CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION 219
We seem to be left, then, with these alterna-
tives—that certain speeches, especially curses and
blessings, were originally metrical, but that their
metrical character has been destroyed or obscured
by additions and alterations, or that the
speeches in question, while differentiated from.
the simplicity of the prose of ordinary narrative,
were not subjected to regular metrical form. In.
favour of the first alternative, so far at least as
the curses and blessings are concerned, is the:
fact that the blessings of Jacob (Gen. xlix.),
Moses (Deut. xxxiii.), Balaam (Num. xxiii.,
xxiv.) are all unmistakable poems, and that an
important function of the early Arab poets was
to compose and recite curses). At the same time
most of the passages cited are in their present
form considerably removed from metrical regu-
larity.
Even if, however, we admit that the speeches
referred to in the last paragraph are metrical,
they could reasonably be explained as instances
of the same Writer passing from the prose of
narrative to poetical form in the speeches of the
persons of his story—a transition which is clearly
1 See particularly I. Goldziher, Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philo-
logie," Uber die Vorgeschichte der Hip' Poesie," referred to and briefly
described in my note on Num. xxii. 6 (Commentary on Numbers, p. 328).
See further G. Holscher, Die Profeten (1914), pp. 92 ff., 120 f., where
examples are given. It must be observed, however, that many of
these early curses are not composed in the classical Arabic metres,
but in saf (see above, p. 44 f.); an example of a curse in this " rhymed
prose " is Sura cxi. of the Kur'an.