S. THOMAS' PRIORY,
RUGELEY.
UCSB LIBRARY
library of tfje Bomimcan Jfatfjerg
WOODCHESTER
Case.. Shelf..
THE
SYMMETRICAL STRUCTURE OF SCRIPTURE.
THE
SYMMETRICAL STRUCTURE OF SCRIPTURE:
OR,
THE PRINCIPLES OF
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM EXEMPLIFIED,
IN AX ANALYSIS OF
THE DECALOGUE, THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT,
AXI) OTHER
PASSAGES OF THE SACRED WRITINGS.
BY
THE REV. JOHN FORBES, LLD.
DONALDSON'S HOSPITAL, EDINBUBGH.
EDINBURGH:"
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. DUBLIN : JOHN ROBERTSON,
AND HODGES & SMITH.
MDcccLnr,
PRINTED BY STEVENSON AND COMPANY, 32 THISTLE STHEET, EDINBURGH.
PREFACE.
THE views advanced in the Work now submitted to the Public, and the rules of Scriptural arrangement proposed, have not been hastily adopted, but are the result of long sus- tained investigation of a much more extensive range of passages than the examples selected for the present publication. The more the Author examines the subject, the more deeply is he convinced of the great importance of Bishop Lowth's discovery of the Parallelism of Scripture, as furnishing one of the most valuable aids ever presented to the interpreter, and calculated, when its principles have been more fully developed, to throw a new and clearer light on a great part of the Sacred Volume.
Under the powers of this new instrument of investigation, the Sermon on the Mount is shewn to be one of the most perfect compositions that can be conceived, not only from the depth of wisdom which it displays, but for the exquisite arrangement of all its parts, which constitute one grand symmetrical whole, while yet each smaller portion is finished with the most consummate skill and minuteness of detail. The Seven Beatitudes, in parti- cular, with which the Lord opens this discourse, exhibit a combi- nation of the most surprisingly beautiful arrangements and con- nexions, disclosing a fulness and comprehensiveness of meaning, even beyond what these Divine utterances were already known to contain. The structure of the Lord's Prayer is, in like manner, shewn to be most remarkable, revealing a deeper significance in this perfect model of Christian devotion ; while the closest cor-
vi PREFACE. f
respondence is detected between its seven petitions, and the seven Christian graces which the Beatitudes successively unfold. The Ten Commandments, when examined by the same analytical pro- cess, are discovered to embrace the mutual relations of God and man with a fulness, spirituality, and perfection, marvellous in so condensed a code, and with a precision of arrangement so definite, that not a single line could be displaced without impairing the connexion ; amounting to a demonstration that we possess them in the original form in which they proceeded from the mouth and finger of the Lord. The Psalms of David furnish instances of admirable order in the very numbers of the verses, lines, and words, suggestive of the internal coherence and bond of connexion between the thoughts. The very irregularities in the succession of the letters in the Alphabetical Psalms, which have occasioned so much perplexity to critics, instead of arguing any derange- ment in the text, become evidences for its integrity, and enhance our admiration of the exquisite order, so remarkable in the composition of these inspired songs. The examples adduced, however, are but a slight earnest of the rich harvest to be reaped, should the principal object which the Author proposes to himself be attained, of inciting Biblical Scholars to become fellow-labour- ers in the new field of research thus opened up.
But the Work is not designed for the Scholar alone. It has been the Author's endeavour to avoid the parade of learning, by which the meaning is too often overlaid in works of criticism, and to exhibit as far as possible only results, in language intelligible to ordinary readers.
With few exceptions, the rendering of the Authorized Version has been retained (unless in the extracts from Bishops Lowth and Jebb), in order to prove to the unlearned reader, how little the exact correspondence of the Parallelisms is dependent on any questionable changes in the translation.
PREFACE. Vll
The Author is fully aware of the preliminary objection which will be taken by many to the artificial character of the arrange- ments of Scripture given in the following pages. Such extremely minute attention to numbers and order, as is here alleged to pervade much of the Holy Scriptures, will repel some minds as a littleness unworthy of the Oracles of God. The Author candidly confesses that, when first he began to remark these niceties of composition, he felt extremely jealous of himself lest he should be allowing his mind to be carried away by the creations of his own fancy, and, instead of humbly following the guidance and teaching of the Spirit, should make the Scriptures speak his own conceits. But the truth has gradually forced itself upon him by its irresis- tible evidence, and forms only another illustration of the maxim, that God's " thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are his ways like unto the ways of the children of men." Yet why should it be thought a thing incredible that a God of order should have stamped this impress on the Book of Revelation ? and that atten- tion to number, the symbol of order, should characterize His works of revelation, as well as His works of nature ? If so won- derful is the symmetry of the heavenly orbs, that the planets are placed at the most exactly proportionate distances from each other, so that the observation of this proportion led to the suspi- cion, and eventually to the discovery, of a new group of planets filling up the void which appeared in the series, why should not a like symmetrical proportion hold in Scripture, directing at- tention to, and leading to the discovery of, truths which otherwise might have escaped observation ? One of the grandest triumphs of modern science has been the discovery of the new planet Nep- tune, in October 1846 — a discovery to which the observers were led solely by the science of number and quantity, and which was predicted with undoubting confidence by Sir John Herschel in the following beautiful language, addressed to the meeting of the British Association. " Among the remarkable events of the last twelvemonth, it has added a new planet to our list. It has done
viii PREFACE.
m0re — it has given us the probable prospect of the discovery of another. We see it, as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far- reaching line of our analysis, with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration." If by the discovery of atomic pro- portions in chemistry we find a like beautiful progression of com- binations guiding the chemical analyst in his investigations, why should it be deemed unworthy of the Divine Intelligence that similar definite rules should regulate the composition of His Word, by whom " the very hairs of men's heads are numbered ?"
Whether such minuteness and delicacy of finish exist in God's Word must be decided, we submit, not by any foregone conclu- sions what mode of composition it became the Sacred Writers to adopt, but by a calm and sober induction from a variety of ex- amples, taken from the several books both of the Old and New Testaments. This method it has been the writer's humble en- deavour to pursue ; and he has not ventured to publish this first specimen of his inquiries, until he had tested the accuracy of his principles by their application to a great portion of the Sacred Volume, and in some cases even to entire books.
He now dismisses his Work with an earnest prayer to the Father of Lights, that He may bless this humble attempt to the promotion of a more devout and discerning study of " the won- drous things" contained in His Law.
CONTENTS.
SECTION I.
Paga
Discovery of Parallelism due to Bishop Lowth — Definition — Pro- wress in the Study made by Bishop Jebb and Rev. T. Boys — Reply to the Objections of Professor Alexander, . . 1-8
SECTION II. Parallelism not confined to strictly poetical composition, . 3-5
SECTION m.
Different species of Parallel Lines — Synonymous, Cognate, or Gra- dational Parallelism — Climax in Psalm i. 1, pp. 7-10 ; and in Matt. v. 44, pp. 10, 11 — Respective functions of the Grada- tional and Antithetic Parallelisms — Antithetic Parallelism, p. 13 — Synthetic or Constructive Parallelism — Remarkable instance from 2 Cor. xi. 22-27 analysed, pp. 15-17, . . . 5-17
SECTION IV.
Combinations of Parallel Lines — Couplets — Triplets, pp. 18-20 — Quatrains, pp. 20-23 — Use of Parallelism in deciding on vari- ous Readings, p. 22 — Five-lined Stanzas, pp. 23-33 — Remarks on John xi. 9, 10, pp. 24, 25 — Romans ii. 17-29 illustrated, pp. 28-32 — Six and Seven Lined Stanzas, . . . 17-34
SECTION V.
