is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 437 



Mighty bowmen are cast down, | 



And the stumbling gird on strength ; | 



The full hire themselves for bread, | 



And the hungry keep holiday. || 



Yea, the barren hath born seven, | 



And she that hath many sons is withered. || l 



To the two classes of rhythm which we have hitherto 

 exemplified the names devised by Lowth are not in 

 appropriate ; but it is unfortunate that so narrow a word 

 as parallelism has been so universally adopted to express 

 all possible varieties of effect that arise under the general 

 law, that wave after wave of feeling gives rise to wave 

 answering wave in utterance. Lowth s third species of 

 parallelism, which he calls synthetic, is not parallelism 

 at all, and very inadequately groups together a great 

 variety of rhythmical effects which have very little in 

 common with one another, beyond the general principle 

 that the verse falls into two or more members, each of 

 which represents a unity of thought, feeling, or fancy, 

 while the transition from member to member takes place 

 in harmonious pulsation of movement and rest. One or 

 two examples will sufficiently illustrate the various ways 

 in which this is realised : 



My voice 1 cry unto Jehovah, | 



And he hath heard me from his holy mountain ; || 



I laid me down and slept, | 



I awoke, for Jehovah sustains me. || 2 



We are apt to overlook the truly rhythmic character of 

 such passages, because to our habits of abstract thought 

 the logical union of protasis and apodosis in a complete 

 sentence is predominant. But to the concrete way of 

 thinking of the Semite, a conditional proposition consists 

 of two distinct mental pictures, one of which flows over 

 into the other. Where we would say, &quot; If he pulls down, 

 it cannot be rebuilt,&quot; Job says, &quot; Lo ! he pulls down, and 

 it cannot be rebuilt &quot; (xii. 14). Remembering this habit 

 of thought, we shall recognise an impressive rhythm in 



1 i Sam. ii. 5. 2 Ps. iii. 



