Scripture writers

1. In certain parts of the Bible the so-called ‘lower’ style is employed, while others are marked by the use of a ‘higher’ style. The difference may be observed even by readers of the Bible who have no acquaintance with Hebrew. They will note how in certain portions of the OT the employment of metaphorical expressions has @ special vogue. Every one is familiar with the hrase ‘daughter of Zion,’ i.e. the inhabitants of ion, and at times=Zion itself. But where do we meet with this phrase for the first time in the OT? From the perine of Genesis we may read straight on to 2 K 19%! before we encounter it, and the passage just named is the only one in the historical Fook of the OT where it occurs. How has it found its way here? Simply because in this assage we have a report of words spoken by saiah (cf. Is 372"), in whose writings this and similar phrases are found repeatedly (18 10° 32 16! 224 2310. 12 372; cf. [Deutero-] Is 471°. © 52? 621). The reader of the English Bible may, further, remark how, for instance, in the Book of Isaiah, the beautiful meta- phors of. darkness and light are employed (5%°> 8” gt etc.), and how at one time the hosts of the enemy and at another time the Divine judgments figure in the oracles of this prophet as irresistible floods (87 2817 ete.), Any ordinary reader of the Bible will notice, again, how in Isaiah there are far more questions and exclamations than in the Book of Kings. For instance, ‘ How is the faith- ful city become an harlot !’ (171); ‘Woe unto the wicked !’ (3%); ‘O my people !’ (v.22) ; ‘ Woe unto them !’ etc. (58%) ; ‘Woe is me!’ ete. (6°); ‘ Bind up the testimony !’ (8°); ‘Shall the axe?’ ete. (105); ‘This people was not!’ (23!5), Nor can the reader of this book help noticing the dialogues and monologues it contains. How lifelike, for instance, are the words‘ The voice said, Cry, and he (the person formerly addressed) said, What shall I cry ?’ followed by the answer of the first speaker, ‘All flesh is grass,’ etc. (40°). The same quality excites our admiration in ‘Can a woman forget her sucking child?’ etc.; ‘Yea, they may forget . . . Behold, I have,’ etc. (49); or in the question ‘Wherefore have we fasted,’ etc. (58%), ete.; cf. Stilistik, pp. 229-231. But the reader of the original text of the OT will recoenize much more clearly still that certain portions and even whole books are distinguished from others by a higher style. He will observe that many com- ponents of the Hebrew vocabulary are used only in certain passages. For instance, there is no occur- rence in Gn 1-4” of he’ézin ‘ give ear,’ a synonym of shdma' ‘hear’ which is used in 3°, On the other hand, he’ézin, which is translated ‘hearken’ in 4, recurs in the following additional passages: Ex 1516, Nu 238 (one of the Balaam oracles), Dt 1® 321, Jeg 53, 2 Ch 24 (perhaps an imitation of Is 64°), Neh 9° (in a prayer), Job 91° ete., Ps 52 ete., Prl74, Is 17: 1° 89 28% 329 485 514 648 Jer 13', Hos 5}, Jl 1. ‘ymra ‘speech,’ which likewise does not occur prior to Gu 4, and after that is preferred to its synonym dabar only in the following passages: Dt 32? 33%, The same is the case with the word . 2S 2281 Pg 127 etc., Pr 30°, Is 5% 28% 294 32%, La 2!7, Consequently, the choice of these two words suffices to bring Gn 4% into connexion with other portions of the OT where the same compara. tively rare terms occur (cf. Stilistik, pp. 277-283). To take other two illustrations of a similar ki the dative ‘to them’ is expressed by the us lahém in Gn 3# etc., but by /amé in the following passages: Gn 9%. 27, Dt 325% 8 332, Job 3 ete, (10 times), Ps 24 etc. (21 times), Pr 23”, Is 164 23% 9614. 16 805 358 438 447. 15 492] 538 (2), La ]2% 22 420. ba Hab. 27, Again, ‘man’ is expressed by adam from Gn 16 onwards, but ’éndésh is the term selected in the Song of Moses (Dt 32) as well as in Job 4” etc. (18 times), Ps 85 etc. (12 times), Is 8! 