118 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
two words "heavy" as against two others that
are to be called "light," any better than the
attempt to cover up the absence of parallelism
between two lines by speaking of them as synthetic
parallels?
To this question we shall return. Meantime,
I will only say that the theory of light and heavy
groups of words seems to me to suffer shipwreck
on the very first verse of the book : for it is very
difficult to believe that if Myvgb ytbr at the end of
the second section is light, tvnydmb ytrw at the
beginning of the third is heavy. The truth is
rather that Lamentations i. 1 b, c are both lines
of four words equally divided: and Sievers is
probably not far wrong in finding a full half of
the entire number of lines in Lamentations i. to
be of the same nature.^1 In any case, Lamenta-
1 The sections treated by Sievers as containing four accented words
and as being equally divided by the caesura are 1 b, c, 2 b, 4 c, 5 b, c, 6 a,
c, 7 a (to hyrvrmv), c, 8 b, c, 9 b, 10 a, b, 11 a, 12 c, 13 a, b, c, 14 b, e, 15 a, b,
17 c, 18 b, c, 19 a, b, e, 22 b, c; marked as less certain sections of the same
kind are 2 c, 3 b, c, 4 b, 15 c. Sections of this kind are far less frequent
in the remaining poems ; those treated as such by Sievers are : ii.
12 (a, b) c, 14 a, b, c, (19 d) ; iii. 6, 10, 13, 15, 23, 24, 50 (58, 59, 60); iv.
3 b, 5 a, b, 6 b, 13 a, b,14 (a) b, (15 a, b),18 a (b), 20 (a) b, 21(a) b. References
to uncertain examples are enclosed in brackets. It is interesting and
instructive to compare with this classification the examples given by
Budde (Zeitschr. fur die alttestamentliche Wissensehaft, 1882: cp. his
commentary on Lamentations in the Kurzer Handlcommentar, 1898)
of the verses in which the first part contains only two words—these
being, on his theory, " long " or " heavy." Budde cites i. 1 b, c, 4 e,
9 b, 13 c, 14 b,17 c, 18 c, 19 a, b ; ii. 12 b, c ; iii. 15 ; iv. 5 a, 13 b, 17 b.. The
large number of sections treated by Sievers as evenly divided, but not
treated by Budde as containing two words only in their first parts,
consists of lines in which Budde either allows a full word-value to
prepositions or other particles (e.g. i. 8 c, 10 b, 11 a), or emends the text
(e.g. in i. 5 b he inserts xvh after hvhy).