Grammatical Aspects of Biblical Parallelism*

A D E L E B E R L I N University of Maryland, College Park

I . INTRODUCTION

A. Word Pairs and Parallelism B. T h e Corpus C. What is Grammatical Parallelism?

I I . MORPHOLOGICAL PARALLELISM

A. Word Pairs f r o m Different Morphological Classes 1. Noun II Pronoun 2. Noun or Pronoun II Relative Clause 3. Prepositional Phrase H Adverb 4. Substantive II Verb

B. Word Pairs f r o m the Same Morphological Class j. Word Pairs of Different Tense 2. Word Pairs of Different Conjugation 3. Word Pairs of Different Gender 4. Word Pairs of Different Number

I I I . SYNTACTIC PARALLELISM

A. Positive-Negative Parallelism B. Parallelism Involving Change in Grammatical Mood C. Subject-Object Parallelism D. Nominal-Verbal Parallelism

I V . SUMMARY

V . GRAMMATICAL PARALLELISM IN PSALM 9 2

V I . CONCLUDING REMARKS

* The author wishes to thank Prof. D. Hillers and Prof. M. Greenberg for reading the manuscript and offering many helpful comments. A Summer Stipend from The National Endowment for the Humanities enabled me to complete the work.

1 7

[2] ADELE BERLIN 18

I . INTRODUCTION

A. Word Pairs and Parallelism

I t has become a commonplace to assert that parallelism is the outstanding characteristic of biblical poetry. And while it occurs primarily in poetry, it is not totally absent f r om prose.1 Yet it is surprising how little is actually known about the inner workings of this popular rhetorical feature.

T h e most important component of biblical parallelism seems to be parallel word pairs. This has been the object of most studies of biblical parallelism during the last quarter century. T h e pairs have been listed,2

and the principles by which they were selected have been examined. Most of the literature o n the subject accepts the hypothesis that there was a tradition of fixed word pairs in Ugaritic and Hebrew poetry which auto-matically conditioned the use of the second member of a pair once the first member was employed. This assumption has been recently challenged in a study by William R. Watters, in which h e shows that the majority of word pairs are not traditional (i.e. they d o not recur), and that the recurrence of others can b e explained by reasons other than a fixed tradition.3 But whatever the t ruth may be in regard to a tradition of fixed pairs, Watters stresses again the importance of word pairs in parallelism. "The paral-lelism as well as the sense of the line is based upon the word pair."4 I n fact, not only a re word pairs important, they a re essential. "There can be n o parallelism without a word pair."5

( 1 ) I use "prose" and "poetry" in the conventional manner, without attempting to define either. Examples of prose verses containing parallelism are I Sam. 3:1, 2, 7. From such examples it would appear that attempts to differentiate poetry from prose solely by the presence or absence of parallelism are misguided.

On the basis of parallelism, formulaic pairs, and other rhetorical features J . S. Kselman has recendy identified some hitherto unrecognized poetic fragments ("The Recovery of Poetic Fragments from the Pentateuchal Priestly Source ,"/BL 97 [1978] 161-173). These verses may, indeed, be poetic fragments, or they may simply show, as do several examples in the present study, that many of the rhetorical features found in poetry also occur in prose. On possible criteria for differentiating prose from poetry see D. N. Freedman, "Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy: An Essay on Biblical Poetry," JBL 96 (1977) 5-26.

For some views on the difference between prose and poetic parallelism (not necessarily shared by this writer) see Wm. Whallon, Formula, Character, and Context, Studies in Homeric, Old English, and Old Testament Poetry (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1969) 197-199.

(2) The most comprehensive listing of parallel word pairs in Ugaritic and the Bible is M. Dahood, with the collaboration of T . Penar, "Ugaritic-Hebrew Parallel Pairs," Ras Shamra Parallels I (Analecta Orientalia 49, Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1972) 71-382; I I (Analecta Orientalia 50, 1975) 1-39·

(3) Formula Criticism and the Poetry of the Old Testament (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1976) 60-80.

(4) Ibid. 42. (5) Ibid׳

1 9 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM [ 3 ]

But while word pairs are a crucial ingredient of parallelism, there is more to parallelism than the presence of word pairs. T h e use of word pairs, fixed o r not, is not sufficient to explain the wide variety of parallel stichs that occur in the Bible. The re are other aspects of parallelism that need to be recognized and analyzed. These other aspects are referred to by Roman Jakobson when h e states that

Pervasive parallelism inevitably activates all the levels of language — the distinctive features, inherent and prosodie, the morphologic and syntactic categories and forms, the lexical units and their semantic classes in both their convergences and divergences acquire a n au-tonomous poetic value.6

I n short, it is not only words ("lexical units and their semantic classes") that are paired in parallelism, but other aspects o r levels of language as well. This study will examine some of the grammatical aspects ("morphologic and syntactic categories and forms") of biblical Hebrew which are acti-vated in biblical parallelism.

B. T h e Corpus

T h e corpus under consideration fo r this study is the entire Hebrew Bible. I have purposely drawn o n all parts of the Bible because the phenomena which I have observed are not limited to a particular genre, time, o r author.7 T h e verses cited represent examples of various types of gram-matical parallelism. Some of the verses have been noted by others; some are fortuitous findings of my own. T h e compilation of a complete list of all verses illustrating all types of parallelism is not a practical undertaking without the aid of a computer, no r is it necessary to prove the existence of these types.

The re is some injustice done to a verse by lifting it out of context, as I have done. I n many cases a verse is part of a larger structure built o n lexical o r phonetic patterns, o r woven among other levels of parallelism. T o appreciate the full measure of intricacy and beauty of a specific verse one must always go back to the context. But the purpose of this study is to abstract certain general features of parallelism. When these are noted, along with other rhetorical features, in entire passages, the "rhetorical criticism" of those passages should be more complete.

(6) "Grammatical Parallelism and Its Russian Facet,"Language 42 (1966) 423. Cf. also R. Jakobson, "Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry," Lingua 21 (1968) 604.

(7) It may be that certain phenomena recur more often in one book or period but that is not the concern of the present study.

[41 ADELE BERLIN 2 0

C. What is Grammatical Parallelism?

While there are many stichs which repeat the grammatical structure of those which precede them, many others alter that structure in some way. T h e alteration of grammatical structure in parallel stichs, or, better, the pairing of two different grammatical structures in parallel stichs we term grammatical parallelism. Grammatical parallelism warrants fur ther analysis because it is one of the keys to understanding how parallel stichs are generated, and how the danger of monotony, inherent in such a repetitive type of rhetoric, is avoided. 8

Grammar has two subdivisions: morphology and syntax. Morphology deals with the individual components of a sentence, o r , in parallelism, a stich; syntax is concerned with the sentence o r stich as a whole. When we examine the morphological aspects of parallelism we will be comparing the morphology of parallel terms (word pairs). Morphological parallelism is the pairing of parallel terms f r o m different morphological classes (parts of speech) o r f rom the same morphological class but containing different morphological components. Let us illustrate by citing two verses. T h e first contains n o morphological parallelism, but complete morphological repe-tition. T h e second has one instance of morphological parallelism.

