THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS 103
Chapter ii. differs greatly from chapter iii.
The repetition in chapter iii. of the initial letter
before each of the three sections belonging to it
corresponds to a real independence, as a general
rule,l of the sections in that poem. On the other
hand, the three sections which belong to each
letter of the alphabet in chapter ii., but of which
the first section only is distinguished by beginning
with that letter, are closely connected with one
another ; and this connexion is formally marked
by the frequency with which the entire sections
within the several alphabetic divisions are parallel
to one another. The exact number of these
sectional parallelisms depends on interpretation,
and in some cases on textual questions: but I
believe it may be safely asserted that in a large
majority at all events of the twenty-two alpha-
betic divisions two at least of the three sections
are parallel to one another, and in several all
three sections are so. I should myself put the
number of parallelisms' between two, if not all
three, sections as high as eighteen, if not higher.^2
Over against this frequency of sectional paral-
lelism we have to set the relative infrequency
of subsectional parallelism : this latter kind of
parallelism, which might have occurred sixty-six
1 Vv. 34-36 form an exception.
2 Absence of parallelism or a near approach to it will be found in
vv. 4, 17, 18, 22, but even this may be partly due to textual corruption.
In most of the remaining verses parallelism is obvious, in all it was
probably intended.