"Praise ye Jehovah, ye of the earth;
Ye sea-monsters, and all deeps:
Fire and hail, snow and vapour ;

Stormy wind, executing his command:
Mountains, and all hills;
Fruit-trees, and all cedars:
Wild beasts, and all cattle;
Reptiles, and birds of wing:

Kings of the earth, and all peoples ;
Princes, and all judges of the earth :
Youths, and also virgins;

Old men, together with the children :
Let them praise the name of Jehovah ;
For his name alone is exalted;
His majesty, above earth and heaven."

"With him is wisdom and might;

Psal. cxlviii. 7-13.

To him belong counsel and understanding.
Lo! he pulleth down, and it shall not be built;
He incloseth a man, and he shall not be set loose.

Lo! he withholdeth the waters, and they are dried up;

And he sendeth them forth, and they overturn the earth.

With him is strength, and perfect existence;

The deceived, and the deceiver, are his."

Job xii. 13-16.

"Is such then the fast which I choose?

That a man should afflict his soul for a day?

Is it, that he should bow down his head like a bulrush ; And spread sackcloth and ashes for his couch?

Shall this be called a fast;

And a day acceptable to Jehovah?
Is not this the fast that I choose?
To dissolve the bands of wickedness;
To loosen the oppressive burdens ;

To deliver those that are crushed by violence;
And that ye should break asunder every yoke?
Is it not to distribute thy bread to the hungry;
And to bring the wandering poor into thy house?
When thou seest the naked, that thou clothe him;
And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
Then shall thy light break forth like the morning;
And thy wounds shall speedily be healed over:
And thy righteousness shall go before thee;
And the glory of Jehovah shall bring up thy rear."
Isa. lviii. 5-8.

Of the constructive kind is most commonly the parallelism of stanzas of three lines; though they are sometimes synonymous throughout, and often have two lines synonymous; examples of both which are above given. The following are constructively parallel :

"Whatsoever Jehovah pleaseth,

That doeth he in the heavens, and in the earth;

In the sea, and in all the deeps:

Causing the vapours to ascend from the ends of the

earth;

Making the lightnings with the rain;

Bringing forth the wind out of his treasures."

Psal. cxxxv. 6, 7.

"The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear, And I was not rebellious;

Neither did I withdraw myself backward,

I gave my back to the smiters,

And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair
My face I hid not from shame and spitting."

Isa. 1. 5, 6.

"Thou shalt sow, but shalt not reap;

Thou shalt tread the olive, but shalt not anoint thee with oil;

And the grape, but shalt not drink wine."

Micah vi. 15.

Of the same sort of parallelism are those passages, frequent in the poetic books, where a definite number is twice put for an indefinite; this being followed by an enumeration of particulars naturally throws the sentences into a parallelism, which cannot be of any other than the synthetic kind. This seems to have been a favourite ornament. There are many elegant examples of it in the 30th chapter of Proverbs, to which I refer the reader: and shall here give one or two from other places.

"These six things Jehovah hateth;

And seven are the abomination of his soul.

Lofty eyes, and a lying tongue;

And hands shedding innocent blood:
A heart fabricating wicked thoughts;
Feet hastily running to mischief:

1

A false witness breathing out lies;

And the sower of strife between brethren."

Prov. vi. 16-19.

"Give a portion to seven, and also to eight;

For thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth." Eccles. xi. 2.

"These two things have befallen thee; who shall bemoan thee?

Desolation and destruction, the famine and the sword; who shall comfort thee?"

Isa. li. 19.

that is, taken alternately, desolation by famine, and destruction by the sword. Of which alternate construction I shall add a remarkable example or two; where the parallelism arises from the alternation of the members of the sentences:

“I am black, but yet beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem:

Like the tents of Kedar; like the pavilions of SoloCant. i. 5.

mon."

that is, black, as the tents of Kedar; (made of dark coloured goat's hair;) beautiful, as the pavilions of Solomon.

"On her house-tops, and to her open streets, Every one howleth, descendeth with weeping."

Isa. xv. 3.

that is, every one howleth on her house-tops, and descendeth with weeping to her open streets.

The reader will observe in the foregoing examples, that though there are perhaps no two lines corresponding one with another as equivalent, or opposite in terms; yet there is a parallelism equally apparent, and almost as striking, which arises from the similar form and equality of the lines, from the correspondence of the members and the construction ; the consequence of which is a harmony and rhythm, little inferior in effect to that of the two kinds preceding.

The degrees of the correspondence of the lines in this last sort of parallels must, from the nature of it, be various. Sometimes the parallelism is more, sometimes less, exact: sometimes hardly at all apparent. It requires indeed particular attention, much study of the genius of the language, much habitude in the analysis of the construction, to be able in all cases to see and to distinguish the nice rests and pauses, which ought to be made, in order to give the period or the sentence its intended turn and cadence, and to each part its due time and proportion. The Jewish critics, called the Masoretes, were exceedingly attentive to their language in this part; even to a scrupulous exactness and subtle refinement; as it appears from that extremely complicated system of grammatical punctuation; more