Introverted Parallelism — Extensively employed even in Prose — Plan of Epistle to Philemon, p. 40 — Remarkable instance in Psalm Ixxxix. 28-45, pp. 40, 41, . . « . . . . 35-41
X CONTENTS.
SECTION VI.
Page Epanodos closely allied to the Introverted Parallelism — Defined —
Rationale — Romans ii. 12-15 analysed, .... 42-46
SECTION VII.
Rule of Scriptural Arrangement exemplified in Gen. ii. 1-3 — Ap- plied to the elucidation of the difficulties connected with the accounts of the early history of David in 1 Sam. xvi.-xviii. — Solutions attempted by the Translators of the Septuagint, Bishop Horsley, and Dr Davidson — Unsatisfactory — Solution proposed, which requires no omission nor transposition of any part of the Text, 46-55
SECTION vm.
Co-ordinate dependence on a common antecedent — Exemplified, 50-58
SECTION IX.
The Principles of Parallelism advocated by Bishop Jebb must ex- tend to the arrangement of entire compositions — Proved by an examination of some of his own examples, Acts iv. 24-30, pp. 59-67— Reference in the Threefold Division to Past, Present, and Future— John v. 19-30 examined, pp. 68-81— Relations
and Signification of the Ternary or Threefold Division, p. 75
Elucidation of John v. 31 and following context, pp. 78-81, 58-81
SECTION X.
Psalm xxviii. illustrated, pp. 82-87— Psalm xxix. pp. 87-90— Con- nexion between the two Psalms, p. 90, . 82-90
CONTENTS.
SECTION XI.
Page
The three first Alphabetical Psalms all arranged by Sevens — Subdi- vision of Seven into 3, 1, 3 — Apparent irregularities in the Letters accounted for — Psalm xxv. illustrated, pp. 91-102 — Psalm xxxiv., pp. 102-105 — Psalm xxxvii. pp. 106-114 — Connexion of the three Psalms, pp. 106, 107, . . 91-114
SECTION XII.
Psalm li. illustrated, pp. 115-132 — Divided like the three preceding Psalms into three Sevens — Catchword, p. 126 — Division in the Epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia into Classes of Three and Four, p. 133 ; of the Seven Parables in Matt, xiii., into Four and Three, p. 134 — The whole Psalms divided into Seven Books
— Subdivisions — Psalms of Degrees — Similar arrangement of
the Book of Proverbs, ' ...... 115-136
SECTION XIH. THK DECALOGUE, ....... 137-158
SECTION XIV.
THE SEVEN BEATITUDES and THE LOHD'S PRAYER — Symbolical sig- nificance of Seven ; of Three ; of Four ; and of Twelve, pp. 159, 160 — Binary Division of Seven — Ternary Divisions — Order of Creation, pp. 162-165 — Light, a triune emblem of the Deity, p. 165 — Structural Arrangement of the Seven Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, pp. 166, 167 — Examination of the Order of the Seven Beatitudes, and Si^ni-
* O
ficance, pp. 167-188 — Spirit, Soul, and Body, pp. 175-177
— Parallel between the Material and Spiritual Creations, p. 178
— Use of Parallelism in fixing the order of the Text in the case of various Readings (comp. p. 22), pp. 182-188 — The Lord's Prayer, pp. 188-190 — Correspondence between its Petitions and the Beatitudes, pp. 190-194 — Remarkable Tri- plicity in Scripture, pp. 194-195 — Threefold Temptations of Adam and Christ — The Devil, the World, and the Flesh — Threefold offices of Christ — Three principal attributes of God —Trinity, ...... . . * 158-195
XIV CONTENTS.
Page
Person and Life of our Lord presented in different, yet not conflicting, aspects by the Evangelists, p. 325 — Definition of Inspiration, p. 327 — Necessity of distinguishing between Objec- tive and Subjective Inspiration, as confounded by Mr Maurice, pp. 327-331 — Plenary Inspiration claimed by Scripture itself, p. 331 — Prevalent misapprehension of the doctrine — Theory of Partial Inspiration self-confuting — Leads to inconsistencies — Answer. to Objection from Luke's Preface, pp. 335, 336 — Plenary Inspiration a question only for the Believer — Demon- strable Historical Mistakes asserted by Mr Alford, p. 337, 1st, in Acts vii. 15, 16 — Reply, pp. 337-341 — 2d, in Acts vii. 4 — Reply, pp. 342-344 — Scripture probably one organic whole, . ..... . . . 324-345
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
SECTION I.
To BISHOP LOWTH we owe the discovery of the true nature of the rhythm in Hebrew Poetry. Its essential characteristic he has shewn to consist in a correspondence of the lines, not, as in modern languages, in sound, but in sense ; in the recurrence of a regular measure dependent not on the quantity or length of syl- lables, but on the agreement of ideas ; proposing as its highest aim, therefore, not to gratify the ear, but to satisfy the reason. This correspondence he has denominated Parallelism, which he defines to be " a certain equality, resemblance, or relationship be- tween the members of each period ; so that in one or more lines or members of the same period, things shall answer to things, and words to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure."1 By this discovery he furnished the interpreter of Scripture with a key by which he is enabled to resolve many difficulties in the poetical parts of the Old Testament ; that which is obscure in one line or member being frequently rendered per- fectly clear and unambiguous, by comparison with the parallel expression in the corresponding line or member.
Bishop Jebb, in his " Sacred Literature," has proved that this mode of composition, being perfectly independent of any peculia- rities of the Hebrew language, is by no means confined to the Old Testament, but pervades a great portion of the New. In this elegant and instructive work, he has thrown much light on the structure and arrangement of the Sacred Volume : and by a fuller
1 See Lowth's Lectures on Heb. Poetry, Pnelec. xix. A
2 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
development of the principles of Parallelism than had been given by Bishop Lowth, he has shewn that we are thereby enabled to group a series of lines into paragraphs or stanzas, and thus to fix more accurately the meaning of the whole, and the connexion of each part with the context.
The Rev. T. Boys, in his " Tactica Sacra," and subsequently in his " Key to the Book of Psalms," has extended still further the limits of parallelism, and has proved that it is not confined merely to a correspondence of lines one with another in the same paragraph, but that whole paragraphs are themselves so arranged as to present a mutual correspondence or parallelism, similar to that which single lines exhibit to each other ; nay, that entire compositions, such as many of the Psalms and of the Epistles of the New Testament, are thus arranged in the most systematic form.
The importance of the study of parallelism, to all who desire to investigate the full meaning and connexion of Scripture, and the extent to which its principles have influenced the composition of the whole Sacred Volume, seem nevertheless to have been hitherto but very inadequately apprehended. The general impres- sion on the minds even of those who have paid some attention to the study appears to be, that it is a subject more of learned curio- sity than of any real practical utility. The charge has been brought against it, that it has rarely, if ever, " been the means of eliciting any new sense in Scripture not known before ;" and one of our latest critics, Professor Alexander of America, sees so little advantage in the parallelistic arrangements, that in the introduc- tion to his valuable Commentary on Isaiah,1 he strongly protests against what he denominates " the fantastic and injurious mode of printing most translations of Isaiah, since the days of Lowth, in lines analogous to those of classical and modern verse." He objects that this mode of typography disappoints by exciting the expectation, which cannot be realized, of a poetical metre in the strict sense of the term. Surely this is a prejudice, which a very little trouble on the part of the reader, when once warned of the fallacy of his pre-conceptions, might enable him easily to stir-' mount. And if the practice has commended itself to the good
1 P. XL. of the Glasgow edition.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 3
taste and sense of most nations not to print poetry continuously like prose, as we sometimes see done in German hymn-books, but to aid the ear by the eye in tracing the harmony and correspond- ences in the sound, why should exception be taken to the employ- ment of the same auxiliary to serve the far more important end of tracing the harmony and correspondences in the sense ? With- out the assistance thus afforded by marking to the eye the termi- nation of the lines, it would often be very difficult to discover those which correspond, and next to impossible, in a passage of any length, to trace out the complicated relations which, in the subsequent pages it will be shewn, often subsist between them.