Ps 103:10 לא כחטאינו עשה לנו ולא כעונתינו גמל עלינו

T h e corresponding terms occur in the same order in both stichs and are quite obvious: 1. T h e negative particle לא is paired with the same. 2. A term composed of a preposition + noun 4־ possessive suffix (כחטאינו) parallels a different term composed of the same parts of speech (כעונותינו). I n addition, both terms a re of the same gender and number. 3. A qal perfect 3rd person singular verb is paired with a different verb with the same morphology. 4. A preposition 4 1 ־ s t person plural suffix is paired with a different preposition with the same suffix. Lexically these stichs are in parallelism; morphologically, however, they a re repetitive.

J o b האנוש מאלוה יצדק 4:17 אם מעשהו יטהר גבר

Although the word pairs occur in a different order in the two stichs they are easily recognizable. T h e only morphological difference is in / מאלוה / the latter containing a possessive suffix which is absent (for מעשהו semantic reasons) in the former.

(8) Other techniques employed to avoid monotony in parallelism are the omission and/or addition of terms and the change of order of the terms.

[ 5 ] GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM 2 1

The first part of this paper will list and examine several types o f morphological parallelism. It will be shown that in some cases the pairing of morphologically different terms seems to have been intentional, in order to heighten the effect o f the parallelism beyond that already pro-duced by the use of semantically parallel terms.

The second part of the paper will deal with syntactic parallelism — that is, parallel stichs with different syntax. The two verses quoted above are examples o f syntactic repetition, not syntactic parallelism. In both verses stich b has the same syntactic structure as stich a. The change in word order in Job 4:17 does not alter this fact. The order of the words does not affect the syntactic analysis o f a stich, and therefore it is not considered grammatically significant for the purpose of this study.9

Both morphological and syntactic parallelism augment the total effect of the parallelism, and provide an almost infinite number of possibilities for constructing parallel stichs.

I I . MORPHOLOGICAL PARALLELISM

A. Word Pairs from Different Morphological Classes

Whenever a word from one part o f speech parallels a word from a different part of speech we have a form of morphological parallelism. I have noted the following combinations:

1. Noun II Pronoun Ps. 33:2 הודו להיבכנור

בנבל עשור זמרו לו

Ps. 3 3 : 8 ייראו מה, כל הארז ממנו יגורו כל ישבי תבל

2. Noun or Pronoun II Relative Clause10

Isa. 44:1 ועתה שמע יעקב עבדי וישראל בחרתי בו

( C f . I s a . 4 5 : 4 ) "

(9) Word order, or, more specifically, chiasm, does have a semantic function, as demon-strated by F. I. Andersen, The Sentence in Biblical Hebrew (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1974) 119-140. Note especially p. 123: "Chiasm is a syntactic as well as an artistic device." What Andersen means is that in poetry two parallel stichs arranged chiastically are to be viewed as one sentence. However, in our study we are not interested in the two stichs as a unit, but in the contrast between the two stichs.

(10) A relative clause is not a part of speech, but one does not find a relative pronoun by itself, and often the pronoun is omitted.

(11) The word pair עבד / / does not appear in Dahood's list of word pairs (Ras Shamra בחר Parallels) but occurs in Isa. 41:8, 9; 42:1; 43:10; 44:1, 2; 65:9, 15, as noted by W. Watters, Formula Criticism 174, and also in Ps. 89:4; 105:6; and perhaps Hag. 2:23.

[6] ADELE BERLIN 22

T h e relative clause may precede the noun, as in

Lam. מה היה לנו 5:1 , ה זכר הביט וראה את חרפתנו

Song 3: ! ... את שאהבה נפשי בקשתי בקשתיו ולא מצאתיו

3· Prepositional Phrase II Adverb

Ps. 34:2 בכל עת , ה אברכה את תמיד תהלתו בפי

Substantive II Verb ׳4

Ps. 3 4 : 2 a ' s o illustrates that a substantive (noun, adjective, o r participle) can parallel a verb. This is not uncommon in parallelism and will be discussed under syntactic parallelism.

There is really nothing unusual about such pairings, fo r the members of each category are normally used as substitutes f o r each other in biblical Hebrew; pronouns take the place of nouns, prepositional phrases and adverbs of ten serve the same syntactic function and are not always distin-guishable,12 and a relative clause may serve as a subject o r object — the same syntactic slot also filled by nouns and pronouns. T h e evidence seems to indicate that any parts of speech that serve the same syntactic function can be used as parallel terms.13 This provides a grammatical dimension fo r broadening the choice of parallel terms, in addition to the choice provided by lexical-semantic possibilities. I n the next section we will show that efforts were made to broaden the selection of parallel terms even when they are f rom the same morphological class.

B. Word Pairs f r o m the Same Morphological Class

As stated in the preceding section, a term may be paralleled by one f rom a different morphological class. I t is also possible to repeat the same term (technically this is repetition, not parallelism), o r to parallel it by another term f rom the same morphological class. Parallel terms f rom the same morphological class may be morphologically identical o r morphologically different. T h e following sections will enumerate parallel pairs f r o m the same class which are morphologically different. Moreover, their mor-

(12) Cf. P. Joüon, Grammaire de l'hébreu biblique (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1923) 267.

(13) Compare P. Kiparsky, "The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry," Daedalus, (Summer, 1973) 235: "the linguistic sames which are potentially relevant in poetry are just those which are potentially relevant in grammar." (Italics in the original.)

[ 7 ] GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM 2 3

phological difference does not affect the meaning of the parallelism. I t represents a type of paralleling o n the grammatical level, not o n the semantic level.

ι. Word Pairs of Different Tense

T h e shift f r om perfect to imperfect forms, and vice versa (the qtl-yqtllyqtl-qtl sequence) in parallel stichs has been recognized fo r some time and is amply documented.14 I t occurs with verbs f r om the same root, as in

Ps. 29:10 ה׳ למבול ישב , מלך לעולם ה וישב

o r with verbs f rom different roots, as in

Ps. 26:4 לא ישבתי עם מתי שוא ועם נעלמים לא אבוא15

I t is important to emphasize that the qtl-yqtl shift occurs not fo r semantic reasons (it does not indicate a real temporal sequence),16 but fo r stylistic reasons; it provides a n added dimension to the parallelism.

2. Word Pairs of Different Conjugation

Another phenomenon in parallelism is the use of the same verbal root in two different conjugations, such as is found in

Ps. 24:7 שאו שערים ראשיכם והנשאר פתחי עולם17

This was called the active-passive sequence by U. Cassuto,18 and the factitive-passive sequence by M. Held.19 However, the shift is not limited to specific conjugations o r grammatical voice, as can be seen f r o m the following verses listed by M. Dahood: Ps. 64:5 (qal-hiphil); Ps. 77:12 (Ketiv)

(14) Cf. M. Held, "The YQTL-QTL (QTL-YQTL) Sequence of Identical Verbs in Biblical Hebrew and in Ugaritic," Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman (Leiden: Brill, 1962) 281-290; M. Dahood, Psalms III {Anchor Bible, Garden City: Doubleday, 1970) 420-423.