1374 248 338 517 12 562, Jer 20 2 Ch 14%; cf. the Aram. ’éndsh in Ezr 44 64, Dn 2” ete. 2. The portions of the OT which are charac- terized by the ‘higher’ style embrace the two categories of addresses and poems. This may be noted clearly enough, we think, by comparing the Book of Isaiah and the Psalms with one another. For instance, Is 17 reads— T have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.’ Here we find that peculiar construction of clauses to which, so far as the present writer is aware, the name ‘parallelismus membrorum’ was first given by Robert Lowth in the Fourteenth of his famous Prelectiones de But this ideal rhythm (explained psychologically and comparatively in Stdistik, PP. 307-311) is not met with everywhere in Isaiah. For instance, when we read ‘When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at bh hand to tread my courts?’ ete. (1114), it would be precarious here to attribute to the author an aim at parallelismus membrorum. As little can any such intention be detected in sentences like ‘In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats’ (2). Such instances occur frequently in the prophetical books; and if these contain also sentences which exhibit the parallelismus membrorum, it must be remembered that the higher form of prose, as employed especi- ally by good speakers,was not without a certain kind of rhythm. This is pointed out by no less an authority than Cicero in the words ‘Isocrates primus intellexit etiam in soluta oratione, dum versum effugeres, modum tamen et numerum quendam oportere servari’ (Brutus, viii. 32); and we find a confirmation of his statement when we examine the opening words of his own First Oration against Catiline: ‘Quousque, tandem, abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quamdiu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese eftrenata iactabit audacia?’ The word nd@bv’, indeed, means liter- ally ‘speaker’ (cf. the present writer’s Ojfen- barungsbegriff des AT, i. 71-78), and prophecies as such could be co-ordinated with the productions of poets only if ald prophetical utterances bore upon them the characteristic marks of poetical compositions. But no one would venture to assert this, for instance, of Zec 1-8 or of the Books of Haggai and Malachi. The last-named portions of the OT lack even those elements of the higher diction described above, (1). Further, the author of Ps 74° did not count himself a prophet, for he says expressly of the age in which he lived, ‘There is no more any prophet’ (see, further, Stilistik, p. 318 f.). A characteristic feature of the OT prophecies is that they begin with a Divine utterance, which they oest Hebreorum (Oxonii, 1753)., ————— STYLE OF SCRIPTURE STYLE OF SCRIPTURE 167 then go on todevelop. For instance, the Book of Isaiah contains at the outset God’s declaration ‘I have nourished and brought up children,’ etc. yv.?»-8), which the prophet as God’s interpreter (30) then illustrates in detail. Note the words ‘2hey have forsaken the LORD,’ etc. (1), and ‘Unless the LORD of Hosts had left us,’ etc. (v.°). | Many similar instances will be found in Stilistik, | p, 255f. Another peculiarity of the style of the Ee phste is that many of them commence with censure, then speak of the punishment of the im- enitent, and close with the announcement of Bei crance for the godly. This order is found, for instance, in Am 7}-9 [on 9°85 see Driver, Joel and Amos, pp. 119-123], Hos 12-2, Is 12-24 25-48, Mic 4% 11-18 514 ete., The true relation of the Prophets of Israel to poetry consists, in the opinion of the present writer, in the circumstance that here and there they intersperse their addresses with poetical com- positions. Thus in Is 5' we have a ‘song’ about the vineyard of Jahweh, and specially frequent are assages which reproduce the rhythm of the lament or the dead (the kind). This rhythm, which re- sembles the elegiac measure of the Romans, is heard in such passages as Am 5— The virgin of Israel is fallen, she shall no more rise, She is forsaken upon her land, there is none to raise her.’ The same rhythm is found also in the Prayer of Hezekiah in Is 38”, Another ‘elegy’ occurs in Jer 9u— ‘And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons, And I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.’ And such ‘elegies’ recur in v.™, Ezk 19% ™ 2617 (‘How art thou destroyed,’ etc.) 275% 82 Qg12f. 327%. 16. 198. See, further, art. POETRY, vol. iv. p. 5. 3. The structure of the other pene parts of the OT (cf. wy ‘my works,’ car’ éé. Ps 451) is not easy to determine. But certain conclusions may be affirmed with confidence, and the first of these is that the rhythm of ancient Hebrew poetry does noé consist in the alternation of short and long syllables. W. Jones held, indeed (Poeseos Asiatic Com- mentaru, London, 1774, cap. ii.), that the poems of the OT exhibit a regular succession of syllables of difierent quantity, such as we find in Arabic poems. But he was able to prove his point only by altering the punctuation oad by allowing the Hebrew poets great freedom in the matter of prosody. The con- clusion on this subject reached by the present writer in Stilistik (p. 341) is maintained also by Sievers (§ 58): ‘Hebrew metre is not quantitative in the same sense as the classical.’ Hence it is now admitted in all the more recent literature on Hebrew poetay, that the rhythm of the latter is based een the alternation of unaccented and accented syllables. Still there are various nuances to be observed in the views held by those who have investigated this subject. G. Bickell (Metri- ces Biblice Regula, etc., 1879, etc.) holds that ‘the metrical accent falls regularly upon every second Mable.’ But, in order to make this law apply to the Psalms, he has either removed or added some 2600 vowel syllables and proposed some 3811 changes, as is pointed out by J Reker in his brochure, ‘Professor G. Bickell’s Carmina Veteris Testamentt metrice das neueste Denkmal auf dem Kirchhof der hebriiischen Metrik’ (1883). Nevertheless, Bickell has adhered to his principle, and gives us his transcription, for instance, of Job 32° thus— Za'fr’ani leyAmim W’attém sabim yeshishim Al-kén zahalt wa’ira’ Mebavvoth dé‘i ’éthkhen.. That is to say, he makes Elihu speak in Iambic Tetrameter Cotaleatis, But, in order to reach this result,’ he introduces in v.* the superfluous word sabim ‘grey-headed,’ while in v.°« he robs zahaltt of its ending -7, which in Hebrew is the characteristic of the lst person singular. In spite of such objections, Duhm in his Commentary on Job (Kurzer Hdcom. 1897, p. 17) accepted without reservation Bickell’s theory of the rhythm of ancient Hebrew poetry. terwards, however, he rightly abandoned it (in his Commentary on the Psalms in the same series, 1899, Einleit. § 24). The falsity of Bickell’s view is demonstrated by the present writer in Stilistik (p. 339f.), and in like manner Sievers.(§ 55) declares, ‘I can take no further account of Bickell’s system.’—A preferable view of the rhythmical character of OT poetry is that which is represented especially by J. Ley. According to this theory, the ancient Hebrew poets paid regard only to the accented syllables (cf., on this point, S¢ilistik, pp. 330-336). But even the advocates of this view are divided into two schools. The majority (e.g. Duhm, Psalmen, 1899, p. xxx) hold that the Hebrew poets aimed at an equal number of ‘rises’ in the correspondin, lines. To this group belongs also Sievers (cf. §§ 5 and 88 of his Metrische Studien, 1901, Bd.i.). But Budde and still more the present writer have come to the conclusion that a Hebrew poet aimed at nothing more than the essential symmetry of the lines that answer to one another in his poem. This may be observed, for instance, in the follow- ing four passages: ‘Be instructed, ye judges of the earth’ (Ps 2), ‘and rejoice with trembling’ (v.0>), ‘and ye perish from the way’ (v.