VARIETIES OF RHYTHM 197
and ye were as a brand plucked out of the burn-
ing," which is somewhat more in quantity than
MkynHm wxb hlfxv Mkysvs ybw Mf MyrvHb brHb ytgrh
Mkpxbv, "I have slain your young men with the
sword together with your captive horses, and I
have made the stink of your camps to come up
into your nostrils" (v. 10), which counts, and with
good reason, as two lines!
With the breakdown of the arithmetical part
of Muller's scheme there breaks down also the
significance of the correspondences. In strictly
measured sections it might be significant of
intention if the same word should occur, say, in
the first line and the last of two corresponding
sections ; but as soon as the measurement ceases
to be exact the mere recurrence within a few lines
of such frequently recurring words as Yahweh
becomes entirely insignificant.
There may be here and there a certain artifice
in the repetition at given intervals of particular
words, and to such an artifice is probably to be
attributed the almost regular recurrence, even
in the present text of Psalm cxix., of the same
eight different words for law; but such artifices
are scarcely more frequent than the use of
alphabetic schemes, and have just as little power
to create real strophes or verse-paragraphs.