t His article in the Jahrb. f. prot. Tluol. i. (1876) p. 121 ff., il still well worthy of study.
I Cf. W. Max Miiller,' Die Liebegpoeeie der alten jEgypter, 1899, p. 10, Anm. 1.
POETRY (HEBREW)
POETRY (HEBREW)
d. Metre: the Kinah and other kinds of verse. — Fium «li:il lius jusi been s;iid, it is selievident that tUe length of the tines is not a matter of in- diU'erence. These must be fashioned in a certain uniform relation to one another, in order to pro- duce the impression of rhythmic units. The sure proof tliat the Heb. poet consciously fixed the length of the lines is found in the circumstance that for a special occasion that presented itself in the life of the people he uniformly chose a special length of line. 'J'liis is establislied in the case of the .ij'iJ. the Hebrew lament for the dead, i.e. the songs which women as mouiners (ni:;ipo Jer 9") Bang at funerals in ancient Israel. These were uniformly composed in verses of two members, the length 01 the lirst of which stands to that of the second in the proportion of 3:2, givin" rise to a peculiar limping rhj'thm, in which tlie second member as it were dies away and expires. These verses are very shari)ly distinguished from the others, in which equal length of verse-members in the same verse is the rule. For proof of the cor- rectness of these observations the present writer's art. 'Das hebriiische Klagelied ' in ZAllV, 1882, pp. 1-52, may still suflice, if it be read with care. It will not do either to unite the two unequal stichoi into a single ' long line,' or to pronounce it a matter of inditierence whether the longer line comes (irst or last.* Equally established bej-oiid all doubt is the original connexion of this kind of verse with the popular lament for the dead. When Briggs (op. cit. p. 381) says, 'there is no propriety in the name,' and, further, supposes that the name was given to it bj- the present writer ' because apparentl}' he lirst noticed it in the Book of Lamentations,' the one remark is as mistaken as the other. The second of the two merely proves that Briggs has not followed our argument, which is founded rather upon the fact that the projihets, whenever the}' introduce the mourning women speaking in [jersoii (Jer g's-a* 38"-), t or when they themselves in their symbolical actions assume the rOle of the mourning' women (Am 5', Ezk 19, etc.), uniformly choo.se this mea-sure.J The objec- tion that David does not employ it in his lament for Saul and Jonathan (2 S l""-) can be urged only bv one who holds that David meant to take the place of the mourning women at the obsequies, or to attach himself to their lamenta- tions. And when Grimme (/'ye. cit. p. 549) suggests that the earliest employment of^ this measure should rather be sought i'or in the oracles of the priests, not only must we lirst wait for proof that the ancient oracles were composed in it,§ but must ask, further, which was the earlier in Israel, the funeral or the oracle, and whether it is likely that this form of verse was originally learned by the mourning women from the lips of the priests as they pronounced their oracles, to be afterwards
• lioth these ttiin^ have been done recently by Griiniiic (ZV.Va, laSHi, p. ;,t:<l.). The examples he adduces in justi- fication of his prot'edure appear to us to be altogether in- ftdequate. Some of them are due to faulty scansion, in others & false length is (fiven to the lines by a wrong division of the context, somt; arc cit*d from a corrupt uneinfiuiwl text, others are to lie explained in wcordance with ZATW ii. p. 7, No. 3. No agreement seems possible between the present writer and Orinniie, for not only would this necessitate the acceptance of the metrical system of the latter, but Grimme's ' fUnf-hebiger Vers' is sometiiing quite different from the kinah verse.
f Cf. y.A TW, )bi.t, p. '.'TOtf.
: Grinmic {ZD.MG, 18117, p. CM) declares that one might as well assert that the Greek hexameter is uroperly a uiouniing strain because it is in it that the women lament for the dead Hector. Yes, no doubt, were it not that the rest of the Iliad »lso is written in hexameters. In the same place he seeks to prove that Jer 9*-!** is wholly comiwised in the Ifiwth me.isure, out his argument breaks down completely. Only 8^-9^ was originally an independent poem in Ibis measure.
8 The examples which (irimme (XllMH, ls;i7, p. 707 f.) brings forwartl and scans exactly (Gn 26^ 27'^^ ^"^ ) may be, according to his system, pentameters, but thev have nothing whatever to do with tlie 'mourning verse' Doted by the present writer.
copied from the women by the prophets. Woman is the most conservative of all social forces, and if even at the present day in an Arab nnrsery the kinah verse is still to be heard from the lips of the mother (as reported by Snouck-Hurgronje), there is nothing more probable than that in this a re- collection has been preserved of a time when it was par excellence the verse of women. *
But now that it has been thus shown that in one particular case Hebrew poets consciously fixed the length of their verses and shaped it accord- ing!}', we must conclude that in the case of other verses (or lines) as well they had a clear conscious- ness of one or more ditterent lengths. And, as a matter of fact, examination shows that throughout wide tracts the individual lines have the usual length of the lir.st member of the kinah verse ; amongst others this is by far the predominating length all through the Book of Job. Elsewhere we may observe a longer line than the prevailing one, something like double the length of the shorter kinah line.