™>), and ‘blessed are all they that put their trust in him’ (v.24), Our conclusion is confirmed also by the Peon compositions which are sung by the in- habitants of Palestine at the present day (see Stilistik, pp. 337, 343). Cornill (Die metrischen Stiicke des Buches Jeremia, 1901, p. viii) supports the same view, so far at least as the Back of Jeremiah is concerned: ‘For Jeremiah an exact correspondence of the various stichot was not a formal principle of his metrical system.’ Duhm, it is true, in his Commentary on Jeremiah (Kurzer Hdcom. 1901) remarks on 2°; ‘In all Jeremiah’s poetical compositions the stichoi contain three and two ‘‘rises” alternately.’ But, to make good his theory, he has to deny to Jeremiah a passage like 24-138 because ‘ the metre of Jeremiah is wanting’ in it. Such a conclusion, however, would be valid only if he were able to adduce other, ae ones reasons for the excision of this passage. He urges, indeed, that v.4 contains a fresh notice of the Divine com- mission to Jeremiah. But this is nothing strange ; such notes occur very frequently in Jeremiah and the later Prophets (see the passages in Stilistik, p. 174). Moreover, vv. 7 of the same chapter are allowed by Duhm himself to be Jeremiah’s, and yet v.™t- is followed by a fresh call, ‘O generation, see ye the word of the LORD,’ quite in the manner in which v.4 follows upon v.% Further, Duhm thinks himself entitled to deny 2“ to Jeremiah because the people of the LORD are addressed in v.‘ as ‘house of Jacob,’ a designation which Duhm believes to be unused except by later writers. But ‘house of Jacob’ occurs also in Is 2° and 87”, both of which passages are regarded by Duhm himself (in Nowack’s Hdkom.) as Isaianic; and the same expression is found in Am 3" and Mic 27 3°, passages which cannot be attributed to ‘later writers.’ Finally, Duhm’s view of Jer 2!% raises the difficulty that Israel is treated in v.% as a feminine, but in v.14 as a masculine, subject. But, if v.14 is the sequel of v.%, Israel is naturally treated as masculine, because it has just been designated in v.43 by the masculine word ‘am ‘people.’ In 168 STYLE OF SCRIPTURE STYLE OF SCRIPTURE any case, it may be added, the supposed interpolator of vv. knew nothing of the metrical system which Duhm attributes to Jeremiah, else he would have accommodated the form of these verses to their surroundings. Hence the present writer is unable to accept Duhm’s view as to ‘the metre of Jeremiah,’ quite apart from the fact that, according to our foregoing contention (see above, (2)), Jeremiah was not a poet. 4. Some interesting features of style occur gporadically in various parts of the OT.—(a) There are alphabetical acrostics. The present writer cannot, indeed, admit that Nah 1??° belongs to this category [but see art. NAHUM in vol. ‘iii. p. 475], which, however, probably includes Ps 9f., and certainly Ps 25. 34. 37. 111 f. 119. 145, Pr 31°, La 1-4, and Sir 51%, as is shown by the recently discovered Heb. text (cf., further, Stzlistik, pp. 357-359). There is another species of acrostic which we do not believe to be found in the OT. The letters, for instance, with which the lines of Ps 110-4 commence are not intended to point to 3yow, as the name of Simon the Maccabee, who reigned B.C. 142-135. That such is the case is represented, indeed, by Duhm (Kurzer Hdcom. 1899, ad Joc.) as unquestionable. But, in the first place, it is surely awkward that the alleged acrostic should include only part of the poem. Secondly, as has been shown by Gaster (Academy, 19th May 1892), the name Shim‘on is written upon the coins (where the vowel letters are relatively rare) 40 times with and only once without the 1. Yet the latter is the way in which, upon Duhm’s theory, it would be written in Ps 110. Once more, the clause ‘until I make thine enemies thy footstool’ (v.!») would be in glaring opposition to the statement of 1 Mac 14 that Simon was to hold office ‘until a trustworthy prophet should arise.’ The former (Ps 110!) promises the highest degree of triumph for the king who is there addressed, the latter (1 Mac 141) reminds Simon that his choice to be prince was subject to recall.