(15) Cf. Held's treatment of this and the following verse, op. cit. 286. (16) Cf. D. Clines, / , He, We, and They: A Literary Approach to Isaiah 53, Journal for the

Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 1 (Sheffield: Univ. of Sheffield, 1976) 47-48.

(17) Cf. Ps. 24:9 and M. Held, "The Active-Result (Factitive-Passive) Sequence of Identi-cal Verbs in Biblical Hebrew and Ugaritic,"/ßL 84 (1965) 276, note 8.

(18) The Goddess Anath (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1971; first pub. in Hebrew in 1951) 47-48 = Biblical and Oriental Studies, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975) 58-59· The article originally appeared in Tarbiz 14 (1943) 1-10.

(19) JBL 84 (1965) 272-282.

[8] ADELE BERLIN 2 4

(hiphil-qal); Ps. 139:21 (piel-qal).20 I n addition to the verses cited by the aforementioned scholars,21 the following verses contain the same verbal root in different conjugations in parallel stichs:

Gen. 6:12 וירא אלהים את הארץ והנה ?#קתה כי השחית כל בשר את דרכו על הארץ

Gen. 17:17 הלבן מאה שנה ל5לד ואם שרה הבת תשעים שנה תלד22

I Sam. 1:28 וגם אנכי הקזאקיתיהו לה׳ כל הימים אשר היה הוא שאול לה׳

Isa. 1:19-20 ... טוב הארץ ו*א5לו . חרב תאכלו . . I S I

This is a play on words made possible because the root אכל occurs in different conjugations with different meanings: the qal means "to eat" and the pual means "to be consumed."

Isa. 33:1 הוי שולד ואתה לא שדוד ילא 3גדו בד יביגי כהתמד שולד תושד

כנלתד לבגד לבגדו בד

T h e root שדד occurs here in the qal and huphal; the root בגד only in different forms of the qal. Not only does שדד show variation in conjuga-tion, but repetition of the same pattern for both verbs is avoided by using .in active (impersonal) constructions בגד in passive constructions and שדד

(20) Dahood also lists Ps. 29:5; 38:3; 69:15 (Psalms III, 414). (21) The verses listed by Cassuto and Held are Isa. 6:11 (?);Jer. 15:19; 17:14; 20:7; 31:3,

17; Ps. 19:13-14; 24:7; 69:15; Lam. 5:21. Held hesitates to include Isa. 6:11 because many modern commentators, following the reading in the LXX, emend תשאה to תשאר. This emendation, notes Held, seems also to be supported by Isa. 24:12 (JBL 84, 275, note 2). However, while it is true that Isa. 24:12 contains the same idea and several of the same terms found in 6:11 this does not mean that all of the terms need be identical. The word נשאר may have been used in 24:12 because it makes a good phonetic complement to the word שער at the end of the verse. The phonetic pattern in 6:11 is entirely different. Here one might see an ABBA pattern composed of שאו — אדם— אדמה — תשאה. In my opinion emending תשאה is unnecessary; the verbs תשאה and שאו exemplify both a change of tense and of conjugation, as well as a shift from plural to singular (see below).

(22) Cf. J . S. Kselman,JBL 97 (1978) 168. There is no need to change יולד to אולד or to explain the lamed of לבן as emphatic. The syntax of the two parallel stichs need not be identical. "Will (a child) be born to a centenarian; and will Sarah who is ninety years old give birth" makes a good parallelism. Cf. Jer. 20:14 and see below, SYNTACTIC PARALLELISM.

2 5 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM

Isa. 66:13 כאיש »שר אמו תנחמני כן אנכי אגק?5ם

ובירושלם תנחמו

Je r . ^דתי בו 20:14 ארור היום אשר י אמי אל יהי ברור נ ^ ל יום אשר

Je r . הנה סערת ה׳ חמה יצאה 23:19 וסער מתחולל

על ראש רשעים לחול( c f . J e r . 3 0 : 2 3 )

H o s . 1 2 : 1 3 - 1 4 " W ה · · · ש א ב ו

א נקז^ר י ב נ ב ו —

Mie. 6:14b ותסג ולא 90ליט ואשר ת5לט לחרב אתן

J o b 2 2 : 3 0 יהלט אי נקי ןןקולט בבר כפיר

Furthermore, it has been noted that terms which are used as parallel pairs in parallel stichs may occur elsewhere, in poetry o r in prose, in juxtaposi-tion (one after another) o r in collocation (at some distance f rom one another).23 T h e same is t rue of word pairs consisting of the same verbal root in different conjugations.24

Gen. 7:23 נ?$חו מן הארץ · . . ף9ח את כל היקום

Gen. . מ!ןוןר לו ה׳ 25:21 . . ׳ ה ל ניעהר יצחק

Lev. 13: !9-20 וןה$ה אל הכהן. ור$ה הכהן

Josh. 6:1 ויריחו ס^רת וגןסגרת

Isa. 4 5 : 1 לרד לפניו גוים ומתני מלכים א5וןח ל?תח לפניו דלתים ושערים לא יסגרו

(23) Cf. M. Dahood, Ras Shamra Parallels I, p. 87. (24) Many of Cassuto's and Held's examples really belong in this category. R. Gordis

correctly distinguishes "the use of the same verb in two different tenses or voices, in two separate and parallel stichs" and "the use of the two verbs within the same stich." He then further subdivides the latter category into those which constitute the "plea and response" formula, and those which constitute the "action and result" formula (The Book of Job, Commentary, New Translation, and Special Studies [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1978] p. 511.

[ I O ] ADELE BERLIN 26

והרשעים כים נ^רש כי השקט לא יוכל ולגרשו מימיו רפש וטיט

Ezek. 14:6 שובו והשיבו

Isa. 5 7 : 2 °

(cf. SS111)2 5

התקוששו וקחןזו

ה יהודה בגן . . . מדוע נב*ד איש

Zeph. 2:1

Mal. 2:10-11

Ps. 92:13_ . בחצרות אלהינו ?פייחי 14 . . צדיק כתמר לפרח

Both a shift in tense and a shift in conjugation are found in

.Hos וישראל ואפרים לכשלו בעונם 5 : 5

כשל גם יהודה עמם

M. Held's explanation fo r the shift in conjugation is that "the device is stylistic and would seem to aim at stressing and emphasizing the effect o r result of the action referred to in the first stichos."26 H e also suggests that there were fewer available parallel pairs f o r verbs than for nouns, and so rather than repeat the same verb in the same form, it was modified slightly. 2 7 His observation o n the effect of the device appears to be correct, bu t I doubt that the biblical author was ever at a loss to find a parallel verb if h e so chose. I t would seem that using the same root in a different conjugation is, at times, more effective than using a totally different verb, because it produces the assonance and the play o n words which is so much a part of biblical rhetoric. I n this respect verses contain-ing the same verbal root in different conjugations are only one subset of the set of verses in which two different forms of the same root occur in parallel stichs, n o matter in what part of speech these roots may be found.

