The Strophe System continued

 We didn't get past the first sentence in that last post. And we won't get too much further in this post.

The first paragraph is delightfully vague following Augustine, "certis eos constare numeris credo illis qui eam linguam probe callent" - I believe that they appear in certain numbers to those who are well versed in that language. - and later - "All metre is rhythmic not all rhythm is metric."

But Dr. D insists, "and I agree", as I meekly play the role of the Bishop's wife in the Warden (Trollope), 

Yet there is not a single instance of a definite rhythm running through the whole in a shorter or longer poem, but the rhythms always vary according to the thoughts and feelings. 

This is not to be discovered with abstraction - but with concrete individual analysis of each song and story. Neither God nor the text can be reduced to our formulaic understandings. "Ah, this is how they did things."

as e. g. the evening song Ps. iv towards the end rises to the anapaestic measure: ki atta Jahawe lebadad, in order then quietly to subside in the iambic: labetach toshibeni. With this alternation of rise and fall, long and short syllables, harmonizing in lively passages with the subject, there is combined, in Hebrew poetry, an expressiveness of accent which is hardly to be found anywhere else to such an extent.

 Psalms 4 - OK - here it is. All the music of the psalms and all the other books of the Bible is available for you to read with a music program or visually in PDF form here.

Is this really anapest? ..-..-..- yes a three-foot anapestic line if you allow the divine name three syllables, (or substitute adonai). But you can't add a fourth foot because of the rest. And then does an iambic foot or two follow? Doesn't sound at all like iambic to me. There is too little data for such a conclusion.

Returning briefly to Psalms 2, he writes about verse 5: Thus e. g. Ps. ii. 5a sounds like pealing thunder, and 5b; corresponds to it as the flashing lightning.

Psalms 2:5

I think he is reading a theophany into Psalms 2 as in Psalms 18. The music of Psalms 2 is more subdued than thunder and lightning.

Next - Dr. D's explanation of parallelism.