THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZO
Semitic people, the Babylonians, had the epic, it seems likely that Israel, too, had once epic poetry, and reminiscences or suggestions of such a form are still found, though they are used merely for decorative purpose (Job iii. S, ix. 13; Ps. lxxiv. 13-14). But if one understand by epic only hero-stories in poetic form, then the Hebrews had much of such poetry. If now, with this reservation, one would get a survey of the whole field of Hebrew poetry, he would find a good aid in the Old Testament division of this variety of literature into lyric song and proverb. The lyric song in the secular field embraces love-songs, war-songs, and dirges, all of
which are found in the religious area,
5. Forms as given in Ps.;Ex. xv.; Deut. xxxii.;
Mentioned I Sam. ii.; Nahum i.; Hab. iii., and
in the Old Lamentations. As special kinds of
Testament, poetry the Old Testament mentions the
prayer-hymn (Ps. lxxi. 1; Hab. iii. 1, cf. Ps. lxxii. 20) and the song of praise (Ps.cxlv. 1). The " proverb " has a far wider range. This is directed rather to the intellect than to the feeling, is complex, combines apparently heterogeneous elements, and gives in condensed, often enigmatical, form an experience or a moral truth (cf. I Sam. xxiv. 14; Ezek. xii. 22-23, xviii. 2; Prov. i. 1, x. 1, xxv. 1); it is used by the philosopher (Job xxvii. 1, xxix. 1), the seer (Num. xxiii. 7, 18), the allegorizer (Ezek. xvii. 2, xxiv. 3), and the mocker (Isa. xiv. 4; Mic. ii. 4; Hab. ii. 6). The following is the range of the use of the proverb: (1) in sentences like those just given, riddles, and dark sayings (Prov. i. 6); (2) it means the riddle proper (Judges xiv. 12 sqq.; I Kings x. 1); (3) it stands for fables (Judges ix. 7-8; II Kings xiv. 9-10); (4) for parables (II Sam. xii. 1 sqq., xiv. 6 sqq.; Isa. v. 1 sqq., xxviii. 23 sqq.); (5) for allegories (Ezek. xvii. 2, xxiv. 3); (6) for satires and mockeries (Hab. ii. 6); (7) for expressions of wisdom (Ps. xlix.; Prov. i.-ix.; Eccles. ; Job); (8) for didactic presentation of history (Ps. xcv., lxxviii.); (9) and for prophetic literature (Num. xii. 8, xxiii. 7, 18; Dan. v. 12). But the line between the lyric and the proverb is not sharply drawn, and the two overlap and interchange.
Absolute certainties about the artistic form of Hebrew poetry are very few; still it may be said that criticism has established the following facts:
(1) Poetry is not satisfied with ordi-
6. Charac- nary diction, but searches for sonorous,
teristics of rare, ancient expressions; it often uses
Hebrew a different relative, longer pronominal
Poetry, suffixes, different nominal endings, and
has a preference for alliteration, assonances and word pictures; of a conscious use of rime for metrical purposes there is no trace. (2) Owing to its kinship to music and the dance, poetry demands a form controlled by rhythm. But here is the least known area, for, whereas the Arabs had a developed meter long before they knew how to write, the Old Testament poetry takes such form that many have given up all hope of finding a meter at all, in the place of which they discover merely the " thought-rhythm," the so-called " parallelism of members." The simplest form of this is the synonymous parallelism, in which the second part of the line or verse repeats in different form the
sense of the first (Ps. ii. 4; Job vi. 8; Isa. v. 7- Song of Sol. viii. 6); at times only a part of the first line is repeated (Job iii. 8), or the picture is followed by the fact (Prov. ii. 22; Job vii. 9)at times the two members bear the same relation to each other as the obverse and the reverse of a coin (Song of Sol. vii. 10). A second form is known as the antithetical, in which the sense of the two members is opposed (Ps. xviii. 27; Prov. xi. 1). Besides these two varieties, Lowth names a third, the synthetic, in which the members merely hang together without being parallel or antithetic (cf. Ps. iii. 2 xi. 3, xxix. 1; Job xiii. 16, xxxiii. 29; Prov. ii. 31- Ex. xv. 16). Ordinarily the parallelism has two members, at times three (Song of Sol. iv. 10; Ps. ii. 2, vi. 6, liv. 3), four (Ps. cxiv. 1-2; Deut. xxxii. 11; Judges v. 4, 14), and even as many as six (Lam. i. 1). (3) Altogether different is the problem, however, if the search is for the resolution of Hebrew poetry into a true rhythm and if parallelism is regarded merely as a frequent accompaniment. Merx, for example, sees in parallelism merely a rhetorical law which may accompany, but does not constitute, the poetic form, and Grimme goes so far as to deduce parallelism directly from the rhythm. Here appears the question often affirmatively answered, and as frequently answered in the negative, whether or not a meter can be pointed out in Hebrew poetry. The assertion that the Israelites had a verse measure is old. Josephus says that Moses wrote two poems in hexameter (Ex. xv.; Deut. xxxii.), and David some in trimeters, and others in pentameter. Similar claims are found in Eusebius and Jerome; and the latter discovers in Job the hexameter, in Lam. i., ii., iv., the Sapphic measure, and in Lam. iii. the trimeter. It must be remembered, however, that, on the one hand, these authors were endeavoring to remove the prejudice of their readers against the Hebrew, and, on the other, that only by comparing the Hebrew with the Greek could they make Hebrew poetry intelligible; nevertheless their testimony, especially that of Jerome, is of importance. It goes without saying that the discovery of a meter would be a great help to the textual critic and the exegete, consequently a number of scholars have set themselves the task of searching for the key to this mystery. They fall into two groups, the one of which (represented by Merx, Bickell, Gietmann) tries to find the same meter as is found in Syriac poetry, Servian hero-tales, and new Romance poetry where the rhythm is produced by a definite number of syllables. Bickell, the ablest champion of this theory, claims that in the verse every other syllable is accented, and that in the foot the accent always falls on the penultimate; consequently, that in verses of even number of syllables the measure would be trochaic, in those of uneven number, iambic; and he has formulated a complete system of rules, in accordance with which different syllables may at times be dropped, the half-vowels counted or omitted, the suffixes changed, and so on. The other group (Ley, Neteler, Briggs, Grimme, Duhm, Bertholet, Gunkel) counts only the tone-beat, regarding the unaccented and slightly accented syllables between the tone-beats as unessential to the meter. Ley has found hexameters, octameters,