מדוע בשש רכבו לבוא מדוע אחרו פעמי מרכבותיו

Examples are:

J u d . 5:28

הרחי וגזי על בני תענוגיד הרחבי הרחתד כנשר כי גלו ממך

Mie. 1:16

האכלתם לחם דמעה ותשקמו בדמעות שליש

Ps. 80:6

(25) These verses were called to my attention by Prof. Moshe Greenberg. (26) JBL 84 (1965) 874. (87) Ibid. 875.

27 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM [11]

J o b ובטחת כי יש תקוה 11:18 וחפרת לבטח תשכב28

Ruth 2:12 ישלם ה׳ פעלד ותהי משכרתך שלמה מעם ה׳

3· Words Pairs of Different Gender

T h e paralleling of verbs in the qtl-yqtl sequence and verbs of different conjugations should not be viewed as isolated rhetorical peculiarities. They are part of a broader picture of morphological parallelism. I n addition to alteration of tense and verbal conjugation, there appears to be some evidence of morphological parallelism involving a shift in gender and in number.

I t is obvious f rom such verses as

Isa. 1:2 שמעו שמים והאזיני ארץ

that two terms need not be of the same gender o r number to be parallel. Even in a n incomplete parallelism the term omitted in the second stich (which is to be understood) may be different in gender and/or number f rom its expressed counterpart in the first stich.29 Examples of this a re

Ps. 30:6 בערב ילין בכי ולבקר(תלין) רנה

Ps. 19:5 בכל הארץ יצא קום ובקצה תבל(יצאו) מליהם

These examples merely prove that parallel terms, expressed o r under-stood, need not be in the same gender o r number. What remains to be investigated is to what extent a similarity o r difference in gender o r number influences the choice of parallel terms. We examine the case of gender first.

Umberto Cassuto pointed out that there are Ugaritic and biblical examples which show that of ten a masculine word is used in reference to a male o r masculine term, and a feminine synonym is applied to a female o r feminine term.30 H e cited

(28) Cf. R. Gordis, The Book of Job, 511-513. This verse is not included in the lists, but its assonance is noted in the commentary.

(29) Cf. R. Sappan, The Typical Features of the Syntax of Biblical Poetry in its Classical Period (Unpub. dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1974) 55, note 45. Sappan discusses only the difference in gender.

(30) The Goddess Anath 44-46 = Biblical and Oriental Studies, vol. 2, 66-68; originally published in Leshonenu 15 (1947) 97-102.

[12] ADELE BERLIN 2 8

Je r . אוי לד מואב 48:46 אבד עם כמוש

כי לקחו בניד בשבי ובנתיך בשביה

(cf. Deut. 21:10-11)

Nah. 2:13b וימלא טרף חריו ומענתיו טרפה

Isa. 3: ! כי הנה האדון ה׳ צבאות מסיר מירושלם ומיהודה משען ומשענה

I n Isa. 3-1י Cassuto explains, the word משען harks back to יהודה (here grammatically masculine, cf. Isa. 3:8), and to the משענה feminine ירושלם. T h e pattern is chiastic.

These three verses contain three sets of nearly identical word pairs: / שבי / / טרף,שביה / and ,טרפה / משען / ,Cassuto suggested that these sets .משענה o r a t least the second term in each, were chosen in order to match the gender of another word in their respective stichs. Tha t is, the choice of these words was based o n morphologic considerations.

But there is a slightly different way to view the phenomenon in these three verses. Surely there were other word pairs which were of the required gender.31 One must ask why such similar terms were chosen in these verses. T h e use of such closely related parallel terms is so striking as to indicate a n intent to emphasize their morphology. What these pairs suggest to m e is not only that they were selected to match the gender of other words in their respective stichs, but also that they were intended to parallel each other on a morphological level, much like the pairs com-posed of the same root in different conjugations. Other sets of nearly identical terms, one in the masculine and one in the feminine, a re found in

Je r . , חמה יצאה ופער מתחולל 23:19 ה הנה סערת (cf. 30:23)

Isa. 52:2 התנערי מעפר קומי שבי ירושלם התפתחי(התפתחו:ketiv) מוסרי צוארד שביה בת ציון32

Other verses which employ both masculine and feminine forms of the same root, although they may not be exactly synonymous o r parallel, a re

(31) For example, compare Jer. 48:46 with Num. 21:29. (32) Understanding both שבי and שכיה to mean "captive" — thus RSV.

2 9 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM [ 1 3 ]

Ezek. 25:13 ... ונתתיה חרכה דתה כחרב יפלו ו מתימן

Ezek. 25:15 ... יען עשות פלשתים בנהמה ...וינקמו נהם

(This verse is part of a larger play o n the root נקם.) T h e use of the same adjective in different genders, although this is

determined by the modified nouns, may also be considered morphologi-cal parallelism. (It also serves to put emphasis o n the adjective.)

Gen. 11:6 33הן עם אחד ושפה אחת לכלם

Isa. 66:8 היוחל ארץ ביום אחד אם יולד גוי פעם אחת

Especially interesting is

Ps. 51:19 זבחי אלהים רוח נשברה לב נשכר ונדכה אלהים לא תבזה

T h e word רוח may be either gender, and, indeed, the pair לב and רוח appear in 51:12 where both a re masculine. Perhaps רוח has been used in verse 19 as a feminine in order to produce the masculine-feminine alter-nation which stands out in נשברה / / .נשבר

T h e use of the same substantive in different genders in parallel stichs creates the same type of assonance that is produced by the use of the same verb in different tenses o r conjugations.

From all of these verses we see that one way of forming a parallel word pair is by alternating the gender of the same word. T h e corollary to this is that one way of forming parallel stichs is by alternating the gender of those stichs. This is never the sole way in which a parallelism is con-structed, bu t it may be one of the levels of parallelism operating in certain verses.

The re a re many verses besides those already noted in which there is agreement in gender within a stich and alternation of gender f r om one parallel stich to the next. Examples are

Ps. 144:12 בנתינו כזוית . . . אשר בנינו כנטעים

Ps. 126:2 אז ימלא שחוק פינו ולשוננו רנה

Prov. 1:8 שמע בני מוסר אביד ואל תטש תורת אמך

(33) This echoes Gen. 11:1.

