i8 77 ] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 421 



Often the boldness of the Hebrew images lies in the 

 combination of parts taken from several quite dissimilar 

 figures. Mixed metaphor is not only natural, but appro 

 priate when the world of sense offers no one phenomenon 

 in which the fulness of the poet s emotion can be mirrored. 

 Not only is image piled on image, but the weaker figure 

 seems often to dissolve into one of grander force. Thus 

 when Isaiah pictures the onset of Assyria on Judah, he 

 hears the roar of the lion as it springs on its victim, 

 followed by the low and awful moan which shows that the 

 prey is secured. But presently this moan waxes more and 

 more intense, till it passes into the grim murmur of a 

 storm-lashed sea, while the hot breath and overshadowing 

 terror of the lion bending over his captive are transmuted 

 into a dark and murky storm-cloud which enwraps the 

 land of Judah in the gloom of hopeless night. 



His roar is like the lioness, 



He roars like the young lions ; 



And moans and clutches his prey, and bears it off and none can save. 



And he moans over Judah like the moan of the sea. 



When they look to the land, lo ! stifling gloom 



And day grown black in lowering clouds. 1 



It is not only in the absence of plastic composition and 

 in the shape of individual images and metaphors that the 

 poetry of the Old Testament bears the stamp of the 

 peculiar subjectivity of the Semite. We have seen that 

 this subjectivity dominates for the Hebrew his whole view 

 of the universe ; that all nature appears to him instinct 

 with a life which vibrates responsive to each change in his 

 personal feelings and spiritual relations. This way of 

 looking at outward things makes itself felt in the matter 

 as well as in the manner of Hebrew literature. That the 

 poetry of such a race is certain to be rich in the expression 

 of every human passion is too obvious to need further 

 illustration than every Bible reader can supply for himself. 

 But it is instructive to observe how the poets of Israel 

 enter into human relations with impersonal things, and 



1 Isa. v. 29, 30. 



