orous than the ordinary. But these many and
distinct passages of poetry issue from and run into contexts of prose
unmistakable. For two reasons we are not always able to trace the exact
border between the prose and the verse--_first_ because of the frequent
uncertainties of the text, and _second_ because the prose, like most of
that of the prophets, has often a rhythm approximating to metre. And thus
it happens that, while on the one hand much agreement has been reached as
to what Oracles in the Book are in verse, and what, however rhythmical,
are in prose, some passages remain, on the original literary form of which
a variety of opinion is possible. This is not all in dispute. Even the
admitted poems are variously scanned--that is either read in different
metres or, if in the same metre, either with or without irregularities.
Such differences of literary judgment are due partly to our still
imperfect knowledge of the laws of Hebrew metre and partly to the variety
of possible readings of the text. Nor is even that all. The claim has been
made not only to confine Jeremiah's genuine Oracles to the metrical
portions of the Book, but, by drastic emendations of the text, to reduce
them to one single, exact, unvarying metre.

These questions and claims--all-important as they are for the definition of
the range and character of the prophet's activity--we can decide only after
a preliminary consideration of the few clear and admitted principles of
Hebrew poetry, of their consequences, and of analogies to them in other
literatures.

In Hebrew poetry there are some principles about which no doubt exists.
_First_, its dominant feature is Parallelism, Parallelism of meaning,
which, though found in all human song, is carried through this poetry with
a constancy unmatched in any other save the Babylonian. The lines of a
couplet or a triplet of Hebrew verse may be Synonymous, that is identical
in meaning, or Supplementary and Progressive, or Antithetic. But at least
their meanings respond or correspond to each other in a way, for which no
better name has been found than that given it by Bishop Lowth more than a
century and a half ago, "Parallelismus Membrorum."(41) _Second_, this
rhythm of meaning is wedded to a rhythm of sound which is achieved by the
observance of a varying proportion between stressed or heavily accented
syllables and unstressed. That is clear even though we are unable to
discriminate the proportion in every case or