The elegiac verse
is characterized by a short clause, followed by a still shorter clause,
giving to the phrase a peculiar restrained movement.
is characterized by a short clause, followed by a still shorter clause,
giving to the phrase a peculiar restrained movement.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v18 - Mom to Old
, iii.
, v.
) and of Israel (xxviii.
), the descriptions.
of the haughty bearing and the overthrow of the King of Assyria
(x. , xxxvii. ), the lament over Moab (xv. , xvi. ), the siege of Jerusalem
(xxix. ), the prediction of the return of the exiles (xxxv. ),—these and
other pieces are classic. As an example of its descriptive power we
may take the picture of Jehovah's coming vengeance on Edom
(xxxiv. ):-
APPROACH, O nations, and hear,
And hearken, O ye peoples.
Let the earth hear, and all that it contains,
The world, and all that it produces.
Jehovah is wrathful against all the nations,
Furious against the whole host of them,
He has laid them under a ban,
Given them over to slaughter.
Their slain shall be cast forth,
The stench of their corpses shall ascend,
The mountains shall melt with their blood;
All the host of heaven shall decay,
The heavens shall be rolled up as a scroll,
All their host shall wither,
As withers foliage from vine, leaf from fig-tree.
My sword has drunk its fill in heaven,
Now it descends for vengeance on Edom, the banned
people.
Jehovah has a sword, reeking with blood, anointed
with fat,
Blood of lambs and goats, fat of kidneys of rams,
For Jehovah holds a sacrifice in Bozrah,
A mighty slaughter in the land of Edom:
With these beasts wild oxen shall fall,
And bullocks along with bulls.
I
E
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Jehovah's day of vengeance comes,
The year of requital in Zion's quarrel.
Edom's stream shall turn to pitch,
And its soil to brimstone-
-
Burning pitch its land shall become.
It shall not be quenched night nor day,
Its smoke shall ascend for ever,
From generation to generation it shall lie waste,
None shall pass through it for ever and ever.
Pelican and bittern shall possess it,
Owl and raven shall dwell therein,
Jehovah shall stretch over it the measuring-line of des-
olation,
And the plummet of emptiness.
Its nobles shall vanish,
All its princes shall perish,
Thorns shall spring up in its palaces,
Nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the habitation of jackals,
The dwelling-place of ostriches.
There beasts of the desert shall meet,
The wilderness-demon shall cry to its fellow,
The demoness of night there shall repose,
And find in it her lair;
The arrow-snake shall make its nest,
In its shadow lay and hatch and brood,
And hawks shall be gathered together.
Search Jehovah's scroll and read;
Not one of these shall be missing,
Not one shall want its mate.
For his mouth it is has commanded,
His spirit it is that has gathered them.
For them he has cast the lot,
And his hand has measured the land.
For ever and ever they shall possess it,
Dwell therein from generation to generation.
The most splendid of Prophetic rhapsodies are found in Isaiah,
xl. -lxvi. We may cite from these, as an example of vivid imagination
## p. 10789 (#669) ##########################################
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and gorgeous coloring, the famous description of Israel's coming glory,
in Chapter 1x. :-
ARISE, shine; for thy light is come,
And the glory of Jehovah shines upon thee.
Darkness shall cover the earth,
And gross darkness the peoples,
But Jehovah shall shine upon thee,
And his glory shall appear upon thee.
Nations shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy radiance.
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
They gather themselves together, they come to thee;
Thy sons shall come from far,
And thy daughters shall be carried in the arms.
Then shalt thou clearly see,
Thy heart shall expand with joy.
For the abundance of the sea shall be given thee,
The wealth of the nations shall come unto thee.
A multitude of camels shall cover thee,
The dromedaries of Midian and Ephah;
Men shall come from Sheba, bringing gold and frank-
incense,
They shall proclaim the praises of Jehovah.
All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to thee,
The rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee:
They shall be offered as acceptable sacrifices on mine
altar,
And I will glorify the house of my glory.
Who are these that fly as a cloud,
As the doves to their windows?
Surely the isles shall wait for me,
And the ships of Tarshish first,
To bring thy sons from far,
Their silver and their gold with them,
For the name of Jehovah thy God,
For the Holy One of Israel,
Because he hath glorified thee.
Strangers shall build thy walls,
Their kings shall minister unto thee,
For in my wrath I smote thee,
## p. 10790 (#670) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
But in my love I have mercy on thee.
Thy gates shall be open continually,
Shall not be shut by day or night;
That men may bring thee the wealth of the nations,
And their kings be led with them.
Nation and kingdom shall perish that serves thee
not:
Yea, blasted shall those nations be.
The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee,
The cypress, the elm, and the cedar.
I will beautify the place of my sanctuary,
And make the place of my feet glorious.
The sons of thine oppressors shall bend before
thee;
They that despised thee shall bow down at thy
feet;
Thou shalt be called the City of Jehovah,
Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
I will make thee an eternal excellency,
A joy of endless generations.
For bronze I will bring gold, and for iron silver,
For wood bronze, and for stones iron.
I will make thine officers peace,
And thy taskmasters justice.
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land,
Desolation nor destruction within thy borders,
But thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,
And thy gates Praise.
The sun shall no more be thy light by day,
Nor the brightness of the moon give thee light
by night,
But Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And thy God thy glory.
Thy sun shall no more go down,
Neither shall thy moon withdraw itself:
For Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And the days of thy mourning shall be ended.
Thy people shall be all righteous,
They shall possess the land forever.
The little one shall become a thousand,
And the small one a strong nation.
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Similarly:-
Hebrew poetry, it is generally admitted, is characterized as to its
form by rhythm and parallelism. Rhythm is the melodious flow of
syllables. Parallelism-a form characteristic of, and almost peculiar
to, old Semitic poetry-is the balancing of phrases; the second line
in a couplet being a repetition of the first in varied phrase, or pre-
senting some sort of expansion of or contrast to the first. These two
general classes of parallelism may be called the identical and the
antithetical. An example of the first sort is:-
or, with one slight variation:
Rebuke me not in thy wrath,
Chasten me not in thine anger (Ps. xxxviii. 1);
POETRY
-
The heavens declare the glory of God,
The firmament showeth his handiwork (Ps. xix. 1).
Question and answer:-
Jehovah reigns-let the nations tremble;
He is enthroned on the cherubs - let the earth be moved (Ps. xcix. 1).
Examples of the second are:-
The arms of the wicked shall be broken,
But Jehovah upholds the righteous (Ps. xxxvii. 17).
The plans of the mind belong to man,
The answer of the tongue is from Jehovah (Prov. xvi. 1).
I lift up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
or, with fuller expansion:-
My help comes from Jehovah,
Who made heaven and earth (Ps. cxxi. 1, 2);
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to Heaven, thou art there;
If I couch me in Sheol, lo, thou art there;
If I take the wings of the Dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest West,
There shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me (Ps. cxxxix. 7-10).
Between the extremes of complete identity and complete antithe-
sis there are many sub-varieties, the combinations and interchanges
of which, in the hands of a gifted poet, give exquisite delicacy and
charm to the form of the verse.
## p. 10792 (#672) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Various efforts have been made to discover metre in Hebrew poetry,
-a regular succession of feet after the manner of the Greek; but
without success, and such attempts are now discountenanced by the
majority of critics. Elaborate schemes of dimeter, trimeter, tetram-
eter, and pentameter, which one still finds defended in certain mod-
ern books, may be rejected as having no basis in fact. There might
be more to say in favor of a system of ictus or beats of the voice.