[ 1 4 1 ADELE BERLIN S O

T h e arrangement of the genders in these verses may be accidental, but the effect is a parallelism o n the morphological level. T h e question that remains is: is this juxtaposition of genders intentional? I cannot prove that such is the case, fo r the following reason: Most parallel terms are chosen fo r lexical reasons, not f o r morphological reasons. Since all nouns in Hebrew are either masculine o r feminine, there are inevitably many combinations containing one term in each gender, e. g. ,ששון / / שמחה / הרים / T .גבעות h e use of such combinations does not prove a n intent to alternate genders. Even the use of pairs which were originally based o n a morphological principle, e.g. אב / / / בנים ,אם / does not necessarily ,בנות prove that the author constructed his parallelism o n a morphological level. Pairs such as אב / / are אם probably chosen o n the lexical level — i. e. they are traditional word pairs and/or are perceived as natural counter-parts.

One verse which may be suggestive of a n intentional alternation of genders in parallel stichs is

Isa. 3:8a כי כשלה ירושלם ויהודה נפל

T h e word יהודה may be grammatically feminine, as in Ps. 114:2; Lam. 1:3, o r masculine, as in Hos. 5:5. By choosing to construe it as masculine here (and also in 3:1), Isaiah has created a morphological parallelism. I n 3:8 the two genders appear to balance each other, and may even create a merismus.34 T h e presence of this alternation in gender heightens the effect of the parallelism.

T o summarize: Isa. 3:8 suggests that there may have been an inten-tional switching of genders in parallel stichs. Verses such as Ps. 144:12; 126:2; Prov. 1:8 probably contain a coincidental shift in gender. I n the case of word pairs, however, it seems more certain that pairs of nearly identical terms in different genders constitute a type of morphological parallelism.

4. Word Pairs of Different Number

We tu rn now to a consideration of morphological parallelism involving number. Here, too, one must take into account that some word pairs will

(34) The pair Jerusalem // Judah also creates a merismus by employing a part and its whole. The effect of totality is emphasized by the chiastic word order. The verbs also constitute a totality since both verbs apply to both subjects: Jerusalem and Judah have stumbled and fallen. Thus the grammar, the choice of parallel terms, and the word order all work toward the same end.

[ 1 5 ] GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS O F BIBLICAL PARALLELISM 3 1

contain one singular and one plural term fo r lexical reasons. Most of these fall into one of the following categories:

a. Some words, such as שמים ,מים ,חיים, are grammatically plural al-though they have a singular meaning. They will most likely be paired with a singular term.

b. Some words usually occur in the dual o r plural, e.g.עיניים,שפתיים, bu t often have a singular parallel mate.

c. Some words, although grammatically singular, have a collective meaning, e.g. תבל ,גוי, and will often parallel a plural.

d . O n e of the principles by which word pairs are formed is the parallel-ing of a whole and its part. This seems to be the explanation fo r such pairs as מלכים / / / ערי יהודה ;in Ps. 144:10 דוד / in Je ירושלם r . 7:17 and passim; / ציון / .in Ps. 48:12; 97:8 בנות יהודה

e. T h e r e are traditional, logical, o r natural pairs, such as ירח / / in כוכבים Job / בעלה;25:5 / / אב;in Prov. 31:28 בניה / / אחד 35;ך:in Deut. 32 זקנים / in שנים Deut. 32:3ο·36

Thus, there are many verses in which, fo r lexical-semantic reasons, a singular term will parallel a plural one. But, in addition to these, there are numerous verses which contain this type of parallelism fo r non-lexical-semantic reasons. These verses contain a singular term paralleled by a plural (or a compound, which generates a plural predicate) fo r n o appar-ent reason other than to create a parallelism o n the morphological level.37

This is most apparent when the same word appears in both stichs in different numbers, as in

J u d . מדוע בשש רכבו לבוא 5:28 מדוע אחרו פעמי מרכבותיו38

Hos. 5 :5b וישראל ואפרים יכשלו בעונם כשל גם יהודה עמם

ם (35) קני ז may mean elders of the generation preceding the father — cf. Prov. 17:6. Perhaps it might even be translated "grandfathers." The shift from singular to plural is natural, since a person has only one father but more than one elder.

(36) This also follows the rule for paralleling numbers: χ // x+1. (37) W. Watters has also observed the paralleling of a singular by a plural, but explains

the phenomenon as being necessary for metric reasons. Formula Criticism 105: "The poetry is literally loaded with cases where one half of a word pair is plural and the other half is singular. Yet in most all instances, the use of singular or plural has no impact upon the understanding of the line. By so varying the singular-plural aspect of the words in pair, the lines are balanced in more uniform lengths."

(38) Prof. Greenberg pointed out to me that the plural of מרכבותיו may have been conditioned by the plural of פעמי; cf. צררות כספיהם, Gen. 42:35·

3 2 ADELE BERLIN [ 1 6 ]

Prov. 14:12=16:25 יש דרד ישר לפני איש ואחריתה דרבי מות

J o b אחי בגדו כמו נחל 6:15 באפיק נחליט יעברו

o r when demonstrative pronouns are paralleled, as in

Isa. 66:8 מי שמע בזאת מי ראה באלה

Je r . העל אלה לוא אפקד נאם ה׳ 5:9 ואם בגוי אשר בזה לא תתנקם נפשי

J o b בלבבי 10:13 ת נ פ צ יאלה ידעתי כי זאת עמך

J o b מי לא ידע בכל אלה 12:9 כי יד ה׳ עשתה זאת

J o b אד אלה משכנות עול 18:21 וזה מקום לא ידע אל

Lam. על זה היה דוה לבני 5:17 על אלה חשכו עינינו

I t is also striking to f ind two parallel verbs in different numbers, as in

Deut. 32:7 זכר ימות עולם בינו שנות דר ודר

Although many scholars prefer to read בין o r there is n בינו instead of בינה o evidence to support such a reading. T h e parallelism is clearly singular // plural. This pattern is repeated in the following stichs: שאל אביך ויגדך זקניך T .ויאמרו לך h e pair אב / / has been discussed above. While it was not זקנים formed primarily o n a morphological level, it reinforces the morphologi-cal pattern of this verse.

T h e four-stich parallelism in Deut. 32:7 is only one of several four-stich stanzas that have a morphological pattern based o n number. Other examples a re

Isa. 40:4 כל גיא ינשא וכל הר וגבעה ישפלו

והיה העקב למישור 39והרכסים לבקעה

(39) I have written in Hebrew Annual Review (1979) on my interpretation of this verse.

33 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM [171

where the pattern is singular // plural; singular // plural,

Ps. 92:13-14 צדיק כתמר יפרח כארז בלבנון ישגה

שתולים בבית ה׳ בחצרות אלהינו יפריחו

where the pattern is singular // singular; plural // plural, and

Ps. 126:5-6 הזרעים בדמעה ברנה יקצרו

הלוך ילך ובכה נשא משך הזרע בא יבא ברנה נשא אלמתיו

where the pattern is plural // plural; singular // singular. As in the case of gender, the use of the same o r similar adjectives in

different number emphasizes the adjective and yields a morphological parallelism.

