56 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
the question whether two such independent lines
are correspondent or parallel to one another is
also at times a question both of degree and of
exact interpretation. To return to the passages
already cited; when the Psalmist writes :
He gathered as into a flask the waters of the sea,
and then adds,
He put into treasure houses the deeps,
it is clear that at the end of the first line he breaks
the straight line of continuous statement: the
second line adds nothing to the bare sense, and
it carries the writer no further forward than the
first; the two sentences thus correspond strictly
to two equal and parallel lines: where the first
begins the second also begins, and where the first
ends there also the second ends: each line records
exactly the same fact and the same amount of
fact by means of different but synonymous terms.
And the same is true of the two lines,
For he spake and it came to pass,
He commanded and it stood sure.
We can without difficulty and with perfect pro-.
priety represent these two couplets thus
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But what are we to say of,
I made the earth,
And man upon it I created?
This is certainly not the simplest form of putting
the thought to be expressed : the terms " made "