It is true that all poetry is marked by a certain succession of rhyth-
mic beats. But the succession does not occur in Hebrew according
to any fixed rule. It appears to be determined by the feeling of the
poet, and its appreciation may safely be left to the feeling of the
reader. This much is true, that, in a series of couplets, the same
number of accented syllables may be employed in each couplet, and
we may thus have a guide in fixing the limits of the stanzas; but
even these limits we must leave to the free choice of the poet,
without attempting to impose our rules on him. To such norms,
characterized by the number of beats, we may give the names binary
(when the line has two beats), ternary (of three beats), quaternary,
and so on. In the Book of Proverbs many of the lines or verses are
ternary; elsewhere we find other forms. These can rarely be repro-
duced exactly in English.
Naturally also, these groups of couplets arrange themselves in
strophes or stanzas; but here again, no fixed rule prevails. A stanza
may consist of two, three, four, or more couplets; and adjoining
stanzas may differ in their number of couplets. As the original text
does not indicate any such division, we are left to the rhythm of the
couplets and to the connection of the sense to determine the order of
the strophes. An example of a symmetrical division in the stanzas
is found in the second Psalm, which consists of four stanzas of three
couplets each. In the first, the hostile nations are introduced as
speaking; in the second the speaker is Jehovah; in the third the
speaker is the royal Son, whose coronation has just been announced;
and in the fourth, the poet exhorts the nation to obedience.
Hebrew poetry is either emotional or gnomic. It either enounces
rules of life, in the form of apophthegms or proverbs, or it describes
the poet's own feeling in the presence of any phenomenon of joy or
suffering. It thus, in general, belongs to the class which we call
lyric. It does not present any example of what we call epic and
dramatic. There has been a natural desire to discover, in the Old
Testament poetry, examples of the poetic forms familiar to us in
Greek literature; and so it has been said that the Book of Job is a
drama or an epic, and that the Song of Songs is a lyric drama. But
a little reflection suffices to show that the Book of Job lacks the
essential element of epic and drama; that is to, say, action. It is, in
## p. 10793 (#673) ##########################################
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fact, nothing but an argument consisting of elaborate speeches, with
a conclusion attached. There is no catastrophe toward which all the
acts of the personages tend. The interest lies in the discussion of a
religious theme; Jehovah permits the debate to go on to a certain
point, and then intervenes, the human actors having nothing to do
with bringing about the result. The Song of Songs is a series of love
songs, so delicately conceived, so undefined in shape, so lacking in
indications of place and time, that no two critics have as yet agreed
in their conclusions as to who are the actors in the supposed drama,
or where the action takes place, or what is its culmination. It is
obviously necessary to take it, not as a drama, but as a group of
songs. And in general, we do nothing but harm to the old Hebrew
literature in trying to force it into the forms of a foreign people.
The mistake is similar to that which has been made by Hebrew
grammarians, who have tried to construct Hebrew grammar in the
forms of Greek or Latin grammar; a procedure which, as scholars
are now coming to recognize, can result only in misapprehension and
misrepresentation. It is no less fatal to the poetic form of a people
to force it into the categories of another people. Justice will be
done to the Old Testament on its literary side only when we take it
for what it is, and try to apprehend its form and enjoy its beauties
according to its own rules.
So far as regards the higher characteristics of poetry, these are
the same in the Old Testament as elsewhere. There is eloquence,
pathos, charm, sublimity,-qualities which are confined to no one
race or people. And that the poetry is subjective-that it contains.
only the expression of the poet's feeling or reflection-will be evi-
dent from a brief review of the books themselves.
Let us begin with the Book of Psalms, the longest and most varied
of the poetic books of the Old Testament. It contains simple lucid
bits of description, agonizing cries to God for help, exultation for vic-
tory, rejoicing in time of peace, expression of consciousness of sin,
and odes of praise to the God of Israel. As an example of a gentle,
calm confidence and joy, we may take the 23d Psalm:—
THE Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want;-
He makes me recline in green pastures,
He leads me to still waters.
-
He restores my soul,
He guides me in safe paths for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of gloom,
I fear no evil,
For thou art with me,
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Thou preparest me a table in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runs over.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life,
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Here the imagery, derived from the shepherd's life, is of the most
restful sort; and the whole picture is one of perfect repose under
the protection of God. In contrast with this, the 24th Psalm is an
exulting ode of praise; and the first part, verses 1-6, which states
the moral qualities demanded of those who are to serve Jehovah in
his temple, begins with a declaration of the Divine might:-
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof,
The world, and they that dwell therein;
For he has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
The second part is the hymn of a solemn procession, in which
Jehovah is spoken of as entering the temple, and it is conceived in
the finest vein of stirring song:-
-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Be ye lift up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Here a member of the choir sings:
Who is the King of Glory?
And the answer comes from the whole choir:-
The Lord strong and mighty!
The Lord mighty in battle!
The chorus is then repeated:-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Yea, lift them up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Again the question and answer:-
Who is this King of Glory?
The Lord of Hosts,
He is the King of Glory!
Among the most beautiful of the odes of the Psalter are the so-
called Pilgrim songs (Pss. cxx. -cxxxiv. ); each bears the title Song of
Ascents, the meaning of which is doubtful; they differ greatly from
one another in sentiment and length. One of them, Ps. cxxvii. , is a
song of the household, speaking of house and children. Another,
## p. 10795 (#675) ##########################################
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10795
Ps. cxxxii. , describes the choosing of the site of the temple. We shall
not find a more beautiful expression of trust in God than that which
is given by the 121st Psalm:
:-
I LIFT up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made Heaven and Earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved;
He who keeps thee does not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
Slumbers not nor sleeps.
The Lord is thy keeper,
The Lord is a shade on thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep thee from all evil,
He will preserve thy life.
The Lord will keep thy going out and thy coming in
From this time forth and for evermore.
The longer psalms are either odes written on the occasion of
some national festivity, or narrations of national history, or, in a few
cases, the expression of national experiences. Of these perhaps the
most striking are the 18th and the 68th. The former is a description
of struggle and victory. It contains one of the most magnificent of
poetical passages: –
IN MY distress I called upon the Lord,
I cried unto my God.
He heard my voice from his palace,
And my cry came to his ears.
Then the earth shook and trembled,
The foundations of the mountains were shaken.
Smoke ascended in his nostrils,
Fire out of his mouth devoured,
Coals were kindled by it!
He bowed the heavens and descended;
Thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode upon a cherub and did fly;
He flew on the wings of the wind!
He made darkness his habitation,
And darkest clouds his pavilion.
In brightness passed his thick clouds,
With hail and coals of fire.
The Lord thundered in heaven,
## p. 10796 (#676) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
The Most High uttered his voice.
He sent out his arrows and scattered them,
Shot forth his lightnings and appalled them.
Then the bed of the Deep appeared;
The foundations of the world were laid bare,
At thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils!
It was from this passage that Sternhold and Hopkins elicited the
only bit of poetry in their metrical version of the Psalms:-
The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heavens most high,
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky.
On cherub and on cherubim
Full royally he rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad!
The 68th Psalm is a procession-ode, consisting of a series of stanzas
of singular majesty and force. Psalms 1xxvii. and 1xxxix. , cv. and
cvi. are historical reviews. Psalms ciii. and civ. are odes in celebra-
tion of the glorious and beneficent deeds of Jehovah.
A peculiarity of the Psalter is the presence of alphabetical psalms,
in which each verse or stanza begins with a letter of the alphabet in
order. There are a number of these: the alphabetical arrangement
is, however, not always perfect; and it is, of course, not recognizable
in the English translation. The most noteworthy example is the 119th
Psalm, a collection of couplets in praise of the Law. It is divided
into twenty-two stanzas (according to the number of letters in the
Hebrew alphabet) of eight couplets each. Such psalms, however, are
naturally the least attractive in poetic form.
The Psalter is divided in the Hebrew Bible, and in the English
Revised Version, into five books (in imitation of the division of the
Pentateuch): and these are supposed to indicate collections which
were made at different times; the whole having been finally combined
into our present Psalm-book. The Psalter grew with the temple
services, and many-perhaps the most-of its hymns were intended
for recitation in the sacred place.
