Rhyme

 

here  are very few rhyming verses in Tanach. 

 Some scholars, such as LaSor in his Old Testament Survey (p. 236) whom I cite only because he is wrong, say there are essentially none. 

 

In fact there are several. There is Lamech's rhymed lamentation,  

ויאמר למך לנשיו עדה וצלה שמען קולי

 

נשי למך האזנה אמרתי 

כי איש הרגתי לפצעי 

וילד לחברתי

There is the ballad in Bamidbar 21:26-30,

כי חשבון עיר סיחן 

מלך האמרי הוא והוא נלחם במלך מואב הראשון 

ויקח את כל ארצו מידו עד ארנן

על כן יאמרו המשלים באו חשבון

תבנה ותכונן עיר סיחון

כי־אש יצאה מחשבון 

להבה מקרית סיחן

 אכלה ער מואב בעלי במות ארנן

או לך מואב אבדת עם־כמוש נתן בניו פליטם ובנתיו בשבית למלך אמרי סיחון

ונירם אבד חשבון

 עד דיבן

 ונשים עד נפח אשר עד מידבא

Tehillim 2:2-5

יתיצבו מלכי ארץ ורוזנים נוסדו יחד על יהוה ועל משיחו

ננתקה את מוֹסְרוֹתֵימוֹ 

ונשליכה ממנו עֲבֹתֵימוֹ

יושב בשמים ישחק אדני ילעג לָמוֹ

אז ידבר אֵלֵימוֹ

באפו ובחרונו יְבַהֲלֵמוֹ

and the beginning of Eishes Chayil, where the kametz hei is not just because third person feminine singular, as evidenced by ימצא and ולא רע. (Additionally, in the remainder of the perek there are many rhyming words, and most likely they contributed to the lyrical quality of the perek when sung, but it's not the regular metric rhyming I am looking for.

אשת חיל מי ימצא 

ורחק מפנינים מכרה

בטח בה לב בעלה 

ושלל לא יחסר

גמלתהו טוב ולא רע 

כל ימי חייה

דרשה צמר ופשתים ותעש בחפץ כפיה

היתה כאניות סוחר ממרחק תביא לחמה

ותקם  בעוד לילה ותתן טרף לביתה

 וחק לנערתיה

זממה שדה ותקחהו מפרי כפיה  נטעה כרם

חגרה בעוז מתניה 

ותאמץ זרועתיה

But it is certainly true that the rhyme scheme is rare in Tanach. On the other hand, almost all of our Zemiros and piyutim are written in rhyme.

I am curious: When did we begin to use rhyme in kisvei hakodesh? Who was the first? Did he face opposition? I suppose that although not common, the rhyme scheme appears often enough in Tanach to provide precedent. Some say that Hebrew does not naturally lend itself to rhyme, while other languages do invite the rhyme scheme. I have no opinion on the matter. But if so, what literature influenced our writers to incorporate rhyming into our liturgy?

We all know of the ibn Ezra's criticism of Rav Eliezer HaKalir. In the beginning of the fifth perek of Koheles, the ibn Ezra lists his complaints about that form of paytanus. (His style of complaint is almost as excited as that of the Yaavetz.) His first complaint is that a tefilla ought to be comprehensible, and not present an impassable mountain range to the reader. He gives the example of a line in a piyut that says 

ליראי יקפיל, וחדשים יכפיל, ליום זה פור הפיל, ומציון ימלוך

The ibn Ezra says that this line is hopelessly opaque, and there is no reason for it.  But perhaps, he says, the Kalir had to use these words because he wanted it to rhyme? No, he answers. First of all, he says, we never find rhymed tefillos in Tanach, so why is it so important.  (Ibn Ezra uses rhyme all the time, but not at the expense of clarity.) Second, if it is that important to you, you ought to find a better way to make it rhyme.

ענה אחד מחכמי הדור ואמר, כי חרוז "יקפיל" הצריכו שיאמר "פור הפיל". השיבותיו, כי לא מצאנו הנביאים בכל תפילתם שיעסקו בחרוז. ועוד, כי היה לו לעשות על חרוז אחר; ולמה רכב על פיל? ואותו לארץ יפיל! ואם ראה בחלום שיעשה חרוז על פיל, והוצרך בהקיץ לפתור חלומו – יהיה אומר: "לוחץ יעפיל, להתנשא יפיל, ורמי לב ישפיל, ומציון ימלוך".

Note that the ibn Ezra says בכל תפילתם, not that it never appears - but that it never appears in Tefillos.