The object, therefore, proposed in the following Work, is to attempt to rescue the study of parallelism from the disrepute into which it has fallen, and to evince, by a variety of examples, and by the examination, according to its principles, of one entire com- position, Christ's Sermon on the Mount, that it is calculated to furnish to the student a most valuable aid for the investigation of the true meaning and connexion of Scripture.
SECTION II.
Before proceeding to lay before the reader a short account of the labours of others in this department of Scripture criticism, it may be of consequence to anticipate an objection which will pro- bably present itself at the outset, on examining several of the examples about to be given.
In stating Parallelism to be the formal characteristic of He- brew poetry, as rhyme or metre is of modern verse, it is by no means to be understood that its use is therefore confined to those compositions, which on other grounds, such as their elevated dic- tion or splendour of imagery, we should pronounce to be poetical. Whenaver a prophet or moral teacher was affected by any strong emotion, or became at all excited by his subject, his language naturally assumed the measured step, and rhythmical cadence of the sententious parallelism. Thus, when Moses descended from Mount Sinai accompanied by Joshua, and the sounds of Israel's revelry around the golden calf first struck on their ears, Moses'
4 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
spirit was kindled within him, and to Joshua's remark, " The voice of war is in the camp," he replied :
Not the voice of the shout for victory, Nor the voice of the shout for defeat, But the voice of mirthful song I hear.
EXODUS xxxii. 18.
On Saul's return from the expedition against the Amalekites, whom God had commanded him to go and utterly destroy with all that belonged to them, to his very inadequate excuse for the imperfect fulfilment of this commission that " the rest of the sheep and oxen had been spared to sacrifice unto the Lord in Gilgal," Samuel began, " more in sorrow than in anger," to repeat to him the heavy message with which God had, the night before, charged him to the monarch ; but when the king impatiently repeated his former plea as if it had formed a full justification for his partial obedience, the excited feelings of the prophet found*vent in the indignant strains :
Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD ?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to hearken than the fat of rams ;
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the voice of the LORD, He hath also rejected thee from being king.
1 SAMUEL xv. 22, 23.
The few brief words of lamentation which escaped from David over the grave of Abner form a rhythmical stanza of four lines, of which the fourth corresponds to the first, and the third to the second :
As dieth a criminal, did Abner die?1
Thy hands were not pinioned,
Nor thy feet put in fetters : As one falleth before treacherous men, so fellest thou !
2 SAMUEL iii. 34.
1 " Died Abner, as a felon dieth ? " That is : Were Joab's excuse available that Abner deserved to die as a rebel, then should he have been legally apprehended and im- prisoned, in order subsequently to be tried and convicted according to the full forms of justice, and not have been basely and foully murdered under the guise of friendship.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 5
We need not therefore be surprised — nay, it would be strange were it otherwise — to find the style of the ancient prophets adopted in all the longer addresses of our Saviour, or in the many fervid and impassioned appeals which a Paul or a Peter address to the disciples in their epistles.
But even where the subject is essentially prosaic, if we recol- lect that metre is occasionally employed among ourselves with the simple view of impressing dry details on the memory, we cannot in fairness object to the use of Parallelism, should it be shewn to extend even to the Decalogue and Laws of Moses.
SECTION III.
As the subject will probably be new to many readers, we shall begin with giving some account of the different species of Paral- lelism hitherto noticed by previous writers.
Parallel lines were classified by Bishop Lowth under three species : —
I. Parallel lines synonymous (or gradational) ; II. Parallel lines antithetic ;
III. Parallel lines synthetic, or constructive ;
the two first being dependent on the two great laws of the asso- ciation of ideas, resemblance, and contrast ; while the third is founded simply upon a resemblance in the form of construction and progression of the thoughts.
Bishop Jebb has added a fourth species, which he has named, —
IV. Parallel lines introverted.
I. PARALLEL LINES GRADATIONAL.
These were termed by Bishop Lowth synonymous, because he conceived that they expressed the same sense in different but
O SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
equivalent terms. Bishop Jebb, however, has ably vindicated the language of Scripture from the imputation of such unmeaning tautology to which it would thus be justly liable ; and has shewn that the second or responsive clause always diversifies the pre- ceding clause, generally so as to rise above it, forming a sort of climax in the sense, though sometimes by a descending scale in the value of the related terms. He accordingly proposed the term Cognate as more correctly descriptive of this species ; but since there is always a gradation in the sense either in the ascending or descending scale, a subsequent critic1 has suggested the term Crradational as still more expressive of its distinctive character ; and this designation we shall therefore adopt as being the most appropriate.
Bishop Lowth had given, as an example of parallel lines syno- nymous, the following passage from Isaiah, consisting of three couplets, the second line of each of which he considered merely as a sort of echo or repetition of the first, designed to deepen its im- pression by reiteration : —
Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found ;
Call ye upon him, while he is near :
Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts :
And let him return to Jehovah, and he will compassionate him ;
And unto our God, for he aboundeth in forgiveness.
ISAIAH Iv. 6, 7.
Here, however, as Bishop Jebb has pointed out, we may ob- serve a gradation of member above member, and line above line, in each couplet of the stanza.
" In the first line, men are invited to seek Jehovah, not know- ing where he is, and on the bare intelligence that he may be found ; in the second line, having found Jehovah, they are en- couraged to call upon him, by the assurance that he is NEAR. In the third line, the wicked, the positive and presumptuous sin- ner, is warned to forsake Ms way, his habitual course of iniquity ; in the fourth line, the unrighteous, the negatively wicked, is called to renounce the very thought of sinning. While in the last line, the appropriative and encouraging title OUR GOD, is substi-
1 British Critic for 1820, pp. 585, 586.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 7
tuted for the awful name of JEHOVAH ; and simple compassion is heightened into overflowing mercy and forgiveness." \
" Who shall ascend the mountain of Jehovah? And who shall stand within his holy place ? The clean of hands, and the pure in heart.
PSALM xxiv. 3, 4.
" To ascend marks progress ; to stand, stability and confirma- tion : the mountain of Jehovah, the site of the divine sanctuary ; his holy place, the sanctuary itself : and in correspondence with the advance of the two lines which form the first couplet, there is an advance in the members of the third line : the clean of hands ; and the pure in heart : the clean of hands, shall ascend the moun- tain of Jehovah : the pure in heart, shall stand within his holy place."2
How blessed is the man !
Who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly ;
Nor stood in the way of sinners ;
Nor sat in the seat of the scornful. — PSALM i. 1.
