CHAPTER III
PARALLELISM AND RHYTHM IN THE
BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS
THE Book of Lamentations has played a con-
spicuous part in the constantly renewed discus-
sions of the subject of Hebrew rhythm. Apart
from any analysis of its cause, and without
any exceptional degree of attention, the reader
of the Hebrew text, or even indeed of the English
version, of the Lamentations, perceives some-
thing in the rhythm or cast of the sentences that
is common to practically the whole of the first
four chapters of the book. This same something
that brings these four poems into a common class,
sharply marks there off from the fifth chapter or
poem, and at the same time, too, from the greater
quantity of the poetry of the Old Testament,
though careful examination has discovered not
a little in various books of the Old Testament
that resembles the first four chapters of Lamenta-
tions in the peculiarity in question.
But though this striking peculiarity is common
87