On the Metrical System of Wisdom Verse

I. It is well understood that the basis of Biblical versification is the Parallelism of clauses. A line of verse is constituted, not by rhyme or number of syllables, but by its running parallel with the clauses of another line. And a similar parallelism determines the larger Dissimilar groupings that correspond to modern' stanzas.'

Parallelism:
Similar and

2. Parallelism between adjacent lines must in the nature of things take two different forms. In Similar Parallelism all the lines are, rhetorically, on an equality.

Wisdom crieth aloud in the street;

She uttereth her voice in the broad places;
She crieth in the chief place of concourse.

In Dissimilar Parallelism some lines of a group differentiate themselves from others in their relation to the unity of the whole this difference of relation is conveyed to the eye by differences of indenting.

My son, keep my words,

And lay up my commandments with thee.

Keep my commandments, and live;

And my law, as the apple of thine eye.

Bind them upon thy fingers;

Write them upon the table of thine heart.

In this passage there is clearly an alternation in the parallelism. For the lips of a Strange Woman drop honey,

And her mouth is smoother than oil.

But her latter end is bitter as wormwood,

Sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death;

Her steps take hold on Sheol;

So that she findeth not the level path of life:

Her ways are unstable and she knoweth it not.

Here the first two lines stand by themselves, and the last six go together, in uniting to form the group of eight lines. Similarly,

in I. iii the two groups following the (italic) introduction (page 8) are clearly triplets; and again in I. x (page 18) the short lines evidently make a break in the similar parallelism of the context.

Rhetorical and Metrical Structure

3. When groupings of parallel lines are considered, not from the inside only, but also in regard to their outside relations with other groupings, two distinct metrical systems appear in the versification of Wisdom literature. The one results in the 'Strophe and Antistrophe,' the other in 'Stanzas' like those of English verse. All these terms are metrical. But the real distinction between the two systems goes deeper: the one is purely metrical, the other is metrical and something more.

In most languages verse structure depends upon merely musical distinctions rhyme, syllabic numbers or quantity. But the parallelism of clauses which takes the place of these in Biblical verse is a thing which belongs to rhetoric as well as to music. Hence it is not surprising to find that grammatical and rhetorical relations often coincide with rhythmical distinctions in Biblical

verse. And in the poetry of Biblical Wisdom this becomes the most characteristic feature.

ric or Antistrophic Structure

4. We thus get the Rhetoric Antistrophe. Most readers are familiar with the antistrophic structure of Greek lyrics: how the stanzas run in pairs of strophe and antistrophe, each antistrophe the exact rhythmic The Rhetocounterpart of its strophe, however much the rhythm may change between one pair of stanzas and another. Such structure in Greek is purely rhythmic, having no connection with the thought of the passage. And antistrophic structure that is purely rhythmic is found also in Biblical poetry. But in Wisdom verse the structure of strophe and antistrophe is always strengthened by some rhetoric bond: the break between the strophe and its counterpart coinciding with some grammatical relationship of sentences, or rhetorical connection of thought. The opening of I. iv (see page 10) is a strophe of eight lines followed by its antistrophe: the two make the protasis and the apodosis of the same conditional sentence. In I. xiv. (page 23) the strophe holds up the example and the antistrophe makes the appeal; similarly in III. xxxviii (page 122) the strophe surveys a mystery and the antistrophe finds its explanation. Often the relation between the two strophes of a pair is not so easy to formulate as in these cases, but the rhetoric relationship is always perceptible.

5. Antistrophic structure in Greek poetry, though it implies stanzas running in pairs, does not exclude single stanzas independent in rhythm, occurring at the end (epode)

or middle (mesode) of a poem. Similarly in Introductions

Wisdom verse antistrophic poems may have an odd stanza as Introduction or Conclusion. These odd

and Conclusions

stanzas are included in the rhetoric scheme of the whole. Thus

in I. viii (page 15) the strophe and antistrophe (each of six lines) put precepts, and the conclusion (of eight lines) enforces them. In I. x (page 18) the elaborate strophe describes good, its antistrophe evil, while the brief conclusion unites the two ideas in a common image. Sonnet ix of Book I gives an example of introductory verses outside the antistrophic structure.

The Stanza
Structure

6. This Antistrophic Structure then belongs to a system which is at once metrical and rhetorical. The other system gives purely metrical Stanzas': like those of Modern English poetry these stanzas run in series, not in pairs, and the break between one stanza and the next has nothing beyond form to mark it. Sonnet vii of Book I consists of three similar quatrain stanzas. In V. v a refrain line assists in marking off the stanzas from one another.

7. The Antistrophic Structure and the Stanza Structure can be combined. In I. iii (page 8), besides the Introduction there are three stanzas (triplets), two at the beginning and one at the end, and the intervening lines make up an antistrophic mass of

The two Structures combined

which more will be said below.

8. The two structures so described make the staple of Wisdom versification. I go on to describe the Elaborations varieties of Elaboration by which their effects

can be intensified.

Pendulum

In

To speak first of the Antistrophic Structure. Wherever this extends beyond a single pair of stanzas some elaboration is found; and the modes of such elaboration are three. The first is the Pendulum Structure. Greek lyrics it is common to find a long series of strophes each followed by its antistrophe, and such a series may be expressed by the formula aa' bb' cc' etc. Where this form

Structure