Here the last three lines alone come under the denomination of gradational parallelisms, the first line, " the exclamation with which the Psalm opens, belonging equally to each line of the suc- ceeding triplet. In the triplet itself, each line consists of three members ; and the lines gradually rise, one above the other, not merely in their general sense, but specially throughout their cor- responding members. To walk, implies no more than casual in- tercourse ; to stand, closer intimacy ; to sit, fixed and permanent connection : the counsel, the ordinary place of meeting, or public resort ; the way, the select and chosen footpath ; the seat, the habitual and final resting place : the ungodly, negatively wicked ; sinners, positively wicked ; the scornful, scoffers at the very name or notion of piety and goodness."3
Bishop Jebb has most justly protested against the false criti- cism of Gataker, who " denies the existence of this triple climax, and would work up this beautiful series of well-discriminated moral pictures, into one colourless and undistinguished mass. Gataker's sentiments have been re-echoed by several of the later
1 Jebb's Sacred Literature, p.p. 37, 38. 2 Ibid. p. 40, 8 Ib'td\ p. 41.
8 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
German commentators on the Psalms, among whom we are sur- prised to find the most distinguished of living Biblical scholars, Professor Hengstenberg. Nothing, however, can, we think, be more evident than the reality of this climax, even on his own shewing. " The word *£ (rasha), which we translate " ungodly," he remarks, " as coming from a verb which in Arabic signifies to be strongly moved with desire and lust, and in Syriac, to be excited in mind, and therefore properly denoting passionate, rest- less,1 designates the wicked with reference to his inward state, his passionate excitability, and the restlessness, produced by sinful desires, which constantly urges him on to new transgressions ; whereas the term translated sinner, designates him in respect to the continued series of sinful acts which emanate from him/'* Now, inward desires precede the outward acts ; and the progress of vice would be thus described as beginning in the excited pas- sions of the carnal heart tempting the young to walk in their evil counsel,3 and to enter the forbidden territory of sin. To the rest- lessness, which Hengstenberg considers to be implied in the word that in our version is rendered " ungodly," corresponds, most ap- propriately, the first of the three verbs, " walk," which, when placed as here, in opposition to " stand" and " sit," would seem intended to depict that feverish state of agitation which permits not the novice in sin to rest, but keeps him in a state of continual excitement, walking to and fro, like an " evil spirit seeking rest and finding none ;" impelled hither and thither, as each fitful pas-
1 Compare the locus classicus for the idea, Isaiah Ivii. 20. " The wicked /s*ya~n
[har'shaim] the same word as that translated ungodly in the Psalm) are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest."
8 Hengstenberg's Psalms, i. 1.
3 The word translated " counsel" (~"s.y aitzah) never has the meaning which Bishop Jebb would assign to it of " a place of meeting ; but always, according to Hengsten- berg, signifies " counsel;" sometimes that which one gives to another, but more gene- rally that which one forms for himself, i.e. his plans, purposes. If therefore the paral- lelism demands, as Ilengstenberg thinks, that as " way" and '' seat" are both designa- tions of place, the first noun must be so regarded also ; we may consider " the counsel of the ungodly" in which the transgressor walks, to be that devious way in which passion first leads him astray, which has no one definite direction, but many by-paths, which ho follows according to the lust which bears sway for the moment ; but all of which end at last in that beaten and " broad way of sinners that leadeth to destruction." Compare Psalm Ixxxi. 12, where 'l They walked in their own counsels" stands in parallelism with " So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust."
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 9
sion may direct j1 till by-and-by, growing bolder and more fami- liar with vice, he ventures, having joined the multitude which he sees thronging along " the broad way that leadeth to destruc- tion," to " stand' fearlessly with sinners, and take his fill of every pleasure he meets ; until at length, reaching the last and hope- less stage, settling on his lees, he sinks down iiito the seat of the reckless scorner.
Nothing can be more graphic, or more calculated to impress with a dread of the first fatal step, than the picture here drawn
1 That this is the image which the Psalmist intends to convey to the mind of the reader by the use of the word " walk," is confirmed by reference to the corresponding term in Psalm ii. 1, IBJ"1 (rag'shoo) " rage tumultuously. " (For we may remark, in anticipation, that the parallelism already shewn to exist between two successive lines extends much further, so that as we have pairs of lines gradational, we have, in like manner, pairs of stanzas, and even pairs of Psalms gradational.) Without entering far- ther at present into the connection between Psalms i. and ii., which has, in part, been traced by Hengstenberg, we shall only remark, that in correspondence with the picture presented to us in Psalm L, of the progressive stages of vice, from which the righteous man is preserved by meditating in the law of God, we have the same picture reproduced in Psalm ii., but in heightened colours, in the expostulation addressed to the unrighteous Jews and Gentiles for their presumptuous combination against the Lord and his Anointed : —
"Why do the heathen rage tumultuously, And the people meditate a vain thing, The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers sit together consulting, Against Jehovah, and against his Anointed ?
The verbs here employed have an evident reference to those in Psalm i., but rise above them in intensity.
In Psalm i. 1, we have the ungodly " walking" to and fro in feverish agitation, ac- cording as their passions impel them. In Psalm ii. 1, we find the heathen in " tumul- tuous movement."
In Psalm i. 2, the true people of God are represented as " meditating in the law of the Lord." In Psalm ii. 1, the people of Israel are " meditating1 a vain thing" — to " break the bands of his law asunder." Compare v. 3.
" Standing in the way of sinners," in Ps. i. 1, is heightened into " setting themselves against the Lord," or taking up a determined stand against him ^siST1' (yithyatz'- voo) in Psalm ii. 2.
" Sitting in the seat of the scorner," in Ps. i. 1, making a mock at God and goodness, becomes in Ps. ii. 2, in aggravated form, " sitting together consulting" openly to resist his authority, for such we believe to be the meaning of the verb 1~V~3 (nos'doo). Compare the meaning of the derivative "10 (sood) consessus inter se consultantium, a company of persons sitting together for consultation. Compare also the cognate roots 1%-tftcti, l$-tv(tai, '/£-«, fifvu ; sed-eo ; sit, set ; sitz-en, setz-en, &c.
1 The same word 13?* yeh'goo, as in Ps. i. 2.
10 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
of sin, which, beginning in the thoughts and secretly cherished lusts of the unhallowed heart, gradually manifests itself in the acts of the confirmed sinner, till it reaches its last and most fearful stage of development in those words of heaven-defying impiety and scorn, wherewith the hardened infidel endeavours to draw others into the same recklessness and ruin with himself.
What Christian, who is sensible that such, but for the prevent- ing grace of God, he himself might have been, experiences not the joyful emotions of gratitude to his Eedeemer for his own rescue swell higher and higher, as he contemplates successively each progressive stage here depicted in the downward career of the wicked, or can fail to discern the beauty, and to respond to the propriety, of the climax1 in the Psalmist's exclamation, —
O the blessedness of the man !
Who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly ; Nor stood in the way of sinners ; Nor sat in the seat of the scornful !
This passage finds a counterpart in the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Matt. v. 44.
Love your enemies :
Bless them that curse you,
Do good to them that hate you,
And pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.
Here, as in the opening of the first Psalm, the first line is com- mon to the three succeeding, being the enunciation of the gene- ral principle of which they form special precepts, enumerating the three different modes in which love to enemies can be exhibited and cultivated ; 1st, in word, *2dty, in deed, and 3dty, in thought. In the triplet there is a regular gradation in the development of the character of the enemies of the Christian ; who first, when they feel their own conduct tacitly reproved by his righteous ex- ample and conversation, begin by cursing and speaking evil of
1 The alleged climax is an ascending series, not in the scale of moral goodness (as Gataker's objection implied), but in the scale of conscious happiness, flowing out of an exemption from certain stages of moral evil ; and in each of the ascending terms, the consciousness of happiness must be measured by the magnitude of the evil from which the good man is exempted. The Psalmist's exclamation is not, " 0 the goodness," but " 0 the happiness," &c. — Jebb's Sacred Literature, p. 44.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 11
him. As this inward feeling of self-dissatisfaction increases, it gradually becomes confirmed into settled hatred against him who occasions it, till at length, becoming intolerable, it seeks to alle- viate its torment by venting itself in despiteful usage and persecu- tion of its detested object.
