies them as the seventh book of the Torah. This inspires me to think of this seventh book of the Torah as a biblical version of Israel’s “Declaration of Dependence,” in which the second part is an explicit reference to our continued dependence on God in all our efforts to defeat our foes.