the best Bebrew Bcholar of the present day. Now. had there originally been metre, the case, it is presumed,
could hardly have been such; somewhat must have
been sacrificed to the importunities of metrical neces- sity ; i he sense could not invariably have predominated over the sound; and the poetry could not have been, as it unquestionably and emphatically is. a poetry, not of Bounds or ..I words, hut of things. Let not this last as- sertion, however, he misinterpreted: 1 would he iinder- Btood merelj to assert that sound, and words in subor- dination to sound, do imt iii Bebrew, as in .la— ical poetry, enter into the essence of the thing; hut it is happily undeniable that the word- of the poetical Script- ures are exquisitely fitted to convey the Bense; and it is highly probable thai, in the lifetime of the language, the sound- were sufficiently harmonious: when I say sufficiently harmonious, I mean so harmonious as to render the poetry grateful to the ear in recitation, and suitable to musical accompaniment; for which purpose
POETRY
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POETRY
the cadence of well-modulated prose would fully answer; a fact which will not be controverted by any person with a moderately good ear that has ever heard a chap- ter of Isaiah skilfully read from our authorized trans- lation; that has ever listened to one of Kent's anthems well performed, or to a song from the Messiah of Han- del."
Abarbanel (on Isa. v) makes three divisions of He- brew poetry, including in the first the modem poems which, in imitation of the Arabic, are constructed ac- cording to modern principles of versification. Among the second class he arranges such as have no metre, but are adapted to melodies. In these occur the poetical forms of words, lengthened and abbreviated, and the like. To this class belong the songs of Moses in Exod. xv, Deut. xxxii, the song of Deborah, and the song of David. The third class includes those compositions which are distinguished not by their form, but by the figurative character of their descriptions, as the Song of Songs, and the song of Isaiah.
Among those who maintain the absence of any reg- ularity perceptible to the ear in the composition of Hebrew poetry may be mentioned Richard Simon {Hist. Crit. du V. T. i, c. 8, p. 57), Wasmuth {Inst. Ace. Hebr. p. 14), Alstedius {Enc. Bibl. c. 27, p. 257), the au- thor of the book Cozri, and K. Azariah de Rossi, in his book entitled Meor Enayim. The author of the book Cozri held that the Hebrews had no metre bound by the laws of diction, because their poetry, being in- tended to be sung, was independent of metrical laws. R. Azariah expresses his approbation of the opinions of Cozri and Abarbanel, who deny the existence of songs in Scripture composed after the manner of modern He- brew poems, but he adds, nevertheless, that beyond doubt there are other measures which depend upon the sense. Mendelssohn (on Exod. xv) also rejects the system of n"lS13ni r.^ir^ (literally, pegs and vow- els). R. Azariah appears to have anticipated bishop Lowth in his theory of parallelism : at any rate his treatise contains the germ which Lowth developed, and may be considered, as Jebb calls it, the technical basis of his system. But it also contains other ele- ments, which will be alluded to hereafter. His conclu- sion, in Lowth's words {Isaiah, prel. diss.), was as fol- lows: "That the sacred songs have undoubtedly certain measures and proportions; which, however, do not con- sist in the number of syllables, perfect or imperfect, according to the form of the modern verse which the Jews make use of, and which is borrowed from the Arabians (though the Arabic prosody, he observes, is too complicated to be applied to the Hebrew language) ; but in the number of things, and of the parts of things — that is, the subject and the predicate and their ad- juncts, in every sentence and proposition. Thus a phrase containing two parts of a proposition consists of two measures; add another containing two more, and they become four measures; another again, con- taining three parts of a proposition, consists of three measures; add to it another of the like, and you have six measures." The following example will serve for an illustration :
Thy-right-hand, O-Jehovah, is-glorious in-power, Ttay-ri^ht-hand, O-Jehovah, hath-crnshed the-euemy.
The words connected by hyphens form terms, and the two lines, forming four measures each, may be called tetrameters. " Upon the whole, the author concludes that the poetical parts of the Hebrew Scriptures are not composed according to the rules and measures of certain feet, dissyllables, trisyllables, or the like, as the poems of the modern Jews are; but nevertheless have undoubtedly other measures which depend on things, as above explained. For this reason they are more excellent than those which consist of certain feet, ac- cording to the number and quantity of syllable?. Of this, he says, you may judge yourself in the Songs of the Prophets. For do you not see, if you translate
some of them into another language, that they still keep and retain their measure, if not wholly, at least in partV which cannot be the case in those Verses the measures of which arise from a certain quantity and number of syllables." Lowth expresses his general agreement with R. Azariah's exposition of the rhyth- mus of things ; but instead of regarding terms or phrases or senses in single lines, as measures, he considered "only that relation and proportion of one verse to an- other which arises from the correspondence of terms-, and from the form of construction ; from whence re- sults a rhythmus of propositions, and a harmony of sen- tences." But Lowth's system of parallelism was more completely anticipated by Schbttgen in a treatise, of the existence of which the bishop does not appear to have been aware. It is found in his Horm Hebraicas, i, 1249-12G3, diss, vi, "de Exergasia Sacra." This ex- ergasia he defines to be the conjunction of entire sen- tences signifying the same thing; so that exergasia bears the same relation to sentences that synonymy does to words. It is only found in those Hebrew writ- ings which rise above the level of historical narrative and the ordinary kind of speech. Ten canons are then laid down, each illustrated by three examples, from which it will be seen how far Schiittgen's system cor- responded with Lowth's. (1.) Perfect exergasia is when the members of the two clauses correspond, each to each, as in Psa. xxxiii, 7; Numb, xxiv, 17; Luke i, 47. (2.) Sometimes in the second clause the subject is omitted, as in Isa. i, 18; Prov. vii, 19; Psa. exxix, 3. (3.) Sometimes part of the subject is omitted, as in Psa. xxxvii, 30; cii, 28; Isa. liii, 5. (4.) The pred- icate is sometimes omitted in the second clause, as in Numb, xxiv, 5 ; Psa. xxxiii, 12 ; exxiii, G. (5.) Some- times part only of the predicate is omitted, as in Psa. lvii, 9 ; ciii, 1 : exxix, 7. (6.) Words are added in one mem- ber which are omitted in the other, as in Numb, xxiii, 18 ; Psa. cii, 29 ; Dan. xii. 3. (7.) Sometimes two prop- ositions will occur, treating of different things, but re- ferring to one general proposition, as in Psa. xciv, '.»; exxviii, 3; Wisd. iii, 1G. (8.) Cases occur, in which the second proposition is the contrary of the first, as in Prov. xv, 8; xiv, 1, 11. (9.) Entire propositions an- swer each to each, although the subject and predicate are not the same, as in Psa. li, 7; cxix, 168; Jer. viii, 22. (10.) Exergasia is found with three members, as in Psa. i, 1; exxx, 5; lii, 9. These canons Schcittgen applied to the interpretation of Scripture, of which he gives examples in the remainder of that and the fol- lowing Dissertation.