Nor is the climax in the manifestation of love by the Chris- tian less remarkable. In proportion as the malice of his enemies increases in virulence and outrage, he is required, by the perfect law of his Saviour, to meet every new insult with ever-increasing meekness, and to overcome every rise in evil by a still higher ad- vance in good. Not only must he, by a mild answer, strive to turn away wrath, returning blessings for the curses uttered against himself; but even when he has perceived indubitable tokens that the original dislike has now ripened into settled hate, he must omit no fitting opportunity that offers of shewing effectual kind- ness to his neighbour and doing him good. " If his enemy hun- ger, he must feed him ; if he thirst, he must give him drink,"1 that by such a manifestation of godlike benevolence he may heap coals of conviction upon his head, and, if possible, melt down his hardened enmity into ingenuous relentings and confession of his fault. And should his enmity, notwithstanding, proceed to such outrageous persecution as to repel every manifestation of benevo- lence in act, he can still give him his prayers, and intercede for his persecutors with Him who can turn the hearts of men whither- soever he listeth. If he would become one of " the children of his Father who is in heaven," (compare the next verse, Matt. v. 45), he must imitate the example of Him who prayed even for his mur- derers : " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
From the examples given, it will be evident that the distin- guishing excellence of the gradational specieS of parallelism is its admirable adaptation to mark the nicest shades of moral good and evil, and thus to train the Hebrew people, habituated to its use, to this discrimination. Bishop Jebb has done essential service to the cause of Scripture criticism in pointing out so clearly the true nature and advantages of this species of parallelism, and vindica- ting the language of Scripture from the imputation of gross tau- tology ; an imputation, which, as he remarks, " could not easily
1 Compare St Paul's commentary on this passage, Romans xii. 14 — 21.
12 SCRIPTUKE PARALLELISM.
be repelled, if the Sacred Volume were admitted to abound in consecutive pairs of lines strictly synonymous. The imputation is not new, and the defence has been long since almost antici- pated : — * Nothing is thought more impertinent in Scripture than the frequent repetitions ; but the learned need not be told, that many things seem to the ignorant bare repetitions, which yet ever bring along with them some LIGHT, or some ACCESSION/ — Boyle on the Style of Scripture, p. 90." " But another and not less important consideration," the Bishop adds, " remains. It can, I apprehend, be satisfactorily shewn,1 that a great object of the duality of mem- bers in Hebrew poetry, accompanied by a distinction, and com- monly either a progress or antithesis, in the sense of related terms, clauses, and periods, is to make inexhaustible provision for marking, with the nicest philosophical precision, the moral dif- ferences and relations of things. The Antithetic Parallelism serves to mark the broad distinctions between truth and falsehood, and good and evil. The Cognate [or Gradational] Parallelism discharges the more difficult and more critical function, of discri- minating between different degrees of truth and good on the one hand, of falsehood and of evil on the other. And it is probable that full justice will not be done to the language, either of the Old Testament or of the New, till interpreters, qualified in all re- spects, and gifted alike with sagaciousness and sobriety of mind, shall accurately investigate these nice distinctions."2
II. PARALLEL LINES ANTITHETIC.
" Parallel lines antithetic are those in which two lines corre- spond with one another by an opposition of terms and sentiments ; when the second is contrasted with the first, sometimes in ex- pressions, sometimes in sense only. Accordingly the degrees of antithesis are various ; from an exact contra-position of word to word, singulars to singulars, plurals to plurals, &c., down to a general disparity, with something of a contrariety in the two pro- positions ; for example, —
1 This Bishop Jebb does in his subsequent pages, some examples from which have already been given.
2 Jebb's Sacred Literature, p. 39.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 13
Faithful are the wounds of a friend ; But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.
PROVERBS xxvii. 6.
Here every word has its opposite : faithful, deceitful ; wounds, kisses ; friend, enemy.
A wise son maketh a glad father ;
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
PROVERBS x. 1.
They have bowed down and fallen ; But we have risen, and stand upright.
PSALM xx. 8.
Many seek the ruler's favour ;
But every man's judgment cometh from the Lord.
PROVERBS xxix. 26.
— where the opposition is chiefly between the single terms, the ruler, and the LORD ; but there is an opposition likewise in the general sentiment ; which intimates the vanity of depending on the former without seeking the favour of Him on whom depend the issues of all things.
This species of parallelism is peculiarly adapted to adages, aphorisms, and detached sentences, and abounds in the Proverbs of Solomon, much of the elegance, acuteness, and force of which arise from the antithetic form, — the opposition of diction and sen- timent/'1
III. PARALLEL LINES SYNTHETIC.
" Parallel lines synthetic, or constructive, are those in which the parallelism consists only in the similar form of construction ; in which word does not answer to word, and sentence to sentence, as equivalent or opposite ; but there is a correspondence and equality between the different propositions in respect of the shape and turn of the whole sentence and of the constructive parts ; such as noun answering to noun, verb to verb, member to member, negative to negative, interrogative to interrogative."51
1 Lowth's Isaiah, Preliminary Dissert., p. xiv. 2 Ibid p. xv.
14 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
f Praise Jehovah from the earth, 8 I Ye sea monsters and all deeps ; voices. J 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, Creeping things, and birds of wing :
Kings of the earth, and all people ; Princes, and all judges of the earth ; Young men, and also maidens, Old men, with children :
Let them praise the name of Jehovah ;
For his name alone is exalted ;
His majesty, above earth and heaven.
PSALM cxlviii. 7-13.
Four and twenty voices from earth are called upon to unite in the universal hymn of praise to the Lord, which heaven and all its hosts (ver. 1-6) had begun. They are divided into three choirs, with eight companies in each. First, one blended chorus is heard from earth, and sea, and air ; the deeps, with their mighty tenants, and the resistless elements of air, fulfilling in all things his com- mands, conspiring together to proclaim the Creator's glory ! Next, each individual object on earth is invited to swell the strain — the loftiest features of the land, with all its productions and in- numerable tribes of living beings, be they wild or tame, formed to creep on the surface beneath, or to soar into the regions above ; and, lastly, man, the whole family of the redeemed on earth, of every rank, and age, and sex, are summoned with intelligent voice to join and fill up the universal acclaim of heaven, and earth, and sea, and air !
We have a beautiful instance of this species in Psalm xix. in which the lines are bi-meinbral, that is, they consist each of double members, or two propositions :
The law of Jehovah is perfect, — reviving the soul ;
The testimony of Jehovah is sure, — making wise the simple ;
The precepts of Jehovah are right, — rejoicing the heart ;
The commandment of Jehovah is pure, — enlightening the eyes :
The fear of Jehovah is clean, — enduring for ever ;
The judgments of Jehovah are truth, — they are righteous altogether:
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 15
More to be desired are they than gold, — yea than much fine gold ; And sweeter than honey, — yea than the dropping of the honey-comb.
PSALM xix. 7-10.
This species is frequently employed in an enumeration of parti- culars, for the purpose of forming into groups a variety of details. A striking instance of this occurs in 2 Cor. xi. 22-27, where the Apostle is recounting his numerous labours and sufferings in the cause of Christ :
22. (Are they Hebrews? So am I. •< Are they Israelites ? So am I. (Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I.
23. Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more. In labours more abundant,
DCS above measure, imprisonments more abundant,
(In labour In stripes In impris
In deaths oft ;
24. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.
25. b j Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, £thedeep;
Thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in
26.1 r In journeyings oft;
In perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, b < In perils from mine own countrymen, in perils from the heathen,
In perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, * In perils by sea, in perils by false brethren :
27. /-In labour, and painfulness, In watchings often, hunger and thirst, In fastings often, In cold, and nakedness.
