THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS 109
and joy of the whole earth in v. 15. But, since
subsectional parallelism is merely secondary and
not very frequent in this poem, such an argument
has little if any weight: and it may certainly be
doubted whether it is nearly strong enough to
justify those who omit vrmxyw, with the character-
istic to in v. 15, in order to retain both the
parallel clauses at the end of the verse without
at the same time keeping a section so long as the
existing text presents.
Verse 8 is also interesting. Had subsectional
parallelism been primary, the author would
naturally have written--
Rampart and wall lament | together they languish;
but to gain a closer parallelism with the two pre-
ceding sections, each of which begins with a verb
of which Yahweh is the subject, he avoided what
would have been a more perfect subsectional
parallelism and wrote instead--
He caused to lament rampart and wall; | together they
languish.
By many who refrain from postulating unity
of authorship for the Book of Lamentations,
chapters ii. and iv. at least are attributed to the
same writer. Be this as it may, there is an
appreciable difference, though it has hitherto
been overlooked, in the use of parallelism in the
two poems, just as there is a difference in the
length of the alphabetic divisions. In chapter ii.