A peculiar and very effective form of Hebrew poetry is the elegy.
The discovery of the form of the Hebrew elegy or lament (the
recognition of which adds not a little to the reader's pleasure) is
due to Professor Karl Budde, now of Strassburg.
The elegiac verse
is characterized by a short clause, followed by a still shorter clause,
giving to the phrase a peculiar restrained movement. The most
## p. 10797 (#677) ##########################################
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10797
noted example of this poetic form is found in our Book of Lamenta-
tions a collection of laments over the sorrows of Israel. Thus, in
the beginning of the second chapter:-
―
THE Lord in his anger has smitten
The daughter of Zion,
And cast down from heaven to earth
The beauty of Israel;
He has not remembered his footstool
In the day of his wrath!
The Lord has destroyed without mercy
The dwellings of Jacob;
Has thrown down in anger the stronghold
Of the daughter of Judah;
Has cast to the ground, desecrated,
The realm and its princes.
One feels here how the emotion of the poet drives him into this
sad brief appendage at the end of each line. Elegies are not con-
fined to the Book of Lamentations, but are found elsewhere in the
Old Testament. In Ezekiel xix. are two laments, one for the princes
and the other for the nation. The first reads as follows:-
THY mother was like a lioness | among lions.
Amid young lions she couched, | she reared her whelps.
One of her whelps she brought up, | he became a young lion.
He learned to seize his prey, | men he devoured.
Against him the nations raised a cry, | in their pit he was taken.
They brought him with hooks away | to the land of Egypt.
She saw that she had failed, | her hope had perished.
Another of her whelps she took, | a young lion she made him.
(Etc. )
So the magnificent ode, written in elegiac form, in Isaiah xiv. , in
which the fall of the King of Babylon is celebrated:-
How is the tyrant quelled, | quelled his havoc!
The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, | the ruler's sceptre!
Who, in his wrath, smote the nations | with blows unceasing!
At rest is the world, and at peace- | breaks forth into song!
Over thee exult the spruce-trees, | the cedars of Lebanon:
"Since thou art laid low there comes no longer | the woodman
against us. "
The realm of Shades beneath is stirred | to meet thine arrival.
―――――
## p. 10798 (#678) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
―
It rouses the Shades for thee -
| the heroes of earth,
Rouses from their thrones | the kings of the nations.
To thee they all speak, and say:-
"Thou too art become weak as we, | art become like us;
Thy pomp is brought down to the Shades, | the clang of thy
harps;
Mold is the bed beneath thee | and worms thy covering.
How art thou fallen from heaven, | bright star of dawn!
How art thou hurled to the ground, | thou conqueror of nations!
Thou hadst thought in thy heart, 'To heaven I'll mount,
High above the stars of God | exalt my throne;
I will sit on the mount of God | in farthest north;
To the heights of the clouds I'll ascend- | be like the Most High! '
And now thou art hurled to the realm of death,
To the deepest abyss. "
A still better conception of the power of the elegiac verse is
given by the fine alphabetic ode in triplets contained in Lamenta-
tions i.
How sitteth the city solitary, | once full of people.
She who was great among the nations | is become as a widow.
The princess among the provinces | is become tributary.
She weepeth sore in the night, | her cheeks are wet with tears;
She hath none to comfort her | among all her lovers;
All her friends are traitors, | are become her enemies.
Exiled is Judah in grievous affliction, | in bitter servitude;
She dwelleth among the nations, | findeth no rest;
All her persecutors overtook her | in the midst of her straits.
The ways to Zion do mourn, | none come to her feasts;
All her gates are desolate, | her priests do sigh;
Her virgins are deeply afflicted, and she is in bitterness.
Her adversaries are become supreme, | her enemies prosper;
For Jehovah hath sorely afflicted her | for her many sins;
Her children are gone into captivity | before the adversary.
Gone from the Daughter of Zion | is all her splendor.
Her princes are become like harts | that find no pasture:
Powerless they have fled | before the pursuer.
Jerusalem remembereth her days of affliction and misery,
When her people succumbed to the foe, | and none did help
her;
On her her enemies gazed, | mocked at her bereavement.
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Jerusalem hath grievously sinned, | foul is she become;
All that honored her despise her | because they have seen her
disgrace.
Yea, she herself sigheth | and turneth away.
Her filthiness is in her skirts, | she remembered not her end;
Wonderful is her downfall, | she hath no comforter.
Behold, O Jehovah, my affliction, | for the foe doth triumph.
The adversary hath laid his hand | on all her treasures;
She hath beheld the nations enter | her sanctuary,
Who, thou commandedst, should not come into | thy congrega-
tion.
All her people sigh, | seeking bread.
Their treasures they have given for food | their life to sus-
tain.
See, O Jehovah, and behold | how I am despised.
Ho, all ye that pass by, | behold and see
If there be sorrow like to the sorrow | which is come upon
me,
Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted me | in the day of his anger.
Fire from on high he hath sent, | into my bones hath driven it,
Hath spread a net for my feet, | turned me back;
Desolate he hath made me, | faint all the day.
Bound is the yoke of my trespasses | by his hand;
Knit together they lie on my neck, | my strength doth fail.
The Lord hath given me up to them | whom I cannot with-
stand.
My heroes the Lord hath cast down | in the midst of me,
Hath summoned a solemn assembly | to crush my warriors;
In a wine-press he hath trodden | the virgin daughter of Judah.
For these things weep mine eyes, | my tears run down;
Far away from me is the comforter | who should revive my
soul;
Desolate are my children | because the foe hath prevailed.
Zion spreadeth forth her hands, | there is none to comfort her;
This hath Jehovah ordained for Jacob, that his neighbors.
should be his foes;
Among them is Jerusalem become | a thing of loathing.
## p. 10800 (#680) ##########################################
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Jehovah, he is just-I have rebelled against him.
Hear, all ye peoples, | behold my sorrow:
My virgins and my young men | are gone into captivity.
On my friends I called, they deceived me.
My priests and my elders | perished in the city,
Seeking food for themselves | to sustain their lives.
Behold, O Jehovah, my deep distress: | my soul is troubled;
My heart is o'erwhelmed within me, | rebellious was I.
Abroad the sword bereaveth, | at home is death.
They have heard that I sigh, | there is none to comfort me.
My foes have heard of my trouble, | they are glad thou didst it.
Bring in the day thou hast announced, | let them be like me.
Regard thou all their wickedness; | do to them
As thou hast done to me | for all my sins!
For many are my sighs, | my heart is faint.
Other examples of the elegy are found in Amos, v. 1; Ezek. xxvii.
32-36, and xxxii. 19–32.
The Book of Job must be reckoned among the great poems of the
world. The prose introduction - the story of the crushing of Job's
worldly hopes-is itself full of power. The poem is unique in form.
It is a series of monologues, all united by the author's intention to
develop a certain idea in connection with the question, "Why do
the righteous suffer? " The Three Friends affirm that the righteous
do not suffer,—that is, that no man suffers except for wrong-doing.
Job combats this view to the uttermost, holding that he is righteous
and that he suffers. Elihu further insists that suffering is designed to
destroy the pride of men who are otherwise good. Finally, Jehovah
intervenes, and proclaims the wonderfulness of his government of
the world, and Job is reduced to silence. The freshness and variety
of thought, the picture of a terrible struggle in Job's soul, the
majestic descriptions of Divine power,-all these together give a
peculiar impressiveness to the book. At the outset, Job gives us a
glimpse into his own soul:-
PERISH the day wherein I was born,
And the night which said, Behold, a man!
Let that day be darkness;
May God ask not of it;
May no light shine on it;
May darkness and gloom claim it,
Clouds dwell on it, and eclipses terrify it!