/-In a < In
The correspondence in the constructions and expressions will be still more apparent in the original Greek :
22. *E£«a/b/ siffi ;
'l6sar,Xira.i siffi •
23. A/axovo/ XI/OTOU siffi ; (<7raoa<pcovuv Xa>.ai) OTSO Jyw.
I' Iv xocro/s crsff/ufforspwj, a ^ EC -n-Xjjya/j
u f y?.ax.a7; TEM
16 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
sv Quvdroig ToXXccx/j*
26. f 65o/T00/a/s xivdvvoig
b -< xivfivvoig ex. y'tvovg, Kivfrjvoig e% edvuv,
M&WMf Jv TcXs/, xtv&vvois sv £gj],«,/<x, xivdvvoi; sv ^cC^atiG-fa xivfrjvois sv
27. f Jv xo'vrw xa/
Jv a -< «» X//XW xa/ d/'-vpe/,
In verse 23, the three lines marked (a) end; in the original, each with adverbs, and are evidently intended to form one group, as the first and last end with the same comparative (vsgHtfforegus, more abundantly). The two central stanzas (ver. 24, 25 (b), and 26 (&),) as evidently correspond, each beginning with the general heads, " In deaths oft," " In journeyings oft," under which respectively are ranged several special instances of each sort of suffering. Under the first head we have (ver. 24 and 25) a triplet or stanza of three lines, connected by the recurrence of numeral adverbs (" five times, thrice, once," &c.). Under the second we have (ver. 26), a quatrain or stanza of four lines, marked as forming one group by the constant recurrence of the word " perils," and each line will be observed to consist of two similarly constructed members, " In perils of rivers, in perils of robbers," (xitfovo/g xorapuv, xivBwoi? \r\6ruv, two genitives), " in perils from mine own countrymen, in perils from the heathen/' (xiv8vvoi$ Jx yaws, xivBu- vois s% tdvuv, where the connexion between the first and second substantives is made by the preposition lx from, &c.) Of the four lines thus formed, the first and fourth are parallel, since in each the first member specifies perils by water (" perils of rivers," " perils by sea,") and the second by enemies, whether open (': rob- bers,") or concealed (" false brethren") ; while in the two central verses, journey whither the Apostle may, among Jews or Gentiles, in the crowded city or tenantless wilderness, all persons and places seem to conspire against his peace and safety.
Hl'lUI'TUKE PAKALLKI.1SM. 17
The last stanza («) recurs to the subject with which the first (a) began, and which is thus placed first and last, as forming the strongest evidence of the sincerity of his zeal as a servant of Christ, — the voluntary and self-imposed labours (t* XOKOIS " in labours," v. 23, ^ x^y " in labour," v. 27) which he underwent in farthering the cause of the Gospel. The alternate lines in this five-lined stanza (a) correspond exactly in structure. The three odd lines, the 1st, the 3d, and the 5th, consist each of a couple of singulars, while the 2d and 4th are plurals, with the adverb " often" appended to each.
SECTION IV.
Kespecting the three preceding species of parallelism, Bishop Jebb remarks, that " separately, each kind admits many subor- dinate varieties, and that in combinations of verses the several kinds are perpetually intermingled ; circumstances which at once enliven and beautify the composition, and frequently give pecu- liar distinctness and precision to the train of thought." It is par- ticularly important to observe, that the lines are variously com- bined, so as to form not only couplets, but triplets, quatrains, and stanzas of five, six, or more lines.
I. Parallel couplets are by far the most common : thus,
For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, And for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,
Until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, And the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.
And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, And all kings thy glory ;
And thou shall be called by a new name, Which the mouth of the LORD shall name, &c.
ISAIAH Ixii. 1-5.
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, And bow myself before the high God ? B
18 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
Shall I come before him with burnt- offerings, With calves of a year old ?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? &c.
MICAH vi. 6-8.
2. Parallel triplets consist of three connected and correspond- ent lines, which constitute within themselves a distinct sentence, and form a sort of stanza :
" Woe unto them ! For in the way of Cain have they walked ; And in the deviousness of Balaam's reward, they have eagerly rushed on ; And in the gainsaying of Korah, they have perished.
JUDE ii.
" Things future are here spoken of in the grandest style of pro- phetic poetry, as already accomplished. The climax, in the con- cluding terms especially of the lines, is very strongly marked."1
The Lamentations of Jeremiah are mostly composed of triplets, as the acrostic form indicates, each third verse beginning with a new letter of the alphabet :
Ah ! how doth she sit solitary, — the city once full of people !
How is she become as a widow, — she that was great among the nations !
And princess among the provinces, — how is she become tributary !
She weepeth sore in the night, — and her tears are on her cheeks ! None hath she to comfort her, — among all her lovers !
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her, — they are become her enemies !
LAMENTATIONS i. 1, 2.
In triplets, however, only two of the lines commonly corre- spond as synonymous or gradational.
Sometimes the odd line stands first, in which case it usually contains a general proposition, of which the two succeeding lines form the illustration : thus,
If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, And to be trodden under foot of men.
MATTHEW v. 13.
1 Jebb's Sacred Liter, p. 153.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 19
Let your light so shine before men, That they may see your good works, And glorify your Father who is in heaven.
MATTHEW v. 16.
Thou wilt shew me the path of life : Fulness of joys is in thy presence ; Pleasures are at thy right hand for evermore.
PSALM xvi. 11.
When the odd line comes last, it forms a close to the two pre- ceding lines, stating some general proposition applicable to them as their result, or proof, or contrast : thus,
Awake thou that sleepest, And arise from the dead ; And Christ shall give thee light.
EPHESIANS v. 14.
Either make the tree good, and its fruit good ; Or else make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt : For from the fruit the tree is known.
MATTHEW xii. 33. The foxes have holes ; And the birds of the air have nests : But the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
MATTHEW viii. 20.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven,
And his circuit unto the ends of it : And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
PSALM xix. 6.
I was dumb with silence :
I held my peace even from good : And my sorrow was stirred.
My heart was hot within me : While I was musing, the fire burned : Then spake I with my tongue.
PSALM xxxix. 2, 3.
Sometimes the odd line occupies the central position, and forms the intermediate connecting link between the first and third line ; for example : —
Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness : Thou hast enlarged me, when I was in distress : Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.
PSALM iv. 1.
20 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
Wait on the Lord :
Be firm, and may he strengthen thine heart : Wait, I say, on the Lord.
PSALM xxvii. 14.
I will behave myself in a perfect way.
O when wilt thou come unto me ? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
PSALM ci. 2.
We have a beautiful combination of all the three varieties in Psalm xxiv. 7-10 :
Lift up your heads, O ye gates ;
And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors ; a And the King of glory shall come in. a Who is this King of glory ? • The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates ;
Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors ; a And the King of glory shall come in. a Who is this King of glory ?
The Lord of hosts ! a He is the King of glory.
3. Quatrains consist of two parallel couplets or distichs so con- nected together by the sense and construction as to make one stanza.
The ox knoweth his owner, And the ass his master's crib : But Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider.
ISAIAH i. 3.
Fret not thyself because of evil-doers,
Neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity :
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass,
And wither as the green herb.
PSALM xxxvii. 1, 2.
Sometimes, however, the parallel lines answer to one another alternately ; the first to the third ; and the second to the fourth : —
Fret not thyself because of evil men, Neither be thou envious at the wicked :
a " King of glory'1 in each of the prominent lines.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 21
For there shall be no reward to the evil man ; The candle of the wicked shall be put out.
PROVERBS xxiv. 19, 20.
" Sometimes, in the alternate quatrain, by a peculiar artifice of construction, the third line forms a continuous sense with the first, and the fourth with the second.
I will make mine arrows drunk with blood ;
And my sword shall devour flesh : With the blood of the slain and the captive ;
From the heads of the chiefs of the enemy.
DEUTERONOMY xxxii. 42.
That is, reducing the stanza to a simple quatrain :
I will make mine arrows drunk with blood ; "With the blood of the slain and the captive : And my sword shall devour flesh ; From the heads of the chiefs of the enemy.
Again,
From without, the sword shall destroy ;
And in the innermost apartments terror ; Both the young man and the virgin ;.
The suckling with the man of gray hairs.