Gen. 11:1 40ויהי כל הארץ שפה אחת ודברים אחדים

Isa. 54 ברגע ר,טן עזבתיך 7: וברחמים גדלים אקבצך41

As we can see f rom Ps. 126:5-6 either a singular o r a plural can b e used generically in Hebrew. Moreover, we often find that a verse o r passage uses both — thereby producing a n alternation in number. For example.

Prov. 14:33 ה מ כ ח ח ר נ ת י י כ נ ב ל ב

ובקרב כפילים תודע

Prov. 18:15 לב נבוך יקנה דעת ואזן חכמים תבקש דעת

Prov. 29:27 תועבת צדיהים איש עול ותועבת רשע ישר דרך

Compare also Ps. 1:1-3, which speaks of the righteous in the singular, a n d the parallel section in vv. 4-5, which describes the wicked in the plural.

Singular-plural alternation apparendy varies freely. We have arbitrar-ily chosen one term, ישרי לב, which always occurs in the plural, and have

(40) For אחדים cf. Ezek. 37:17. are not normally word pairs, but can be contrued here as parallel ברחמים and ברגע (41)

terms because they each occupy the same position in their respective stichs. The fact that they are phonetically similar (ברע and ברח), and that both are modified by similar adjectives adds to the impression that they are parallel terms.

[18] ADELE BERLIN 34

noted that it is paralleled by צדיק in Ps. 64:11 ; 97:11 ; and probably 94:15, and paralleled by צדיקים in Ps. 32:11 and by יודעיך in Ps. 36:11.

Finally, we must comment o n what importance the recognition of the device of alternating number has o n the interpretation of the biblical text. T h e Massoretic Text contains several cases of singular-plural parallelism which are not reflected in the versions.

Gen. 12:3a ואברכה מברכיך ומקללך אאר42

(Versions: ומקלליך)

Isa. 44 מקים דבר עבדו 26: ועצת מלאכיו ישלים

(Versions: עבדיו)

Ps. 114:2 היתה יהודה לקדשו ישראל ממשלותיו(Versions:ממשלתו)

Deut. 26:13 ככל מצותך אשר צויתני לא עברתי ממצותיד43 (Versions: ככל מצותיך)

I n light of the foregoing discussion we should not conclude that the M T is corrupt, o r that the Versions had a different text, but rather that the Versions were simply not sensitive to this particular device.

The re is ample evidence that the Bible contains morphological paral-lelism. Most likely there are other types besides those mentioned here. T h e shift in person, an accepted rhetorical device in the Bible (cf. Mie. 7:9;

Ps. 104:13; 145:6; Song 1:2) should probably be considered morphologi-cal parallelism.

T o conclude this section on parallel terms f r o m the same morphologi-cal class I of fer an example in which every word pair shows morphological parallelism.

Je r . ונתתי את ירושלם לגלים מעון תנים 9:10 ואת ערי יהודה אתן שממה מבלי יושב

I n this verse none of the parallel nouns match in respect to number:

(42) U. Cassuto comments on this verse: "The difference between the plural those who bless you and the singular him who curses you was introduced, it seems, for the sake of diversification and variation in the parallelism, for which reason a change was also made in the order of the words of the two clauses" (From Noah to Abraham (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1964] 315)·

(43) This verse is prose and does not, strictly speaking, contain a parallelism, but reflects the same rhetorical usage of a shift in number in closely linked phrases.

35 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM

/ ירושלם / / גלים 44,ערי יהודה / and ,שממה even תנים / / although strictly יושב speaking this is not a parallel word pair.45 T h e verbs are in the qtl-yqtl sequence. T h e use of morphological parallelism does not exclude the use of other types of parallelism o r parallelistic devices. This verse also em-ploys chiastic word arrangement and rhythmic parallelism. Phonetic par-allelism is noticeable in the rhyme of תנים,גלים,ירושלם and a ,שממה,יהודה n d the alliteration מבלי,מעון.

I I I . SYNTACTIC PARALLELISM

We have seen that individual terms can be paralleled by a member of the same morphological class (with o r without a morphological change of the components), o r by a member of a different morphological class. A similar principle operates in the paralleling of a stich as a whole: a stich may be paralleled by one with the same syntax (syntactic repetition o r identity) o r by one with different syntax (syntactic parallelism). T h e following are some ways by which syntactic parallelism is achieved:46

A. Positive-Negative Parallelism

This is a well known type of parallelism in which the same thought is expressed twice, once positively and once negatively. (This is a fo rm of synonymous parallelism and is not to be confused with antithetic paral-lelism.) Examples are

Prov. 1:8 שמע בגי מוסר אביך ואל תטש תורת אמך

Prov. 6:2o נצר בני מצות אביך ואל תטש תורת אמך

Hab. 3:17 כחש מעשה זית ושדמות לא עשה אכל

(44) On this pair see above, note 34. (45) The phrases מעון תנים and מבלי יושב are not lexically or grammatically parallel. They

are phonetically similar, both beginning with mem, and metrically similar, both having the same number of syllables and accent pattern. They also occupy the same position in parallel stichs. Cf. above, note 41.

(46) On what basis did the poet choose an alternate syntax? P. Kiparsky, Daedalus (Summer, 1973) 236 hypothesizes that "those syntactic elements which are counted as parallel for the purpose of verse are, at some point in the derivation, counted as sames according to transformational grammar." That is, the two different syntactic structures used in parallel stichs are transformations of the same underlying sentence. While this has not been demonstrated for biblical parallelism,the examples which follow suggest that such is the case.

3 6 ADELE BERLIN [ 2 0 ]

גזר ממכלה צאן ואין בקר ברפתים

Hab. 3 : 1 7 contains four stichs in a positive-negative-positive-negative pattern, all expressing lacking or ceasing.

This device is often found in prose, as in

Gen. 37:24b והבור רק אין בו מים

Deut. 9:7 ח כ ש ת ל א זכר

I Sam. 3: i b ודבר ה׳ היה יקר בימים ההם אין חזון נפרץ

I Sam. 3:2b ועינו החלו כהות לא יוכל לראות

I Kings 3:18b ואנחנו יחדו אין זר אתנו בבית

T h e negative may precede the positive, as in

Prov. 3:1 בני תורתי אל תשכח ומצותי יצר לבר

B. Parallelism Involving Change in Grammatical Mood

There are a number of parallelisms in which two different grammatical moods are paired. This may involve indicative // interrogative

Ps. 6:6 כי אין במות זכרך בשאול מי יודה לך

interrogative // indicative

Ps. 73 : 2 5 ם י מ ש ב י ל י מ

ועמד לא חפצתי בארץ

interrogative // imperative

Ps. 19:13 שגיאות מי יבין מנסתרות נקני

There are many cases of imperative //jussive / jussive // imperative. Some involve second person jussive and imperative (i.e. also second person). Verse of this type in Psalms have been noted by M. Dahood.47 There are also verses containing an imperative and a third person jussive.