―
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Job longs for death, that he may go to that sad underworld, and
dwell
Where-
-
To this outburst, the eldest of the three friends, Eliphaz, replies
by insisting on the general rule that men receive in this world what
they deserve; and he expresses his conclusion in the form of a
vision:-
With kings and councilors of the earth,
Who built tombs for themselves,
-
The wicked cease from troubling,
And the weary are at rest.
XVIII-676
Stealthily came to me a word,
And a whisper to my ear;
In thoughts, from visions of the night,
When deep sleep falls on men.
Fear came upon me, and trembling,
Which made all my bones to shake;
And a breath passed over my face,
The hair of my head stood up.
There It stood! Its semblance I could not see! -
-
Job replies to this, and is answered by the second friend, replies
to him, is followed by the third friend, and so for several rounds of
argument, the only effect of which on Job is to draw him to deeper
hopelessness. He exclaims (vii. 7):—
A form was before my eyes!
I heard a voice which whispered,
"Shall man be more just than God,—
A creature purer than the Creator?
He puts no trust in his servants,
His angels he charges with folly:
How much more them who dwell in houses of clay,
Whose foundation is in the dust? "
A tree cut down may sprout again,
Its tender branch will not cease.
Though its root wax old in the earth,
And its stock die in the ground,
Yet through the scent of water it will bud,
And put forth boughs like a plant.
But man dies and wastes away,
Breathes out his life, and where is he?
The waters pour out of the sea,
The river dries up and fails;
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
So man lies down and rises not;
Till the heavens be no more they shall not awake,
Nor be raised out of their sleep!
Then there comes to him a vague wish that God would think of
him after death in the underworld, and he exclaims:-
Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the underworld,
Keep me secret till thy wrath be past,
Appoint me a set time, and remember me!
The finest outbursts of poetry are to be found in the speeches of
Job himself, yet others also contain many striking pieces. See, for
example, the speech of Zophar, Chapter xx. ; that of Eliphaz, Chapter
xxii. ; and that of Bildad, Chapter xxv. Elihu's description of the
chastening power of suffering in xxxiii. 19-28 is also full of vigor:-
He is chastened with pain on his bed,
In his bones is continual torment;
He abhors all nourishing bread,
Cares not for dainty food;
His flesh wastes away to nothing,
His bones, hid no longer, stick out,
And he draws near unto the pit,-
His life approaches the dead!
—:
If there be an interpreter with him
Who will shew him what is right,
Will be gracious to him, and say,
"Loose him! I have ransomed his life,"
Then his flesh becomes fresher than a child's,
He returns to the days of his youth,
He prays to God, who accepts him,
Shews him his face in joy,
Restores to him his righteousness.
He sings before him, and says:-
"I had sinned, and done what was wrong,
-
But it was not requited to me;
He has redeemed me from the pit!
My life shall behold the light! "
The speeches of Jehovah make a magnificent poem in themselves.
Chapters xxviii. , xxxix. , are worthy to stand alongside the first chap-
ter of Genesis for sublimity of statement, and have in addition the
freshness and color of a fine imagination. One other poem in Job,
that contained in Chapter xxviii. , we may reserve, in order to place
it alongside of several similar poems.
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We have already seen that the Canticles, or Song of Songs, must
be taken as a group of songs of love, in which it is impossible to
discover any relation of time and place. It may be compared, for
poetic grace, with the finest idylls of Theocritus. It breathes the air
of the fields and mountains; and in this respect is unique among
the Old Testament books. For ancient poetry does not occupy itself
directly with external nature. Neither among the Greeks nor among
the Hebrews do we find the phenomena of nature introduced into
poetry for their own sake: they are used as illustrations purely.
The reason of this is not that the ancients did not love nature,-
tainly they must have been alive to its charm. It is rather that
only in modern times have men come to that habit of close observa-
tion of nature which has made it possible to use its varying forms as
part of poetic material. So, in the Psalms, clouds and mountains,
stream and sunshine, appear as exhibiting the power and wisdom or
the wrath or the love of God. But not even in such Psalms as xviii.
and xix. does the poet dwell on these phenomena for their own sake.
In this book we seem to have an exception to this rule; as in the
beautiful spring song in Chapter ii. :-
cer-
―
THE Voice of my Beloved! Lo, he comes,
Leaping over the mountains,
Skipping over the hills!
My Beloved is like a roe, a young hart.
Now he stands behind our wall,
Looks through the window,
Peeps through the lattice.
My beloved spake, and said to me:-
Arise, my Love, my Fair One, and come away!
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
The voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land,
The fig-tree ripens her figs,
The vines are in blossom,
They give forth their fragrance.
Arise, my Love, my Fair One, and come away!
Here the pictures introduced are all of the country, and all charm-
ing, and the poet seems to dwell on them for their own sake. But
after all he does not do this. It is the lover who describes the
beautiful face of nature, in order to tempt his beloved to come
forth and roam with him over the fields and hills. Nevertheless,
the pictures of natural scenery which he gives are very striking, and
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
might easily prepare the way for that completer contemplation of
nature which is found in the modern poets. .
It is the occurrence of responsive songs in the book that has sug-
gested the opinion that it is a drama. How vague the speeches and
the supposed dialogue are, will appear from the following examples.
The occasion of the first address to the Jerusalem ladies (1. 5, 6) is
not obvious:-
I am dark but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar,
As the curtains of Solomon.
Scorn me not because I am dark,
Because the sun has shone on me.
For my brothers were wroth with me,
And made me keeper of the vineyards.
On this follows the first dialogue:-
The Beloved speaks (i. 7):
Tell me, thou whom I love,
Where thou feedest thy flock at noon;
For I would not seem to be a loiterer
Beside thy comrades' flocks.
The Lover replies (i. 8):
If thou know not, O fairest of women,
Go, follow the tracks of the flock,
And feed thy kids by the shepherds' tents.
After a brief descriptive strophe, the second dialogue proceeds (i. 15-
ii. 6):-
Thou art fair, my Love, thou art fair,
Thou hast the eyes of a dove.
Thou art fair, my Love, and lovely.
Our couch is the greensward,
The beams of our house are the cedars,
The walls of our rooms are the cypresses.
I am a rose of Sharon,
A lily of the valleys.
As a lily among thorns,
So is my Love among the maidens.
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As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood,
So is my Love among the youths.
Under his shadow I sat with delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting-house,
And his banner over me was love.
Stay me with raisins, strengthen me with apples,
For I am sick with love.
Be his left hand under my head!
Let his right hand embrace me!
Refrain (ii. 7, iii. 5):
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles and the hinds of the field,
Rouse not nor awaken love
Until it please!
The search by night for the Beloved (iii. 1-4):
At night on my bed I sought my Beloved,
Sought him, and found him not.
(I said) I will arise and go through the city;
In the streets and the squares
I will seek my Beloved.
I sought him and found him not.
The watchmen, patrolling the city, found me.
"Saw ye my beloved? »
Scarce had I passed from them,
When I found him whom I love,
I held him, would not let him go.
The vagueness of this narration is equaled by that of its com-
panion song, the less fortunate search for the Lover, of which we
cannot say whether it is a dream or reality (v. 2-7):—
I sleep, but my heart is awake.
Hark! my Beloved knocks, and cries:
Open to me, my sister, my friend,
My dove, my perfect one!
For my head is filled with dew,
My locks with the drops of the night.
(She): I have put off my dress-
Must I put it on again?
I have washed my feet-
Must I defile them?
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
My Beloved put his hand through the window,
My soul yearned for him.
I rose to open to my Beloved,
And my hand dropped with myrrh,
And my fingers with liquid myrrh,
On the handles of the bolt.
I opened to my Beloved,
But he had withdrawn and was gone —
My heart had failed me when he spake.
I sought him, but found him not,
I called, he answered not.
The watchmen, patrolling the city, found me,
They smote me, they wounded me,
The keepers of the walls took from me my veil.
This exquisite piece is the expression of the longing of love; it
does not belong to a drama. The reference to the night-watchmen
of the city is to be noted.
