found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.

Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel;

Be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem.

The LORD hath taken away thy judgements,

He hath cast out thine enemy:

The king of Israel, even the LORD, is in the midst of thee:

Thou shalt not fear evil any more.

In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not:

O Zion, let not thine hands be slack.

The LORD thy God is in the midst of thee,

A mighty one who will save:

He will rejoice over thee with joy, he will rest in his love,
He will joy over thee with singing.

I will gather them that sorrow for the solemn assembly, who were of thee: to whom the burden upon her was a reproach. Behold, at that time I will deal with all them that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven away; and I will make them a praise and a name, whose shame hath been in all the earth. At that time will I bring you in, and at that time will I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I bring again your captivity before your eyes, saith the LORD.1

This overlapping of verse and prose may then be regarded as the foremost of the characteristics that distinguish Hebrew among the great literatures of the world. As we proceed with our survey of Scripture we shall meet this phenomenon at every step. It will make easy to understand the spontaneous effusions of poetry in blessings and curses in the midst of prose narrative; it will explain how, in Deuteronomy, only a slight step is necessary between

1 For the reader who may desire to study this compound style, I suggest the
following references [to the Modern Reader's Bible]. For the Doom form proper:
Isaiah III; IV. i, iii, iv; Zion Redeemed I. Obadiah; Nahum (sections 3, 5);
Zephaniah; The King of Peace [Minor Prophets volume, page 205]. Jeremiah
II. v; VI. iv, v, vi; X. ii, iv, v, vi, vii, x.
For the same form, though
Other passages:
Jeremiah X. viii. Ezekiel

not in Dooms: Zion Redeemed Prelude; III; IV; V.
Isaiah I. iii, iv, v; II. i, iv; IV. vii, x, xii, xiii; V. iii, vii.
I. vi; V. ii, vi; VI. vii. Joel ii. Micah i. Habakkuh ii.

oratory and song. In light of this it will no longer appear strange that the Bible should not contain verse epics like those of other nations its stories are simply attracted to the prose form of the history they are used to illustrate. We shall have to see how the proverb couplet is a meeting point for a Wisdom literature in verse and prose, the respective forms of which exactly correspond each to each. In Ecclesiastes we shall see how a theory can be stated in the form of a sonnet, and discussed in philosophic prose; how again a prose exhortation can find a climax in the most poetic of sonnets. For what affects the two styles we call verse and prose will also react upon the varied forms of poetry and prose with which those styles are usually allied: hence it need not be surprising that in Job, as we have already seen, all the six main forms of literature are illustrated within a single book; in the prophetic rhapsody, as we are to see later, all six can be fused together into one. Other languages may surpass Hebrew as vehicles for precision of thought. But the harmonisation of recitative and rhythm, on the common ground of high parallelism, has provided for the Bible the most elastic medium of expression which the world's literatures contain.

BOOK SECOND

LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE

CHAPTER

V, THE BIBLICAL ODE

VI. SONGS, ELEGIES, AND MEDITATIONS

VII. MONODIES, DRAMATIC LYRICS, AND RITUAL PSALMS

VIII. LYRIC IDYL: SOLOMON'S SONG' .