Deut. 32:1 האזינו השמים ואדברה ותשמע הארץ אמרי פי

(47) Psalms III 423-424·

37 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM [21]

Mie. 6:1 קום ריב את ההרים ותשמענה הגבעות קולך

Prov. 3: ! בני תורתי אל תשבח ומצותי יצר לבך

Eccl. 5:1 ר אלתבהלעלפי ולבך אל ימהר

These verses could be analyzed o n the morphological level as a change in person.

C. Subject-Object Parallelism

Many parallel stichs are structured in such a way that the subject in one becomes the object in the other.

Gen. 27:29 הוה גביר לאחיו־ וישתחוו לד בני אמך

Ge11· 37 :33 חיה רעה אכלתהו טרף טרף יוסף

Jer . 1:5 . . . ן ט ב ב בטרם אצורד ... ובטרם תצא מרחם

J e r . ארור היום אשר ילדתי בו 20:14 יום אשר ילדתני אמי אל יהי ברוד

Hos. 5:3 אני ידעתי אפרים וישראל לא נכחד ממני

Ps. 2:7 בני אתה אני היום ילדתיך

Ruth 1:21 אני מלאה הלכתי וריקם השיבני ה׳

Lam. 5:4 מימינו בכסף שתיני עצינו במחיר יבאו

Many of the verses listed under MORPHOLOGICAL PARALLELISM, Word Pairs of Different Conjugation, are also examples of subject-object parallelism. For example, Jer . 20:14 contains three types of grammatical parallelism: subject-object, change in conjugation, and positive-negative, as well as chiastic word order. Some cases of imperative // jussive also manifest subject-object parallelism, e.g. Mie. 6:1 and Eccl. 5:1.

3 8 ADELE BERLIN [ 2 2 ]

D. Nominal-Verbal Parallelism

T h e verses listed in this section all contain a nominal clause paralleled by a verbal clause (or vice versa). Some verses utilize a substantive a n d a verb f r o m t h e same root.

Ps. 97:9 על כל הארץ כי אתה ה׳ עליון מאד נעלית על כל אלהיט

Ps. 145:18 ה׳ לכל יוראיו קרוב לכל אשר יקראהו באמת

Ruth ישלם ה׳ פעלד 2:18 ה׳ ותהי משכרתן־ שלמה מעם

T h e use o f a substantive a n d verb f r o m t h e same root is also f o u n d in passages which a re non-parallelistic.

Exod. 12:10 עד בקר באש תשרפו עד בקר והנתד ממנו ולא תותירו ממנו

Lev. 13:12-13 . · . ו ה כ ה . לכל מראה הכהן. וראה . .

Lev. 13:17 (cf- 13:34) א ו ה י י ה מ את הנגע . .וטהר הכהן .

Lev. 13:46 הוא בדד ישב מחוץ למחנה מושבו. . .

Some verses employ substantives and verbs f r o m different roots.

Mie. 6:2b כי ריב לה׳ עם עמו ועם ישראל יתוכח

Ps. 34:2 ת ע אברכה את ה׳ בכל תמיד תהלתו בפי

Ps. 4 9 : 4 ת ו מ ב ח פי ידבר והגות לבי תבונות

Compare also Ps. 34 : 1 9! 5 ° : 8 ; 8 1 : 1 4 .

These categories of syntactic parallelism a r e not mutually exclusive. I t is common t o find a verse displaying more than o n e type, e.g. J e r . 20:14, m e n t i o n e d above; Ps. 50:8: ve rba l -nomina l , subject-object , a n d negative-positive; Deut. 32:1: imperative-jussive a n d verbal-nominal / אדברה) / / שמים ,also plural-singular) (אמרי פי / although this is a ,ארץ common word pair not fo rmed o n the morphological level).

39 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM

I V . SUMMARY

T h e section o n morphological parallelism has demonstrated that there is more to paralleling terms than the selection of semantically appropriate word pairs. I t is not only important to see which terms are used, but how they are used. T h e fo rm of the word pairs is as interesting as their content. T h e structure of the language permits the paralleling of one term by another f rom the same morphological class o r f r om a different class. Using a term f rom a different class automatically introduces a grammati-cal change in one stich and creates a morphological parallelism. Even when the parallel term belongs to the same morphological class its fo rm is often varied in some way, by changing the tense, conjugation, gender, number, o r person. This also produces a morphological parallelism.

We cannot know in all cases whether the biblical authors employed morphological parallelism intentionally, instinctively, o r accidentally. I n some cases involving a shift in gender o r number morphological paral-lelism resulted f rom lexical necessity. I n other cases it seems to have resulted f rom an intentional manipulation of the grammar of the Ian-guage. But whatever its origin, its presence certainly heightens the effect of the parallelism and adds a dimension of interest and variety to the stichs in which it occurs.

T h e inclination to vary the structure of parallel stichs is not confined to the morphological level. O n the syntactic level we see that variety is provided by pairing two stichs with different syntax. T h e categories of syntactic parallelism illustrated here are positive-negative, change in grammatical mood, subject-object, and nominal-verbal.

Syntactic parallelism and morphological parallelism together consti-tute grammatical parallelism. Grammatical parallelism is a device whereby the grammar of the language is activated in order to create parallel stichs. T h e parallelism is achieved by structural substitutions o r pairings in addition to lexical-semantic pairings.

T h e purpose of this study was to call attention to the phenomenon of grammatical parallelism by showing individual examples of many types scattered throughout the Bible. But how frequently does grammatical parallelism occur in relation to other types of parallelism? How does it manifest itself within a complete passage? T h e answers to these questions are not within the scope of the present study, but the following section provides a sample analysis which, if carried out fo r many passages, would give some indication of the prevalence of grammatical parallelism.

[24] ADELE BERLIN 4 0

V . GRAMMATICAL PARALLELISM IN PSALM 9 2

This brief analysis of Ps. 92, based on the MT, shows how grammatical parallelism may occur in a complete passage. T h e psalm was chosen at random, but if it is at all typical, grammatical parallelism is a very perva-sive device. Within fifteen verses (not including the superscription) there are ten occurrences of grammatical parallelism. For purposes of compari-son I have noted M. Dahood's interpretation {Psalms II , Anchor Bible) of the pertinent verses in brackets.

v. 2 — a change f rom third person ("to the Lord") to second person ("to your name, Elyon"). [Dahood proposes to eliminate the "incongruity" by parsing the lamedh preceding the Tetragrammaton as the vocative parti-cle. This requires that the lamedh of the first stich be analyzed differently f rom the lamedh of the second stich, not in and of itself impossible, but this would then leave להודות without an object, a ra re occurrence (with the exception of Neh. 12:24; I Chron. 25:3; I I Chron. 31:2).]

v. 3 — singular // plural,בקר / / Dahood translates "daybreak" and] .לילות "watches of the night." T h e use of לילות here is compared to Ps. 16:7 and 134:1, none of them convincing proof f o r Dahood's translation.]