We add two beautiful expressions of love, the first, of joy in the
possession of the beloved one (iv. 16, v. 1):—
Awake, O north wind; come, O south!
Breathe on my garden that its balsam may flow!
Let my Beloved come into his garden,
And enjoy its precious fruits!
of the haughty bearing and the overthrow of the King of Assyria
(x. , xxxvii. ), the lament over Moab (xv. , xvi. ), the siege of Jerusalem
(xxix. ), the prediction of the return of the exiles (xxxv. ),—these and
other pieces are classic. As an example of its descriptive power we
may take the picture of Jehovah's coming vengeance on Edom
(xxxiv. ):-
APPROACH, O nations, and hear,
And hearken, O ye peoples.
Let the earth hear, and all that it contains,
The world, and all that it produces.
Jehovah is wrathful against all the nations,
Furious against the whole host of them,
He has laid them under a ban,
Given them over to slaughter.
Their slain shall be cast forth,
The stench of their corpses shall ascend,
The mountains shall melt with their blood;
All the host of heaven shall decay,
The heavens shall be rolled up as a scroll,
All their host shall wither,
As withers foliage from vine, leaf from fig-tree.
My sword has drunk its fill in heaven,
Now it descends for vengeance on Edom, the banned
people.
Jehovah has a sword, reeking with blood, anointed
with fat,
Blood of lambs and goats, fat of kidneys of rams,
For Jehovah holds a sacrifice in Bozrah,
A mighty slaughter in the land of Edom:
With these beasts wild oxen shall fall,
And bullocks along with bulls.
I
E
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Jehovah's day of vengeance comes,
The year of requital in Zion's quarrel.
Edom's stream shall turn to pitch,
And its soil to brimstone-
-
Burning pitch its land shall become.
It shall not be quenched night nor day,
Its smoke shall ascend for ever,
From generation to generation it shall lie waste,
None shall pass through it for ever and ever.
Pelican and bittern shall possess it,
Owl and raven shall dwell therein,
Jehovah shall stretch over it the measuring-line of des-
olation,
And the plummet of emptiness.
Its nobles shall vanish,
All its princes shall perish,
Thorns shall spring up in its palaces,
Nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the habitation of jackals,
The dwelling-place of ostriches.
There beasts of the desert shall meet,
The wilderness-demon shall cry to its fellow,
The demoness of night there shall repose,
And find in it her lair;
The arrow-snake shall make its nest,
In its shadow lay and hatch and brood,
And hawks shall be gathered together.
Search Jehovah's scroll and read;
Not one of these shall be missing,
Not one shall want its mate.
For his mouth it is has commanded,
His spirit it is that has gathered them.
For them he has cast the lot,
And his hand has measured the land.
For ever and ever they shall possess it,
Dwell therein from generation to generation.
The most splendid of Prophetic rhapsodies are found in Isaiah,
xl. -lxvi. We may cite from these, as an example of vivid imagination
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and gorgeous coloring, the famous description of Israel's coming glory,
in Chapter 1x. :-
ARISE, shine; for thy light is come,
And the glory of Jehovah shines upon thee.
Darkness shall cover the earth,
And gross darkness the peoples,
But Jehovah shall shine upon thee,
And his glory shall appear upon thee.
Nations shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy radiance.
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
They gather themselves together, they come to thee;
Thy sons shall come from far,
And thy daughters shall be carried in the arms.
Then shalt thou clearly see,
Thy heart shall expand with joy.
For the abundance of the sea shall be given thee,
The wealth of the nations shall come unto thee.
A multitude of camels shall cover thee,
The dromedaries of Midian and Ephah;
Men shall come from Sheba, bringing gold and frank-
incense,
They shall proclaim the praises of Jehovah.
All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to thee,
The rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee:
They shall be offered as acceptable sacrifices on mine
altar,
And I will glorify the house of my glory.
Who are these that fly as a cloud,
As the doves to their windows?
Surely the isles shall wait for me,
And the ships of Tarshish first,
To bring thy sons from far,
Their silver and their gold with them,
For the name of Jehovah thy God,
For the Holy One of Israel,
Because he hath glorified thee.
Strangers shall build thy walls,
Their kings shall minister unto thee,
For in my wrath I smote thee,
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
But in my love I have mercy on thee.
Thy gates shall be open continually,
Shall not be shut by day or night;
That men may bring thee the wealth of the nations,
And their kings be led with them.
Nation and kingdom shall perish that serves thee
not:
Yea, blasted shall those nations be.
The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee,
The cypress, the elm, and the cedar.
I will beautify the place of my sanctuary,
And make the place of my feet glorious.
The sons of thine oppressors shall bend before
thee;
They that despised thee shall bow down at thy
feet;
Thou shalt be called the City of Jehovah,
Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
I will make thee an eternal excellency,
A joy of endless generations.
For bronze I will bring gold, and for iron silver,
For wood bronze, and for stones iron.
I will make thine officers peace,
And thy taskmasters justice.
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land,
Desolation nor destruction within thy borders,
But thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,
And thy gates Praise.
The sun shall no more be thy light by day,
Nor the brightness of the moon give thee light
by night,
But Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And thy God thy glory.
Thy sun shall no more go down,
Neither shall thy moon withdraw itself:
For Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light,
And the days of thy mourning shall be ended.
Thy people shall be all righteous,
They shall possess the land forever.
The little one shall become a thousand,
And the small one a strong nation.
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Similarly:-
Hebrew poetry, it is generally admitted, is characterized as to its
form by rhythm and parallelism. Rhythm is the melodious flow of
syllables. Parallelism-a form characteristic of, and almost peculiar
to, old Semitic poetry-is the balancing of phrases; the second line
in a couplet being a repetition of the first in varied phrase, or pre-
senting some sort of expansion of or contrast to the first. These two
general classes of parallelism may be called the identical and the
antithetical. An example of the first sort is:-
or, with one slight variation:
Rebuke me not in thy wrath,
Chasten me not in thine anger (Ps. xxxviii. 1);
POETRY
-
The heavens declare the glory of God,
The firmament showeth his handiwork (Ps. xix. 1).
Question and answer:-
Jehovah reigns-let the nations tremble;
He is enthroned on the cherubs - let the earth be moved (Ps. xcix. 1).
Examples of the second are:-
The arms of the wicked shall be broken,
But Jehovah upholds the righteous (Ps. xxxvii. 17).
The plans of the mind belong to man,
The answer of the tongue is from Jehovah (Prov. xvi. 1).
I lift up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
or, with fuller expansion:-
My help comes from Jehovah,
Who made heaven and earth (Ps. cxxi. 1, 2);
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to Heaven, thou art there;
If I couch me in Sheol, lo, thou art there;
If I take the wings of the Dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest West,
There shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me (Ps. cxxxix. 7-10).
Between the extremes of complete identity and complete antithe-
sis there are many sub-varieties, the combinations and interchanges
of which, in the hands of a gifted poet, give exquisite delicacy and
charm to the form of the verse.
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Various efforts have been made to discover metre in Hebrew poetry,
-a regular succession of feet after the manner of the Greek; but
without success, and such attempts are now discountenanced by the
majority of critics. Elaborate schemes of dimeter, trimeter, tetram-
eter, and pentameter, which one still finds defended in certain mod-
ern books, may be rejected as having no basis in fact. There might
be more to say in favor of a system of ictus or beats of the voice.
It is true that all poetry is marked by a certain succession of rhyth-
mic beats. But the succession does not occur in Hebrew according
to any fixed rule. It appears to be determined by the feeling of the
poet, and its appreciation may safely be left to the feeling of the
reader. This much is true, that, in a series of couplets, the same
number of accented syllables may be employed in each couplet, and
we may thus have a guide in fixing the limits of the stanzas; but
even these limits we must leave to the free choice of the poet,
without attempting to impose our rules on him. To such norms,
characterized by the number of beats, we may give the names binary
(when the line has two beats), ternary (of three beats), quaternary,
and so on. In the Book of Proverbs many of the lines or verses are
ternary; elsewhere we find other forms. These can rarely be repro-
duced exactly in English.