We don't really know how long ago Reb Elazar HaKalir lived, so it's hard to use him. (Tos Chagiga 13a and Rosh Brachos 5:21 say he was the tanna, from the time of the Bayis Sheini. Some people see in the words of the Geonim that he lived in the sixth century.) and Yosi ben Yosi, who lived at the time of the Savoraim, in the sixth century, did not use rhyme in his piyutim, only, occasionally, ending each sentence with the same word.  Then you have the tefilla אנא בכח which is also a rhyme, and again, it is attributed to the Tanna R Nechunia ben Hakkanah, but who knows.

According to this essay on Wiki, rhyming was very well developed in sixth century Arabic, and at the same time in Ireland, and long before in China. Ireland and China don't have much to do with our discussion, but it appears that rhyming as we know it developed as a high form among the Jews and the Arabs at the same time. 

The answer is that poetry became popular in Piyutim and Pizmonim and Zemiros in what has become known as The Golden Age of Hebrew Writing. This is from an article on the Oxford Bibliography:

Hebrew poetry began flourishing in mid-10th-century Spain (Sefarad, the ancient Jewish name for Spain) and survived there until the 1492 expulsion. Between 950 and 1150 (often referred to as its golden age), Hebrew poetry prospered in Muslim Spain. It was then already widely acknowledged as the indisputable Jewish poetic center. This poetic efflorescence was part of a wider renaissance of Jewish letters (which had its roots in earlier developments in the Orient). Poets were often themselves Talmudic scholars, biblical exegetes, Hebrew grammarians, and Neoplatonic philosophers. But whereas most writings were in Arabic, poetry was uniquely in Hebrew. Poets and audiences belonged to the elite known in scholarship as “the courtier-rabbis.” They were deeply immersed in the Arabic culture and way of life, and some of them served as officers in Muslim courts. As poets, they extensively employed Arabic poetics (genres, themes, prosody, and rhetoric) in both their secular and their liturgical poems. The Arabic influence persisted beyond 1150, at which time the literary center moved to the Jewish communities in the Christian kingdoms of Iberia. In its second period, from the mid-12th century on, liturgical poetry waned, while Kabbalah expanded, and secular poetry receded to give way to narrative compositions in rhymed prose (influenced by the Arabic maqāma and possibly also affected by the rise of European narrative genres). Medieval Hebrew poetry in Spain is evaluated today as one of the highest summits of Hebrew literature (between biblical and modern Hebrew poetry).

After writing this, an anonymous comment was sent in with a paragraph from David Berger's "Culture in Collision and Conversation." 

"The beauty of Arabic was a crucial Muslim argument for the superiority of Islam. Since the Quran was the final, perfect revelation, it was also the supreme exemplar of aesthetic excellence, and its language must be the most exalted vehicle for the realization of literary perfection. When Jews compared the richness and flexibility of Arabic vocabulary to the poverty of medieval Hebrew, the Muslims’ argument for the manifest superiority of their revelation undoubtedly hit home with special force...
Jews were challenged to demonstrate that even the Hebrew at their disposal was at least as beautiful as Arabic and that Hebrew literature could achieve every bit as much as the literature of medieval Muslims. This created a religious motivation to reproduce the full range of genres and subjects in the Arabic literary repertoire, which meant that even the composition of poetry describing parties devoted to wine, women, men, and song could be enveloped by at least the penumbra of sanctity. There can be no question, of course, that even if the genre was born out of apologetic roots, it took on a life of its own, and not every medieval wine song was preceded by a le-shem yihud; at the same time, every such poem was a conscious expression of Jewish pride, which in the Middle Ages had an indisputably religious coloration.
Furthermore, the power and beauty of the religious poetry of the Jews of medieval Spain were surely made possible by the creative encounter with Arabic models. Some of the deepest and most moving expressions of medieval Jewish piety would have been impossible without the inspiration of the secular literature of a competing culture."

On page 39 of his book, Dr Berger points out that among the Jewish writers, the assertion was made that it was the Arabs that learned their skills from the Jews, not the other way around.

"Consequently, we find the glorification of Hebrew over Arabic and the assertion, ... that Arabic culture, including music, poetry, and rhetoric, was ultimately derived from the Jews."

A friend also directed my attention to a book by an (apparent) relative of Rav Avraham ibn Ezra, Moshe ibn Ezra, titled Kitab al-Muhadara, translated in 1924 to Hebrew by Benzion Halper and titled Shirat Yisrael. In it, he claims that all that is praiseworthy in Arabic literature was based on Greek and Hebrew writings. This must be what Dr Berger was referring to.   I plan to read it, and I will bl'n report.

CONCLUSION:

In any case: the answer to our question is that rhyme is occasionally found in Tanach, from Chumash to Mishlei, but it is rare. It was davka in Muslim Spain that rhyme became the dominant form of Slichos and Zemiros and Piyutim.  Whether it was the Arabs influenced by the Jews, or the Jews by the Arabs, remains to be seen.