— (6) Other poetical compositions in the OT are marked by frequent use of the figure Anadiplosis described above (iii. (5)). Such is the case with the fifteen psalms (120-134). For instance, the ‘dwell’ of ‘that I dwell in the tents of Kedar’ (Ps 120°) is taken up again in the ‘dwell’ of ‘my soul hath long dwelt with him’ (v.%). Again, the two lines ‘that hateth peace’ (v.%) and ‘Tam for peace’ (v.7) have a connecting link in the word ‘peace.’ The same characteristic is still more marked in Ps 121, as may be seen from the clauses ‘From whence shall my help come?’ (v.!>) and ‘My help cometh from the LorD’ (v.¥). The familiar title of these fifteen psalms ‘Songs of Degrees’ (AV ; RV ‘Songs of Ascents’) has refer- ence, in the opinion of the present writer, to their rhythmical peculiarity as well as to their destina- tion to be sung by the caravans of pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem (cf. Stilistik, pp. 302-304). —(c) Rhyme is found in the poetry of the OT only in the same sporadic fashion as in the plays of Shakespeare (where, ¢.g., ‘rise’ rhymes with ‘eyes’ at the close of Hamlet, Act 1., Scene ii., or ‘me’ with ‘see’ in Act Ill, at the end of Ophelia’s eraser. Rhyme of this kind may be observed in the very earliest poetical passage of the OT, namely Gn 4%!, where éli ‘my voice’ rhymes with tmrathit ‘my speech.’ But such rhymes, which could not readily be avoided in Hebrew, are not found at the end of every line of an OT poem. H. Grimme claims, indeed (in an article entitled ‘ Durchgereimte Gedichte im AT’ in Bar- denhewer’s Biblische Studien, Bd. vi. 1901), to have discovered poems of this kind in Ps 45. 54 and Sir 4474 But our suspicions are awakened at the very outset by the circumstance that the poet does not exercise his rhyming skill at tha opening of his composition (Ps 457). Grimme offers, it is true, a scansion of the verse, mark- ing it as he does with the sign of arsis, but he cannot point to the presence of rhyme in it, Further, with reference to the following lines, are we to hold that the poet considered an identity of final consonants (as in ’oznékh and ’abikh of v. to ainount to rhyme, although the standing an correct conception of the latter demands an asson- ance of the preceding vowel, such as is heard even in the rime suffisante (e.g. in ‘soupir’ and ‘ désir’) of the French? Again, Grimme, in order to establish a rhyme between the end of v.> and y.®, drops in v.®» the closing word (2é‘dlam) of the MT, and alters the preceding words. In like manner he transposes the words in v., and again drops two words in v., Lastly, all the rhymes which Grimme discovers in Ps 45 consist beer of the assonance of the pronominal suffix -kh, and he increases the number by making the masculine form for ‘thy,’ namely -kAd, the same as the feminine form, namely -4h. Thus instead of the MT hddarékha (v.34), ‘thy majesty,’ he would pronounce hddaraekh, a course of procedure which — : is shown to be wrong by R. Kittel in his treatise Ueber die Notwendigkeit und neuen Ausgabe der hebrdischen pronouns, which could not be avoided in Hebrew. Why should not the composer of Ps 45 have placed : S'¢ at the end of v.“ a word to rhyme with the final lé‘dlam of v.8>? At all events, the tradition which | allowed /é‘élam to stand at the end of v.®, knew nothing of any intention on the part of the author of Ps 45 to provide all the lines of hig poem with rhymes. writer's brochure, Neweste Prinzipien der alttest. Kritik gepriift, 1902, p. 24). 