DEUTERONOMY xxxii. 25,
Here, as Bishop Jebb remarks, " the youths and virgins, led out of doors by the vigour and buoyancy natural at their time of life, fall victims to the sword in the streets of the city : while infancy and old age, confined by helplessness and decrepitude to the inner chambers of the house, perish there by fear before the sword can reach them."1
" Being darkened in the understanding ; Being alienated from the life of God ; Through the ignorance which is in them ; Through the callousness of their heart.
EPHESIANS iv. 18. " That is, adjusting the parallelism :
" Being darkened in the understanding, Through the ignorance which is in them : Being alienated from the life of God, Through the callousness of their heart." 2
» Jebb's Kacred Lit. pp. 29, 30. * Ibid. p. 192.
22 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
For if ye love them who love you, what reward have you?
Do not even the publicans the same ? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do you extraordinary ?
Do not even the Gentiles thus ?
MATTHEW v. 46, 47.
" In the fourth line of this extract," says Bishop Jebb, " I have substituted Gentiles (s0v/xo/) for publicans (reXwai) ; a substitu- tion which, though disapproved by Mill, is authorised by several MSS., by the great majority of versions, and by many of the Fathers : sdvixoi (Gentiles) is approved by Bengel and adopted by Griesbach in his text [Tischendorf, Alford, &c.]. The alteration is demanded by the principles of Parallelism. In the first line and its parallel the third, the terms are all varied thus :
Ye love1 . . . Ye salute
them who love you. . your brethren.
What reward have you ? What do you extraordinary ?
Now, to correspond with these variations, a similar change of terms appears indispensable in the second and fourth lines, which are also parallel ; and it is accordingly afforded, by the adopted various reading :
The publicans (o/ rt\uvat) . The Gentiles (o/ I
It may be added that, according to the common reading, the fourth line would be merely tautologous ; while, on the contrary, this alteration gives a lively progress to the argument. Degraded as publicans were, they might still be Jews, and they frequently were so ; but the Gentiles were objects of unequivocal and national hatred : the Publican might be despised ; the Gentile was de- tested. Each resemblance, too, is thus appropriately pointed. In loving their lovers only, they were equalled by the sordid publi- cans, whose very affections moved only at the command of self- love, or rather of self-interest : in saluting their brethren — that is, their countrymen — only, they thought themselves discharging a religious duty ; this, at least, they imagined was a virtue pecu-
Tavs a.ya.futTa.f
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 23
liar to them as Jews ; but our Lord brings home the fact, that, in this exclusive nationality, they were equalled by the very heathen. And here we may observe a further nicety ; the ques- tions asked are :
Do not even the publicans THE SAME THING ? Do not even the Gentiles THUS ?
All who loved their lovers only, were actuated by one and ike same principle, of selfishness ; not so with respect to all who confined their courtesy exclusively to their own countrymen ; the Jews did this from religious bigotry, the Gentiles from national pride ; and, as principles determine the character of actions, the Gentiles, in this particular, could not be said to act in the same, but in a like, manner with the Jews."1
In the two following quatrains words and gestures alternate with each other :
Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours,
A scorn and a derision to them that are round about us.
Thou makest us a by-word among the heathen, A shaking of the head among the nations.
All day long my disgrace is before me,
And the shame of my face hath covered me : From the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth ;
From the face* of the enemy and avenger.
PSALM xliv. 13-16.
In the last quatrain especially, the correspondence of the alternate lines will at once be evident by bringing them into juxta-posi- tion:
All day long my disgrace is before me,
From the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth ;
And the shame of my face hath covered me ;
From the face [looks] of the enemy and avenger.
4. " The five-lined stanza admits considerable varieties of structure : sometimes the odd line commences the stanza ; fre- quently, in that case, laying down a truth to be illustrated in the
1 Jebb's Sacred Lit., pp. 206, 207. * -<:s^ mipp' nai.
24 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
remaining four lines : sometimes, on the contrary, after 'two dis- tichs, the odd line malies a full close ; often containing some con- clusion deducible from what preceded : sometimes the odd line forms a sort of middle term, or connective link, between two couplets : and, occasionally, the five-lined stanza begins and ends with parallel lines ; a parallel triplet intervening. Of all these varieties, some exemplification shall be given:"1
Are there not twelve hours in the day ?
If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not ;
Because he seeth the light of this world : But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth ; Because there is no light in him.
JOHN xi. 9, 10.
To the unbelieving fears of his disciples, who would have dis- suaded him from .going into Judea from apprehension of the enmity of the Jews, our Lord replies, that to every man has been appointed his fixed time to accomplish the task assigned him by God ; and like the traveller who stumbles not so long as he walks in the light of day, so no fatal evil can befal him who is directed in his path by the full light of God's presence and Spirit : it is only when darkness overtakes either traveller, that he stumbles and falls. 'But here, as is frequently the case in Scrip- ture similes, instead of drawing out the parallel fully, and indi- cating the points of difference as well as of agreement between the material object of comparison and the spiritual truth to be illustrated, by a sudden transition the spiritual side alone is brought prominently forward, leaving to the reader to fill up for himself the other side of the parallel. The traveller who walks in the night " stumbleth, because there is no light" — to him, we expect to hear : but by the remarkable change, " because there is no light in him," the spiritual pilgrim, to whom alone this can apply, is reminded that the continuance of God's directing light with him depends on his preserving his spiritual eye clear and unclouded. The Sun of Kighteousness never goes down : but the inward darkness may refuse to admit the light (John i. 5).
Several commentators would translate the last line " Because there is no light in IT," that is, in the ivorld, referring the pro-
1 Jubb's Sacred Lit., p. 193.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 25
noun (If cbrw) to " this world" in the third line, instead of to " the man walking." So Dr Campbell, who remarks, " Common sense, as well as the rules of construction, require this interpretation." To this Bishop Jebb well replies, that " the construction would be extremely forced, if we were to go so far back as ' world' (xo'<r,«,ou) for an antecedent : the parallelism would be destroyed, if we were to desert ' the person walking/ the leading member of the three preceding lines, and in the last line to take up ' the world,' a merely subordinate member, which had before occurred only in regimine : and the deep moral sense would be sacrificed to an un- meaning pleonasm ; for who needs to be informed, that THE LIGHT, that is, the SUN, does not, at night, appear to the world / The allegorical, or spiritual meaning, is happily expressed by Euthymius. c If a man walk in the light of virtue, he stumbleth not into danger ; for he seeth the light of virtue, and is led on his way. But if a man walk in the darkness of vice, he stumbleth : for the light is not in him.' The light is wanting, not in the ivorld, but in the individual. It is probable that the whole range of literature, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, does not afford a better illustration of this passage than the strains of our great poet :
Virtue could see to do what virtue would,
By her own radiant light, though Sun and Moon
Were in the flat sea sunk.
He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day ;
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks, under the mid-day sun ;
Himself is his own dungeon."1
Comus.
Now learn a parable of the fig tree :
When its branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves,
Ye know that summer is nigh : So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, Know that it is near, even at the doors.
Verily I say unto you,
This generation shall not pass
Till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, But my words shall not pass away.
MATTHEW *xiv. 32-35.
1 Jelih's Farred Lit., pp. 194, 195.
26 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
In the following examples, after two distichs, the odd line makes a full close : —
Drop down, ye heavens, from above, And let the skies pour down righteousness : Let the earth open ; and let them] bring forth salvation ; And let her cause righteousness to spring up together : I, the LORD, have created it. — ISAIAH xlv. 8.
And many false prophets shall rise,
And shall deceive many ; ,
And because iniquity shall abound,
The love of many shall wax cold : But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
MATTHEW xxiv. 11-13.
I am the way, the truth, and the life ;
No man cometh unto the Father, but through me ; If ye had known me,
Ye should have known my Father also : And from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
JOHN xiv. 6, 7.
