218 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
considerations—and in v. 15 the words jfrz Nybv,
and between thy seed,^1 and if, with Sievers, we are
prepared to include tywx hbyxv under a single
accent, we have left four successive six-stress
periods, the first three being divided into three
two-stress lines, the last into two three-stress
lines, a method of varying the treatment of
six-stress periods within the same poem that has
already been referred to (p. 182, n. 2). With the
two omissions just defined the Hebrew text
and English translation read as follows :
hdWh tyH-klm | htx rvrx | txz tyWf-yk
jyyH ymy-lk | lkxt rpfv | jlt jnHg lf
hfrz Nybv | hwxh nybv | jnyb tywx-hbyxv
bqf nvpvwt htxv | wxr jpvwy xvh
Because thou hast done this,
Cursed art thou
Above all the beasts of the field;
On thy belly shalt thou go,
And dust shalt thou eat,
All the days of thy life;
And enmity will I put between thee
And between the woman,
And between her seed:
He shall crush thee on the head,
And thou shalt crush him on the heel.
1 For the omission of these words there is little, if anything, to be
urged apart from metrical considerations. It is true that the last lines
contrast the woman's seed and " thee,” i.e. the serpent, and take no
account of " thy seed": but per contra they refer only to the woman's
seed and do not mention the woman independently. With the threefold
repetition of in the emended text, cp. Gen. xvii. 7, ytyrb tx ytmyqhv
rfrz Nybv jnybv ynyb; but in this passage the addition of yfrz Nybv to ynyb would
of course have been impossible.