226 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
Mydz Nyxg ytbwhv
lypwx Mycyrf tvxgv
And I will make the pride of the presumptuous cease,
And the haughtiness of the awe-inspiring will I bring low,
is as it stands an excellent 3 : 3 distich of com-
pletely parallel lines; it can be very simply
reduced to a distich of 3 : 2 lines incompletely
parallel by omitting, with Duhm, the overlined
word. But what is the probability that the
conversion of one metre into another would
take place accidentally several times in, the same
poem without affecting the sense? Or, what the
probability that a scribe would intentionally
convert 3 : 2 into 3 : 3 by such additions in some
distichs of the poem, while leaving others in the
original 3 : 2?
If the ease with which every Hebrew text can
in some manner be adapted to Sievers', anapaestic
system should make us slow to accept such
applications of it as his metrical analysis of
Genesis, the ease with which, if we treat the
rhythm merely as so many stresses to a line,
one metre can be converted to another should
warn us against the seductive regularity which
Duhm places, for example, upon Isaiah xiii.
This chapter, says Mr. Box, who, in common
with some other English scholars, reproduces
Duhm's assertions, consists of seven-lined strophes
in the rhythm of the Hebrew dirge ; and in this
resembles the poem in chap. xiv. Yet it is