V.5 —qtl-yqtl sequence (?) and object-subject parallelism. T h e "me" of the first stich becomes the "I" of the second. [Dahood understands the verbs as being in the qtl-yqtl sequence and translates both by English past tense. I n this case, however, it is not certain that this is a t rue rhetoric qtl-yqtl; a real perfect-imperfect may have been intended: "You made m e happy . . . (therefore) I will sing . . . ".48 Dahood also notes the transition f rom second person subject to first person subject both here and in ν 11, although h e does not speak in terms of subject-object parallelism.]

v. 6 — interrogative // indicative. A rhetorical question, "how g r e a t . . . " is echoed by a declarative statement. [Dahood considers מה to b e a double-duty interjection and translates "How g r e a t . . . How immensely deep . . . ".]

v. 8 — T h e construction of this verse is complex and difficult. T h e verse appears to have three stichs.49 T h e first two a re parallel to each other and contain a nominal-verbal parallelism achieved by the paralleling of a n infinitive, בפרח, with a finite verb,ויציצו. T h e last stich of this verse can b e understood as the parallel of the first two, that is, a + b // c, bu t may be

(48) Cf. RSV and the new Jewish Publication Society translation. (49) But cf. the new JPS translation:

though the wicked bloom, they are like grass; though all evildoers blossom, it is only that they may be destroyed forever.

4 1 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM [25]

better taken as the parallel of v. 9. Semantically, the thought is antithetic: "to destroy them forever" // "but You will be exalted forever." Lexically, the parallelism is based o n the word pair עד / עדי / -Dahood under] .לעולם stands להשמדם as emphatic lamedh+finite verb, " H e completely destroyed them . . . " This leaves one with the disturbing feeling that the "He" of ν 8 is someone other than the "But you, Yahweh" of v. 9.]

v. 11 — object-subject parallelism. Again the "me" of the first stich becomes the "I" of the second. Cf. v. 5.

v. 12 — singular // plural, "my eye" // "my ears." Cf. v. 3. [Dahood ignores the difference in number and translates both in the plural. (He does not divide the verse in the usual way.)]

v. 13-14 — These two verses are closely linked, forming a four-stich parallelism. They contain a shift f r om the singular in v. 13 to the plural in v. 14, and a shift in conjugation, יפרח and יפריחו (although these terms d o not parallel each other directly). [Dahood notes the shift in conjugation. H e also notes the shift in number, and explains it by saying that in v. 13 the word צדיק is the subject, bu t in vv. 14-15 the subject is a compound, תמר and ארז. This seems to be taking the imagery a bit too literally, by picturing one צדיק in v. 13 and two trees in vv. 14-15. T h e shift in number is better understood as the use of either o r both numbers in a generic sense, as in Ps. 126:5-6.]

v. 16 — positive-negative parallelism T h e feeling that one gets f r o m reading Dahood, and others, is that

there is a reluctance to accept a wide range of grammatic "incongruities" in biblical poetry, and the result is often a forced explanation of them o r a n emendation. Hopefully, this study will show that some of these gram-matical shifts are stylistic—that is, they were used fo r rhetorical purposes, and d o not require contorted interpretations of the text o r cast doubts o n its accuracy.

V I . CONCLUDING REMARKS

This study has shown that there is a grammatical aspect to biblical parallelism — that parallelism activates the grammatical level of the lan-guage as well as the lexical-semantic level. This is really not a new idea a t all. I t is present in Lowth's famous definition of parallelism:

When a proposition is delivered, and a second is subjoined to it, o r drawn unde r it, equivalent, o r contrasted with it in sense, or similar to it in the form of grammatical construction, these I call parallel lines.50

(50) Isaiah: A New Translation (London: Wm. Tegg and Co., 1778) viii. (Italics mine.)

[26] ADELE BERLIN 4 2

What Lowth calls "similar in the form of grammatical construction" I take to mean either grammatically identical (grammatical repetition) o r grammatically equivalent (grammatical parallelism). T h e existence of grammatical parallelism has been assumed all along, but has never been given the attention bestowed o n the lexical and semantic aspects of paral-lelism. I t is certainly worthy of that attention because it is used frequently and is one of the devices which accounts f o r the wide variety of parallel stichs in the Bible.

Having called attention to one aspect of parallelism, I must emphasize that there are other aspects. T h e matter of omission and/or addition of terms and change of word order has been mentioned in passing. The re is also a phonetic aspect of parallelism (assonance) and a rhythmic o r metric aspect. And, of course, the lexical-semantic aspect continues to be of interest. Most important, it is necessary to examine the interaction among all these aspects of parallelism. I would like to of fer a few observations o n this subject.

One conclusion f rom the study of syntactic parallelism is that parallel terms may occur in the same morphological fo rm but may be used to fill different syntactic functions in each stich. This can be seen in some examples of subject-object parallelism, e.g. Gen. 27:29; Lam. 5:4; Eccl. 5:1. Because of this, there is the possibility of creating tension between the morphological and syntactic levels, o r between the lexical and the gram-matical levels. This kind of tension (and it may involve other levels as well) adds zest to the parallelism. Its effect is roughly analogous to cases in English poetry where the units of meter o r rhyme d o not correspond to the syntactic units, and enjambment results. Two examples of such ten-sion, o r "play o n grammar," are Ps. 49:5 and Lam. 5:3.

Ps. 49:5 אטה למשל אזני אפתח בכנור חידתי

T h e morphological sequence in both stichs is the same: verb, pre-position+noun, noun+suffix. But if one analyzes the verse only o n the morphological level, one emerges with the preposterous notion that / למשל / and בכנור / אזני / / משל Obviously the word pair is .חידתי / bu ,חידה t the illusion is created by using משל as an indirect object and as a direct חידה object. I n linguistic terms these two stichs have the same surface structure but not the same deep structure.51

(51) The reverse is true of the parallel stichs discussed in the previous sections; they have the same deep structures but different surface structures.

43 GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL PARALLELISM [271

Lam. 5:3 יתומים היינו אין אב אמתינו כאלמנות

According to the syntax of the two stichs, יתומים / / since these ,אמתינו are both the subject of their respective clauses, and / אין אב / both ,כאלמנות being attributes of the subjects. But lexically, the usual pairing would be / יתום / and אלמנה This .אם// אב tension between the grammatical and lexical levels is produced by using one part of a word pair as the subject in the first stich and the other part as the predicate in the second stich.

These are jus t some of the possibilities that a grammatical analysis of parallelism yields. Parallelism is a n extremely complex device. T h e r e are a multitude of potential parallel permutations fo r any given stich. T h e biblical authors showed a mastery of parallelism which has yet to be appreciated by modern critics who correct the text in order to make "better," that is, more simplistic, parallelisms. Parallelism is a marvelous vehicle of literary expression — a n esthetically pleasing and engaging device. T h e more we understand of it, the more we will be able to understand the biblical text and appreciate its literary qualities.