5. The last feature we wish to notice as dis- coverable in the stylistic structure of the OT is © Those scholars who — the construction of strophes. at present are disposed to co-ordinate the pro- phecies and the poems of the OT, speak of strophes | if of Isaiah, discovering them, for | Butevenan | also in the Boo instance, in 2! vv." and vvy.282t, orator may unfold his subject in sections cf nearly equal length, and may conclude each of these | with the same sentence, the so-called Hpiphora — (see above, iii. (5d@)). Lately, the opening of the Book of Amos has been a favourite field for attempts to discover a strophic structure. The | earlier attempts are examined in Stilistik, pp. 347-352, and Sievers (i. § 103) agrees with the judgment expressed there by the present writer. But a renewed effort of the same made by Lohr in his Untersuchungen zum Buche Amos, 1901. ee against consisting of 4+2+4 stichoit. But, in order to make out this uniformity, he is ccmpelled in 1% to reckon the object ‘ Gilead’ as the fourth stichos. Similarly, in 2! the fourth stichos has to be made up simply of dassid (‘into lime’). Short as of sentences have thus to be counted as whole lines, although in the corresponding passage of the pro- — phecy against Ammon (1°) a whole clause (‘that they might enlarge their border,’ v.14) is found which Lihr himself takes as the fourth stichos of the ‘strophe’ 1°, such a fashion, in order to form strophes, appears to the present writer to be an artificial procedure, the responsibility for which belongs, not to the | ~ He einer | abel (1901), §§ | 62-68. The weakest point in Grimme’s contention — is found in the circumstance that the rhymes he | discovers depend upon an assonance of a series of | Grimme’s attempt to demonstrate the — presence of rhyme in Ps 54 and Sir 44" must | equally be pronounced a failure (see the present | ind has been ~ He proposes to regard the four pro- | amascus, Gaza, Ammon, and — oab (15-5 vy.5-8 vy.18-!5 21-8) as four strophes, each — The creating of stichoi in — STYLE OF SCRIPTURE propber, Amos but to modern upholders of the theory that the Prophets of Israel meant to employ ‘strophes.’ Our view of the matter is that also of Cornill in the Theol. Rundschau (1901, p. 414f.). Sievers (Metrische Untersuchungen, ii. p. 473) gives up the attempt to establish an exact equality between corresponding lines, for, accord- ing to him, 1 (‘ because they have threshed,’ etc.) contains four feet, while v.® has five, v.> six, and 2!» seven.—In the real poems of the OT there are not a few traces of an aim at a strophic structure. The latter cannot be denied, for instance, to the author of Ps 2, who evidently meant to exhaust his subject in four sets of three verses each. Such an aim was connected also with the construction of alphabetical acrostics (see above, (4)). What, for instance, are the twenty-two groups of eight verses each of which Ps 119 is made up, but strophes? Such divisions of a poem are at times indicated even externally. We have an instance of this in the occurrence of quite similar clauses, ‘Surely every man at his best estate is wholly vanity’ and ‘Surely every man is vanity,’ in Ps 39°" and v."», In 42°11 43°, again, we have the thrice repeated ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?’ and there are a good many similar ‘refrains’ in the Psalter (cf. 467-4 4912. % 575.11 1361». 2b etc., see Stilistik, p. 346 f.). vy. CONCLUSION.—1. In so far as the stylistic diffrrences between Biblical writings depend upon the choice of words, the style is not without sig- nifi.ance for the purposes of literary criticism. This is proved in the present writer’s Hindeit. ins AT, pp. 147-151, and its truth reaffirmed, in reply to recent doubts expressed by W. H. Cobb, and defended, with fresh materials, in the Expository Times, xiii. (1901) p. 134. For instance, the rela- tive pronoun is expressed by Wx in Is _]}- 8b. 30a 21. 8b. 20b Hoa. 28a, but 1 is not met with till 40% and 437, Again, the negative ¥5 may be counted at least sixteen times in Is 1-6. Yet how easily we might have had at least one occurrence of 52, the word used in 40” 4377 448, Now, these and other words selected in chs. 40 ff. belong to the vocabulary of the ‘higher’ style of the Hebrews, and it is a fact that in chs. 1ff. Isaiah cultivates the most elegant mode of writing. Why should he, then, have avoided in these chapters all those elements of the higher style for which a preference is shown in chs. 40 ff.? Such conduct would be all the more incomprehensible, seeing that the most of the linguistic peculiarities which mark Is 40 ff. concern expressions which, on account of their frequency, are employed without deliberate choice and almost without consciousness.