Naturally also, these groups of couplets arrange themselves in
strophes or stanzas; but here again, no fixed rule prevails. A stanza
may consist of two, three, four, or more couplets; and adjoining
stanzas may differ in their number of couplets. As the original text
does not indicate any such division, we are left to the rhythm of the
couplets and to the connection of the sense to determine the order of
the strophes. An example of a symmetrical division in the stanzas
is found in the second Psalm, which consists of four stanzas of three
couplets each. In the first, the hostile nations are introduced as
speaking; in the second the speaker is Jehovah; in the third the
speaker is the royal Son, whose coronation has just been announced;
and in the fourth, the poet exhorts the nation to obedience.
Hebrew poetry is either emotional or gnomic. It either enounces
rules of life, in the form of apophthegms or proverbs, or it describes
the poet's own feeling in the presence of any phenomenon of joy or
suffering. It thus, in general, belongs to the class which we call
lyric. It does not present any example of what we call epic and
dramatic. There has been a natural desire to discover, in the Old
Testament poetry, examples of the poetic forms familiar to us in
Greek literature; and so it has been said that the Book of Job is a
drama or an epic, and that the Song of Songs is a lyric drama. But
a little reflection suffices to show that the Book of Job lacks the
essential element of epic and drama; that is to, say, action. It is, in
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10793
fact, nothing but an argument consisting of elaborate speeches, with
a conclusion attached. There is no catastrophe toward which all the
acts of the personages tend. The interest lies in the discussion of a
religious theme; Jehovah permits the debate to go on to a certain
point, and then intervenes, the human actors having nothing to do
with bringing about the result. The Song of Songs is a series of love
songs, so delicately conceived, so undefined in shape, so lacking in
indications of place and time, that no two critics have as yet agreed
in their conclusions as to who are the actors in the supposed drama,
or where the action takes place, or what is its culmination. It is
obviously necessary to take it, not as a drama, but as a group of
songs. And in general, we do nothing but harm to the old Hebrew
literature in trying to force it into the forms of a foreign people.
The mistake is similar to that which has been made by Hebrew
grammarians, who have tried to construct Hebrew grammar in the
forms of Greek or Latin grammar; a procedure which, as scholars
are now coming to recognize, can result only in misapprehension and
misrepresentation. It is no less fatal to the poetic form of a people
to force it into the categories of another people. Justice will be
done to the Old Testament on its literary side only when we take it
for what it is, and try to apprehend its form and enjoy its beauties
according to its own rules.
So far as regards the higher characteristics of poetry, these are
the same in the Old Testament as elsewhere. There is eloquence,
pathos, charm, sublimity,-qualities which are confined to no one
race or people. And that the poetry is subjective-that it contains.
only the expression of the poet's feeling or reflection-will be evi-
dent from a brief review of the books themselves.
Let us begin with the Book of Psalms, the longest and most varied
of the poetic books of the Old Testament. It contains simple lucid
bits of description, agonizing cries to God for help, exultation for vic-
tory, rejoicing in time of peace, expression of consciousness of sin,
and odes of praise to the God of Israel. As an example of a gentle,
calm confidence and joy, we may take the 23d Psalm:—
THE Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want;-
He makes me recline in green pastures,
He leads me to still waters.
-
He restores my soul,
He guides me in safe paths for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of gloom,
I fear no evil,
For thou art with me,
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
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Thou preparest me a table in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runs over.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life,
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Here the imagery, derived from the shepherd's life, is of the most
restful sort; and the whole picture is one of perfect repose under
the protection of God. In contrast with this, the 24th Psalm is an
exulting ode of praise; and the first part, verses 1-6, which states
the moral qualities demanded of those who are to serve Jehovah in
his temple, begins with a declaration of the Divine might:-
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof,
The world, and they that dwell therein;
For he has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
The second part is the hymn of a solemn procession, in which
Jehovah is spoken of as entering the temple, and it is conceived in
the finest vein of stirring song:-
-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Be ye lift up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Here a member of the choir sings:
Who is the King of Glory?
And the answer comes from the whole choir:-
The Lord strong and mighty!
The Lord mighty in battle!
The chorus is then repeated:-
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
Yea, lift them up, ye ancient doors!
And the King of Glory shall come in!
Again the question and answer:-
Who is this King of Glory?
The Lord of Hosts,
He is the King of Glory!
Among the most beautiful of the odes of the Psalter are the so-
called Pilgrim songs (Pss. cxx. -cxxxiv. ); each bears the title Song of
Ascents, the meaning of which is doubtful; they differ greatly from
one another in sentiment and length. One of them, Ps. cxxvii. , is a
song of the household, speaking of house and children. Another,
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10795
Ps. cxxxii. , describes the choosing of the site of the temple. We shall
not find a more beautiful expression of trust in God than that which
is given by the 121st Psalm:
:-
I LIFT up mine eyes to the mountains!
Whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made Heaven and Earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved;
He who keeps thee does not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
Slumbers not nor sleeps.
The Lord is thy keeper,
The Lord is a shade on thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep thee from all evil,
He will preserve thy life.
The Lord will keep thy going out and thy coming in
From this time forth and for evermore.
The longer psalms are either odes written on the occasion of
some national festivity, or narrations of national history, or, in a few
cases, the expression of national experiences. Of these perhaps the
most striking are the 18th and the 68th. The former is a description
of struggle and victory. It contains one of the most magnificent of
poetical passages: –
IN MY distress I called upon the Lord,
I cried unto my God.
He heard my voice from his palace,
And my cry came to his ears.
Then the earth shook and trembled,
The foundations of the mountains were shaken.
Smoke ascended in his nostrils,
Fire out of his mouth devoured,
Coals were kindled by it!
He bowed the heavens and descended;
Thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode upon a cherub and did fly;
He flew on the wings of the wind!
He made darkness his habitation,
And darkest clouds his pavilion.
In brightness passed his thick clouds,
With hail and coals of fire.
The Lord thundered in heaven,
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The Most High uttered his voice.
He sent out his arrows and scattered them,
Shot forth his lightnings and appalled them.
Then the bed of the Deep appeared;
The foundations of the world were laid bare,
At thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils!
It was from this passage that Sternhold and Hopkins elicited the
only bit of poetry in their metrical version of the Psalms:-
The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heavens most high,
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky.
On cherub and on cherubim
Full royally he rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad!
The 68th Psalm is a procession-ode, consisting of a series of stanzas
of singular majesty and force. Psalms 1xxvii. and 1xxxix. , cv. and
cvi. are historical reviews. Psalms ciii. and civ. are odes in celebra-
tion of the glorious and beneficent deeds of Jehovah.
A peculiarity of the Psalter is the presence of alphabetical psalms,
in which each verse or stanza begins with a letter of the alphabet in
order. There are a number of these: the alphabetical arrangement
is, however, not always perfect; and it is, of course, not recognizable
in the English translation. The most noteworthy example is the 119th
Psalm, a collection of couplets in praise of the Law. It is divided
into twenty-two stanzas (according to the number of letters in the
Hebrew alphabet) of eight couplets each. Such psalms, however, are
naturally the least attractive in poetic form.
The Psalter is divided in the Hebrew Bible, and in the English
Revised Version, into five books (in imitation of the division of the
Pentateuch): and these are supposed to indicate collections which
were made at different times; the whole having been finally combined
into our present Psalm-book. The Psalter grew with the temple
services, and many-perhaps the most-of its hymns were intended
for recitation in the sacred place.
A peculiar and very effective form of Hebrew poetry is the elegy.
The discovery of the form of the Hebrew elegy or lament (the
recognition of which adds not a little to the reader's pleasure) is
due to Professor Karl Budde, now of Strassburg.
