5. The last feature we wish to notice as dis- coverable in the stylistic structure of the OT is the construction of strophes. Those scholars who at present are disposed to co-ordinate the pro- phecies and the poems of the OT, speak of strophes also in the Book of Isaiah, discovering them, for instance, in 2°" yvy.!!7 and vv.38"1. But even an orator may unfold his subject in sections of nearly equal length, and may conclude each of these with the same sentence, the so-called Hpiphora (see above, iii. (5d8)). Lately, the opening of the Book of Amos has been a favourite field for attempts to discover a strophic structure. The earlier attempts are examined in Stzlistik, pp. 347-352, and Sievers (i. § 103) agrees with the judgment expressed there by the present writer.
ut a renewed effort of the same kind has been made by Léhr in his Untersuchungen zum Buche Amos, 1901. He proposes to regard the four pro- phecies against Damascus, Gaza, Ammon, and Moab (1%? vy.8 vy.1515 21-8) as four strophes, each consisting of 4+2+4 stichoi. But, in order to make out this uniformity, he is compelled in 13 to reckon the object ‘ Gilead’ as the fourth stichos. Similarly, in 2! the fourth s¢zchos has to be made up simply of dassid (‘into lime’). Short parts of sentences have thus to be counted as whole lines, although in the corresponding passage of the pro- phecy against Ammon (1?*1>) a whole clause (‘ that they might enlarge their border,’ v.¥¢) is found, which Lohr himself takes as the fourth stichos of the ‘strophe’ 1%, The creating of stichoi in such a fashion, in order to form strophes, appears to the present writer to be an artificial procedure, the responsibility for which belongs, not to the
STYLE OF SCRIPTURE
SYMBOL, SYMBOLICAL ACTIONS 169
prophet Amos but to modern upholders of the theory that the Prophets of Israel meant to employ ‘strophes.’ Our view of the matter is that also of Cornill in the Theol. Rundschau (1901, p. 414f.). Sievers (Metrische Untersuchungen, ii. p. 473) gives up the attempt to establish an exact equality between corresponding lines, for, accord- ing to him, 1°» (‘because they have threshed,’ etc.) contains four feet, while v.® has five, v.28 six, and 2'P seven.—In the real poems of the OT there are not a few traces of an aim at a strophic structure. The latter cannot be denied, for instance, to the author of Ps 2, who evidently meant to exhaust his subject in four sets of three verses each. Such an aim was connected also with the construction of alphabetical acrostics (see above, (4)). What, for instance, are the twenty-two groups of eight verses each of which Ps 119 is made up, but strophes? Such divisions of a poem are at times indicated even externally. We have an instance of this in the occurrence of quite similar clauses, ‘Surely every man at his best estate is wholly vanity’ and ‘Surely every man is vanity,’ in Ps 39° and v.12». In 42°." 43°, again, we have the thrice repeated ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?’ and there are a good many similar ‘refrains’ in the Psalter (cf. 467 4912. 20 575-11 1361. 2b etc., see Stilistik, p. 3461.).
v. CONCLUSION.—1. In so far as the stylistic differences between Biblical writings depend upon the choice of words, the style is not without sig- nificance for the purposes of literary criticism. This is proved in the present writer’s Hinleit. ins AT, pp. 147-151, and its truth reaflirmed, in reply to recent doubts expressed by W. H. Cobb, and defended, with fresh materials, in the Hapository Times, xiii. (1901) p. 134. For instance, the rela- tive pronoun is expressed by Ws in Ig ]1 2b. 30a Qi. 8b. 20b H5a. 28. nt wis not met with till 407 and 4371, Again, the negative 85 may be counted at least sixteen times in Is 1-6. Yet how easily we might have had at least one occurrence of b3, the word used in 4074 4377 448, Now, these and other words selected in chs. 40 ff. belong to the vocabulary of the ‘higher’ style of the Hebrews, and it is a fact that in chs. 1ff. Isaiah cultivates the most elegant mode of writing. Why should he, then, have avoided in these chapters all those elements of the higher style for which a preference is shown in chs. 40ff.? Such conduct would be all the more incomprehensible, seeing that the most of the linguistic peculiarities which mark Is 40 ff. concern expressions which, on account of their frequency, are employed without deliberate choice and almost without consciousness.—But a number of the more recent expounders of the OT have thought to discover a critical touchstone also in features of Biblical style which do not depend upon the choice of words. Duhm, for instance, says in his Com- mentary on Isaiah in Nowack’s Hdkom. p. 30: ‘The fate of the unknown city is depicted in 3° in too elegiac a strain to allow of our assigning these verses to Isaiah.’ He has in view the words ‘Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war,’ etc. But to say that this is ‘in too elegiac a strain’ is simply a subjective opinion, whose correctness is not proved by Duhm, and cannot be proved. For the strongest expres- sions of grief over the catastrophes that over- hang Israel are given utterance to by Isaiah in other passages, such as 1° and 61°”, which are allowed by Duhm himself to be genuinely Isaianic. A number of similar critical judgments, which have been built in recent times upon the manner- isms of style in certain portions of the OT, are examined in the present writer’s brochure, Neweste Prinzipien der alttest. Kvitik geprift, 1902, pp. 13-19.