"And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep: for she kept them."-Genesis xxix.

"And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem."-1 Samuel xvii.

Then were the horsehoofs broken,

By the means of the pransings, the pransings of their mighty ones.

Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be,

Blessed shall she be above women in the tent.

He asked water, and she gave him milk;

She brought forth butter in a lordly dish.

She put her hand to the nail,

And her right hand to the workmen's hammer;

And with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head,
When she had pierced and stricken through his temples.

At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down:

At her feet he bowed, he fell:

Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.

"A Balance of Thought"

In the Hebrew literature this principle of repetition—found in all others in degree is so predominant that it simplifies the whole problem of translation. Matthew Arnold pointed out that by reason of its comparative omnipresence the effect of Hebrew poetry "can be preserved and rendered in a foreign language as the effect of other great poetry cannot." The effect of Homer, of Virgil, or of Dante can never be successfully rendered because the literary architecture of these poets has to be pulled to pieces and cannot be rebuilt to alien music. "Isaiah's, on the other hand, is a poetry, as is well known, of parallelism; it depends not on metre and rhyme, but on a balance of thought, conveyed by a corresponding balance of sentence; and the effect of this can be transferred to another language." One may open the book of Isaiah almost at random and discover the truth of this law. Take this passage:

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be laid low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it to

gether: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely all flesh is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

This passage, like hundreds of others, serves to illustrate another habit of Hebrew poetry which has everything to do with its permanence. Metaphor is the soul of poetry, and here all the metaphors are simple and natural. The visions called up are such as are native to man's understanding in all ages: the pathless desert, the frowning hills, the grass of the field.

The Hebrew Mind

8 4

The Hebrew mind was simple and the Hebrew eye was fixed on the common objects of life. The sun, the moon, and the stars, the wind and the rain, the darkness and depth of the sea, the cedars of Lebanon, the bulls of Bashan, the well or the pool, the winepress, the mill, the corn yellow to harvest, the green pastures and still waters, the rose of Sharon, the great rock in a weary land, the potter's wheel, the husbandman's toil, the sparrow and the eagle, the wild goats and calving hinds, the hen gathering her chickens, silver and gold, spear and shield, flesh and bone-such are the objects of life, common to all ages, to which these old poets went for their imagery. In that immortal rhapsody on love at first sight, Solomon's Song, how marvellously are the swoonings and raptures of love expressed through the medium of everyday things:

Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
Comely as Jerusalem,

Terrible as an army with banners.

Turn away thine eyes from me,

For they have overcome me:

Thy hair is a flock of goats

That appear from Gilead.

Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep

Which go up from the washing . . .

As a piece of pomegranate are thy temples
Within thy locks.

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning,

Fair as the moon,

Clear as the sun,

And terrible as an army with banners?

I went down into the garden of nuts

To see the fruits of the valley,

And to see whether the vine flourished,

And the pomegranates budded.

Or ever I was aware, my soul made me
Like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.

Beyond this realism Hebrew poetry never stretches. The abstract is unknown to it.

Yet there is another secret of the permanence of the Bible as literature at once simpler and greater. Human nature and its working-out in reward or punishment, the wisdom of life and the penalties of ignorance or neglect, have not changed since Abraham sat in the door of his tent in the heat of the day. They have not changed since he rose up early and saw Sodom and Gomorrah go up "as the smoke of a furnace." They have not changed since Sarah was jealous of Hagar, and Abraham groaned to cast out his bondwoman because of his son Ishmael; nor since he saddled his ass to take Isaac into the land Moriah to be a burnt offering to Jehovah. They have not changed since Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide, expectant of his bride, and saw the camels coming; nor since Esau was honest and foolish, and Jacob wily and wise; nor since Rachel came to water her father's sheep at the well of Haran; nor since Joseph's brethren

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