The elegiac verse
is characterized by a short clause, followed by a still shorter clause,
giving to the phrase a peculiar restrained movement. The most
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noted example of this poetic form is found in our Book of Lamenta-
tions a collection of laments over the sorrows of Israel. Thus, in
the beginning of the second chapter:-
―
THE Lord in his anger has smitten
The daughter of Zion,
And cast down from heaven to earth
The beauty of Israel;
He has not remembered his footstool
In the day of his wrath!
The Lord has destroyed without mercy
The dwellings of Jacob;
Has thrown down in anger the stronghold
Of the daughter of Judah;
Has cast to the ground, desecrated,
The realm and its princes.
One feels here how the emotion of the poet drives him into this
sad brief appendage at the end of each line. Elegies are not con-
fined to the Book of Lamentations, but are found elsewhere in the
Old Testament. In Ezekiel xix. are two laments, one for the princes
and the other for the nation. The first reads as follows:-
THY mother was like a lioness | among lions.
Amid young lions she couched, | she reared her whelps.
One of her whelps she brought up, | he became a young lion.
He learned to seize his prey, | men he devoured.
Against him the nations raised a cry, | in their pit he was taken.
They brought him with hooks away | to the land of Egypt.
She saw that she had failed, | her hope had perished.
Another of her whelps she took, | a young lion she made him.
(Etc. )
So the magnificent ode, written in elegiac form, in Isaiah xiv. , in
which the fall of the King of Babylon is celebrated:-
How is the tyrant quelled, | quelled his havoc!
The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, | the ruler's sceptre!
Who, in his wrath, smote the nations | with blows unceasing!
At rest is the world, and at peace- | breaks forth into song!
Over thee exult the spruce-trees, | the cedars of Lebanon:
"Since thou art laid low there comes no longer | the woodman
against us. "
The realm of Shades beneath is stirred | to meet thine arrival.
―――――
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
―
It rouses the Shades for thee -
| the heroes of earth,
Rouses from their thrones | the kings of the nations.
To thee they all speak, and say:-
"Thou too art become weak as we, | art become like us;
Thy pomp is brought down to the Shades, | the clang of thy
harps;
Mold is the bed beneath thee | and worms thy covering.
How art thou fallen from heaven, | bright star of dawn!
How art thou hurled to the ground, | thou conqueror of nations!
Thou hadst thought in thy heart, 'To heaven I'll mount,
High above the stars of God | exalt my throne;
I will sit on the mount of God | in farthest north;
To the heights of the clouds I'll ascend- | be like the Most High! '
And now thou art hurled to the realm of death,
To the deepest abyss. "
A still better conception of the power of the elegiac verse is
given by the fine alphabetic ode in triplets contained in Lamenta-
tions i.
How sitteth the city solitary, | once full of people.
She who was great among the nations | is become as a widow.
The princess among the provinces | is become tributary.
She weepeth sore in the night, | her cheeks are wet with tears;
She hath none to comfort her | among all her lovers;
All her friends are traitors, | are become her enemies.
Exiled is Judah in grievous affliction, | in bitter servitude;
She dwelleth among the nations, | findeth no rest;
All her persecutors overtook her | in the midst of her straits.
The ways to Zion do mourn, | none come to her feasts;
All her gates are desolate, | her priests do sigh;
Her virgins are deeply afflicted, and she is in bitterness.
Her adversaries are become supreme, | her enemies prosper;
For Jehovah hath sorely afflicted her | for her many sins;
Her children are gone into captivity | before the adversary.
Gone from the Daughter of Zion | is all her splendor.
Her princes are become like harts | that find no pasture:
Powerless they have fled | before the pursuer.
Jerusalem remembereth her days of affliction and misery,
When her people succumbed to the foe, | and none did help
her;
On her her enemies gazed, | mocked at her bereavement.
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Jerusalem hath grievously sinned, | foul is she become;
All that honored her despise her | because they have seen her
disgrace.
Yea, she herself sigheth | and turneth away.
Her filthiness is in her skirts, | she remembered not her end;
Wonderful is her downfall, | she hath no comforter.
Behold, O Jehovah, my affliction, | for the foe doth triumph.
The adversary hath laid his hand | on all her treasures;
She hath beheld the nations enter | her sanctuary,
Who, thou commandedst, should not come into | thy congrega-
tion.
All her people sigh, | seeking bread.
Their treasures they have given for food | their life to sus-
tain.
See, O Jehovah, and behold | how I am despised.
Ho, all ye that pass by, | behold and see
If there be sorrow like to the sorrow | which is come upon
me,
Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted me | in the day of his anger.
Fire from on high he hath sent, | into my bones hath driven it,
Hath spread a net for my feet, | turned me back;
Desolate he hath made me, | faint all the day.
Bound is the yoke of my trespasses | by his hand;
Knit together they lie on my neck, | my strength doth fail.
The Lord hath given me up to them | whom I cannot with-
stand.
My heroes the Lord hath cast down | in the midst of me,
Hath summoned a solemn assembly | to crush my warriors;
In a wine-press he hath trodden | the virgin daughter of Judah.
For these things weep mine eyes, | my tears run down;
Far away from me is the comforter | who should revive my
soul;
Desolate are my children | because the foe hath prevailed.
Zion spreadeth forth her hands, | there is none to comfort her;
This hath Jehovah ordained for Jacob, that his neighbors.
should be his foes;
Among them is Jerusalem become | a thing of loathing.
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
Jehovah, he is just-I have rebelled against him.
Hear, all ye peoples, | behold my sorrow:
My virgins and my young men | are gone into captivity.
On my friends I called, they deceived me.
My priests and my elders | perished in the city,
Seeking food for themselves | to sustain their lives.
Behold, O Jehovah, my deep distress: | my soul is troubled;
My heart is o'erwhelmed within me, | rebellious was I.
Abroad the sword bereaveth, | at home is death.
They have heard that I sigh, | there is none to comfort me.
My foes have heard of my trouble, | they are glad thou didst it.
Bring in the day thou hast announced, | let them be like me.
Regard thou all their wickedness; | do to them
As thou hast done to me | for all my sins!
For many are my sighs, | my heart is faint.
Other examples of the elegy are found in Amos, v. 1; Ezek. xxvii.
32-36, and xxxii. 19–32.
The Book of Job must be reckoned among the great poems of the
world. The prose introduction - the story of the crushing of Job's
worldly hopes-is itself full of power. The poem is unique in form.
It is a series of monologues, all united by the author's intention to
develop a certain idea in connection with the question, "Why do
the righteous suffer? " The Three Friends affirm that the righteous
do not suffer,—that is, that no man suffers except for wrong-doing.
Job combats this view to the uttermost, holding that he is righteous
and that he suffers. Elihu further insists that suffering is designed to
destroy the pride of men who are otherwise good. Finally, Jehovah
intervenes, and proclaims the wonderfulness of his government of
the world, and Job is reduced to silence. The freshness and variety
of thought, the picture of a terrible struggle in Job's soul, the
majestic descriptions of Divine power,-all these together give a
peculiar impressiveness to the book. At the outset, Job gives us a
glimpse into his own soul:-
PERISH the day wherein I was born,
And the night which said, Behold, a man!
Let that day be darkness;
May God ask not of it;
May no light shine on it;
May darkness and gloom claim it,
Clouds dwell on it, and eclipses terrify it!
―
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Job longs for death, that he may go to that sad underworld, and
dwell
Where-
-
To this outburst, the eldest of the three friends, Eliphaz, replies
by insisting on the general rule that men receive in this world what
they deserve; and he expresses his conclusion in the form of a
vision:-
With kings and councilors of the earth,
Who built tombs for themselves,
-
The wicked cease from troubling,
And the weary are at rest.
XVIII-676
Stealthily came to me a word,
And a whisper to my ear;
In thoughts, from visions of the night,
When deep sleep falls on men.