—But a number of the more recent expounders of the OT have thought to discover a critical touchstone also in features of Biblical style which do not depend upon the choice of words. Duhm, for instance, says in his Com- mentary on Isaiah in Nowack’s Hdkom. p. 30: ‘The fate of the unknown city is depicted in 3! in too elegiac a strain to allow of our assigning these verses to Isaiah.’ He has in view the words ‘Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war,’ etc. But to say that this is ‘in too elegiac a strain’ is simply a subjective opinion, whose correctness is not proved by Duhm, and cannot be proved. For the strongest expres- sions of grief over the catastrophes that over- hang Israel are given utterance to by Isaiah in other passages, such as 1°¥ and 6!'-'3, which are allowed by Duhm himself to be genuinely Isaianic. A number of similar critical judgments, which have been built in recent times upon the manner- isms of style in certain portions of the OT, are examined in the present writer’s brochuve, Neweste ones der alttest. Kritik geprift, 1902, pp. SYMBOL, SYMBOLICAL ACTIONS 169 2. The differences in style between various books of Scripture have a special significance from the point of view of the history of religion. It is a weighty circumstance that Nathan’s prophecy, which is found in 28 7!1>-16, is reproduced some- what differently in 1 Ch 17>, and that the oracle of Is 27-4 has another form‘in Mic 4!%. From this we gather that the Israelites of earlier times cared for nothing more than to preserve the contents of revelation in their essential identity. The form was of importance only in so far as it served for the preservation of the contents, and thus, even with the Prophets, the form was the human element. God permitted His interpreters to make use of the language of their own time. If this statement required proof, it would be found in such facts as the following. In the prophetical writings the two forms for the pronoun ‘ L namely ’andkhi and dni, stand to one another in the following ratios : —in Amos as 10: 1, in Hosea as 11: 11, in Micah as 1:2, in Jeremiah as 35:51, in Ezekiel as; 1 (3678) : 138, in Daniel as 1 (10") : 23, in Haggai as 0:4, in Zec 1-8 as 0:9, in Malachi as 1: 8. Then in the historical books, Samuel has 48 andkhi_ to 50 dni, Kings 9 to 45, Ezra 0 to 2, Nehemiah 1 to 15, Chronicles 1 (1 Ch 17! || 28 7?) to 30, Esther 0 to 6. A number of other evidences will be found in the present writer’s article ‘ Pro- phecy and History’ in the Expository Times, xi. (1900) pp. 805-310. The above assertion that the form of the language is the human element in the Bible, is subject only to the reservation that the contents of a prophecy were naturally not without influence upon its form, and this was the case also with the spirit which animated the pro- phets (Mic 38, Is 8'! etc.). But we are convinced that there is still another point to be observed. When, for instance, we read ‘They pierced my hands and my feet’ (Ps 221%), the present writer cannot believe this sentence to have been written without the co-operation of the Divine Spirit, who was the supreme director of Israel’s history. Such expressions were meant to pre-establish a harmony between the Old and the New Covenant, so that believers who lived under the new dispensation might. be strengthened in their faith by noticing the presence of such features in the earlier history of God’s saving purpose. LiTvERATURE.—In addition to the works mentioned in the introductory part of the above article, the present writer’s Stilistik, Rhetorik, Poetik, in Bezug auf die Biblische Litteratur komparativisch dargestelit (1900) may be consulted throughout. For special points, reference may be made to Karl J. Grimm’s Euphemistic Liturgical Appendices in the OT (1901), pp. 3-6, and Ed, Sievers’ Metrische Untersuchungen, 2 vols. (1901). Ep. KONIG.