Fear came upon me, and trembling,
Which made all my bones to shake;
And a breath passed over my face,
The hair of my head stood up.
There It stood! Its semblance I could not see! -
-
Job replies to this, and is answered by the second friend, replies
to him, is followed by the third friend, and so for several rounds of
argument, the only effect of which on Job is to draw him to deeper
hopelessness. He exclaims (vii. 7):—
A form was before my eyes!
I heard a voice which whispered,
"Shall man be more just than God,—
A creature purer than the Creator?
He puts no trust in his servants,
His angels he charges with folly:
How much more them who dwell in houses of clay,
Whose foundation is in the dust? "
A tree cut down may sprout again,
Its tender branch will not cease.
Though its root wax old in the earth,
And its stock die in the ground,
Yet through the scent of water it will bud,
And put forth boughs like a plant.
But man dies and wastes away,
Breathes out his life, and where is he?
The waters pour out of the sea,
The river dries up and fails;
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So man lies down and rises not;
Till the heavens be no more they shall not awake,
Nor be raised out of their sleep!
Then there comes to him a vague wish that God would think of
him after death in the underworld, and he exclaims:-
Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the underworld,
Keep me secret till thy wrath be past,
Appoint me a set time, and remember me!
The finest outbursts of poetry are to be found in the speeches of
Job himself, yet others also contain many striking pieces. See, for
example, the speech of Zophar, Chapter xx. ; that of Eliphaz, Chapter
xxii. ; and that of Bildad, Chapter xxv. Elihu's description of the
chastening power of suffering in xxxiii. 19-28 is also full of vigor:-
He is chastened with pain on his bed,
In his bones is continual torment;
He abhors all nourishing bread,
Cares not for dainty food;
His flesh wastes away to nothing,
His bones, hid no longer, stick out,
And he draws near unto the pit,-
His life approaches the dead!
—:
If there be an interpreter with him
Who will shew him what is right,
Will be gracious to him, and say,
"Loose him! I have ransomed his life,"
Then his flesh becomes fresher than a child's,
He returns to the days of his youth,
He prays to God, who accepts him,
Shews him his face in joy,
Restores to him his righteousness.
He sings before him, and says:-
"I had sinned, and done what was wrong,
-
But it was not requited to me;
He has redeemed me from the pit!
My life shall behold the light! "
The speeches of Jehovah make a magnificent poem in themselves.
Chapters xxviii. , xxxix. , are worthy to stand alongside the first chap-
ter of Genesis for sublimity of statement, and have in addition the
freshness and color of a fine imagination. One other poem in Job,
that contained in Chapter xxviii. , we may reserve, in order to place
it alongside of several similar poems.
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We have already seen that the Canticles, or Song of Songs, must
be taken as a group of songs of love, in which it is impossible to
discover any relation of time and place. It may be compared, for
poetic grace, with the finest idylls of Theocritus. It breathes the air
of the fields and mountains; and in this respect is unique among
the Old Testament books. For ancient poetry does not occupy itself
directly with external nature. Neither among the Greeks nor among
the Hebrews do we find the phenomena of nature introduced into
poetry for their own sake: they are used as illustrations purely.
The reason of this is not that the ancients did not love nature,-
tainly they must have been alive to its charm. It is rather that
only in modern times have men come to that habit of close observa-
tion of nature which has made it possible to use its varying forms as
part of poetic material. So, in the Psalms, clouds and mountains,
stream and sunshine, appear as exhibiting the power and wisdom or
the wrath or the love of God. But not even in such Psalms as xviii.
and xix. does the poet dwell on these phenomena for their own sake.
In this book we seem to have an exception to this rule; as in the
beautiful spring song in Chapter ii. :-
cer-
―
THE Voice of my Beloved! Lo, he comes,
Leaping over the mountains,
Skipping over the hills!
My Beloved is like a roe, a young hart.
Now he stands behind our wall,
Looks through the window,
Peeps through the lattice.
My beloved spake, and said to me:-
Arise, my Love, my Fair One, and come away!
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
The voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land,
The fig-tree ripens her figs,
The vines are in blossom,
They give forth their fragrance.
Arise, my Love, my Fair One, and come away!
Here the pictures introduced are all of the country, and all charm-
ing, and the poet seems to dwell on them for their own sake. But
after all he does not do this. It is the lover who describes the
beautiful face of nature, in order to tempt his beloved to come
forth and roam with him over the fields and hills. Nevertheless,
the pictures of natural scenery which he gives are very striking, and
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OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH APOCRYPHA
might easily prepare the way for that completer contemplation of
nature which is found in the modern poets. .
It is the occurrence of responsive songs in the book that has sug-
gested the opinion that it is a drama. How vague the speeches and
the supposed dialogue are, will appear from the following examples.
The occasion of the first address to the Jerusalem ladies (1. 5, 6) is
not obvious:-
I am dark but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar,
As the curtains of Solomon.
Scorn me not because I am dark,
Because the sun has shone on me.
For my brothers were wroth with me,
And made me keeper of the vineyards.
On this follows the first dialogue:-
The Beloved speaks (i. 7):
Tell me, thou whom I love,
Where thou feedest thy flock at noon;
For I would not seem to be a loiterer
Beside thy comrades' flocks.
The Lover replies (i. 8):
If thou know not, O fairest of women,
Go, follow the tracks of the flock,
And feed thy kids by the shepherds' tents.
After a brief descriptive strophe, the second dialogue proceeds (i. 15-
ii. 6):-
Thou art fair, my Love, thou art fair,
Thou hast the eyes of a dove.
Thou art fair, my Love, and lovely.
Our couch is the greensward,
The beams of our house are the cedars,
The walls of our rooms are the cypresses.
I am a rose of Sharon,
A lily of the valleys.
As a lily among thorns,
So is my Love among the maidens.
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As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood,
So is my Love among the youths.
Under his shadow I sat with delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting-house,
And his banner over me was love.
Stay me with raisins, strengthen me with apples,
For I am sick with love.
Be his left hand under my head!
Let his right hand embrace me!
Refrain (ii. 7, iii. 5):
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles and the hinds of the field,
Rouse not nor awaken love
Until it please!
The search by night for the Beloved (iii. 1-4):
At night on my bed I sought my Beloved,
Sought him, and found him not.
(I said) I will arise and go through the city;
In the streets and the squares
I will seek my Beloved.
I sought him and found him not.
The watchmen, patrolling the city, found me.
"Saw ye my beloved? »
Scarce had I passed from them,
When I found him whom I love,
I held him, would not let him go.
The vagueness of this narration is equaled by that of its com-
panion song, the less fortunate search for the Lover, of which we
cannot say whether it is a dream or reality (v. 2-7):—
I sleep, but my heart is awake.
Hark! my Beloved knocks, and cries:
Open to me, my sister, my friend,
My dove, my perfect one!
For my head is filled with dew,
My locks with the drops of the night.
(She): I have put off my dress-
Must I put it on again?
I have washed my feet-
Must I defile them?
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My Beloved put his hand through the window,
My soul yearned for him.
I rose to open to my Beloved,
And my hand dropped with myrrh,
And my fingers with liquid myrrh,
On the handles of the bolt.
I opened to my Beloved,
But he had withdrawn and was gone —
My heart had failed me when he spake.
I sought him, but found him not,
I called, he answered not.
The watchmen, patrolling the city, found me,
They smote me, they wounded me,
The keepers of the walls took from me my veil.
This exquisite piece is the expression of the longing of love; it
does not belong to a drama. The reference to the night-watchmen
of the city is to be noted.
We add two beautiful expressions of love, the first, of joy in the
possession of the beloved one (iv. 16, v. 1):—
Awake, O north wind; come, O south!
Breathe on my garden that its balsam may flow!
Let my Beloved come into his garden,
And enjoy its precious fruits!