In this last example, the third line is to be completed from the first, and the fourth from the second.
If ye had known me, — supply, " as the way, the truth, and the life," from
the first line. Ye should have known my Father also, — supply, " through me," from the
second line.
In the next examples, the odd line forms a sort of middle term, or connective link between two couplets.
Whoso is wise — then let him understand these things ; Prudent — then let him know them ;
For right are the ways of Jehovah : And the just shall walk in them ; But the transgressors shall fall therein.
HOSE A^ xiv. 9.
1 Much difficulty has been occasioned to commentators by the verb " bring forth," *!"T??": v'yiphroo being in the plural. Why may it not have for its nominative " the heavens." " the skies," and " the earth," salvation being regarded as the joint produc- tion of all three — while the skies having already poured down righteousness, the fresh growth of righteousness is attributed to the earth alone ?
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 27
Many are the things thou hast done, O Jehovah, my God ! Thy wondrous acts, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward —
(There is none to be compared to thee !) — If I would declare or rehearse, They are more than can be numbered.
PSALM xl. 5.
Here the odd line is inserted parenthetically between the second and fourth, which stand in the closest connexion :
Thy wondrous acts, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward, If I would declare or rehearse.
The verbs in the fourth line " declare " and " rehearse " (T^ aggidah and Tr"^ vaadabberah) refer to the nouns, " thy wondrous acts," and " thy thoughts" in the second verse, as is evi- dent from their having no pronominal affixes.
For they that sleep sleep in the night ;
And they that be drunken are drunken in the night :
But let us, who are of the day, be sober : Putting on the breastplate of faith and love ; And for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
1 THESSALONIANS v. 7, 8.
Occasionally the five-lined stanza begins and ends with parallel lines, a parallel triplet intervening. Of this, Bishop Jebb gives the following instance :
" Consider the ravens :
They neither sow nor reap ; They have neither storehouse nor barn ; And God feedeth them : How much are ye superior to these birds ?
LUKE xii. 24.
" In the correspondent divisions of the second and third lines, there is a beautiful accuracy : they do not sow ; nor have they any storehouse, from whence to take seed for sowing : they do not reap ; nor have they any barn, in which to lay up the pro- duce of harvest. The habit of observing such niceties is far from trifling ; every thing is important which contributes to illustrate the organization of Scripture."1
1 Jebb's Sacred Liter, p 200.
28 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
Another instance occurs in Rom. ii. 21-23:
21. Thou, therefore, -who teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?
Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?
22. Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit
adultery ? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege ?
23. Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dis-
honourest thou God ?
The various relations which these lines bear to each other, and to the preceding context, deserve our attention.
In the first and fifth lines the Apostle reproves the hypocritical inconsistency of the Jew in general terms while in the three intermediate lines he particularizes three great sins of which he was guilty, — against his neighbour, against himself, and against his God. " The three capital vices," remarks Haldane, " which the Apostle stigmatizes in the Jews, like those which he had pre- ferred against the Gentiles,' stand opposed, on the one hand, to the three principal virtues which he elsewhere enumerates as com- prehending the whole system of sanctity, namely, to live soberly, righteously, and godly ; and, on the other hand, they are con- formable to the three odious vices which he had noted among the Gentiles, namely, ungodliness, intemperance, unrighteousness [Rom. i. 21—29.] For theft includes, in general, every notion of unrighteousness ; adultery includes that of intemperance ; and the guilt of sacrilege, that of ungodliness."1
The order, however, in which the sins are enumerated, is reversed, as Bengel remarks : in the case of the idolatrous Gen- tiles, the violation of their duty to God2 is placed in the front, as being their most flagrant and notorious sin ; while in the case
1 Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, by Robert Haldane, Esq., vol. i. p. 198.
2 They forgot, 1. their duty to God ; Rom. i. 21-23, " Because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God .... and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."
Hence 2f7/y, they forgot their duty to themselves, of restraining their appetites and passions ; ver. 24, " Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts," &c.
And 3t/Z»/, they were led to neglect their duties to their neighbours ; ver. 29-31, " God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness," £o.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 29
of the Jews it is placed last, as, amidst all their professed zeal for the honour of God, still lurking at the bottom of their hearts, and occasionally discovering itself in open acts of profaneness. Thus the two charges, viewed in connexion, form an example of what we shall afterwards find is a prevailing characteristic of Scripture arrangements, the Epanodos, or placing first and last the princi- pal subject to which attention is meant to be directed : and for- getfulness of God is denoted to be the great transgression in which all sin begins and ends ; its originating cause to which it is to be traced as its source, and the final, consummating enormity in which it terminates.
But further, the first and fifth lines (v. 21 and v. 23) refer respectively to each of the two stanzas which immediately pre- cede, recounting the claims to pre-eminence put forth by the Jew, amounting to ten, — in Scripture the number of completeness, — divided into its two halves, Jive
17. Behold them art called a Jew, And restest in the LAW, And makest thy boast of God, And knowest his will,
And approvest the things that are more excellent, Being instructed out of the LAW ;
19. f And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind,
A light of them which are in darkness,
20. •< An instructor of the foolish,
A teacher of babes,
[ Which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the LAW.
ROMANS, ii. 17-20.
In the first five lines are enumerated the advantages, which the Jew assumed to himself personally as a Jew ; in the second five (vv. 19, 20), the points of superiority which he arrogated to him- self above others. To the latter, the first line of v. 21 specially alludes, " Thou who teachest another" &c. ; while v. 23, " Thou that makest thy boast of the law" &c., returns back to the first class of personal advantages, " And restest in the law," &c.
It is worthy of remark, too, how skilfully the word LAW is dis- posed in these ten lines, in order to assign to it thus early that prominence which it held in the estimation of the Jew, and which
30 SCKIPTURE PAKALLEL1SM.
it was about to receive in much of the Apostle's subsequent dis- cussion with him.1 It forms the concluding word which sums up each stanza, as marking the source to which ultimately may be referred every advantage possessed by the Jew, whether as regarded himself or others.
" Being instructed out of the LAW ;"
" Which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the LAW :"
and again, if we regard the two stanzas as forming a whole of ten lines, it meets us at every point, as occupying the first, the central, and the final place.
We give the remaining verses to the end of the chapter, that the reader may see the connexion of the whole passage : —
CLAIMS OF THE JEW.
17. Behold thou art called a JEW,
I And restest in the LAW, And makest thy boast of God, And knowest his will, And approvest the things that are more excellent, Being instructed out of the LAW ;
19. f And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind,
A light of them which are in darkness,
20. b < An instructor of the foolish,
A teacher of babes, [^ Which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the LAW.
1 It needs but a slight glance at the following chapters to see that the LAW forms the pivot upon which the Apostle's argument with the Jew turns.
Chap. iii. By works of LAW shall no man be justified before God, but by faith alone ; yet is not the LAW made void through faith, but established.
Chap. iv. The promise to Abraham was not through the LAW, but through the right- eousness of faith.
Chap. v. The LAW was not the origin of sin and death, and as little can it remove these evils ; its entering in only caused the evil to abound.
Chap. vi. We are no longer under LAW but under grace, yet this is no encouragement to sin.
Chap. vii. Nay, we must be freed from LAW, if we are ever to be freed from these two evils. The motions of sin, which were by the LAW, worked in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. The LAW has become to all who are under it, though not the cause, yet the occasion of sin, ver. 7-12, and of death, ver. 13-25 ; and therefore,
Chap. viii. 2. It may justly be called, " the LAW of tin and death [a generally mis- understood expression].
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 31
REFUTATION.
21. b Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?
Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal ?
22. Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou
commit adultery ? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege ?
23. a Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law,
dishonourest thou God ?
24. b FOR the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you,
As it is written : [See Ezekiel xxxvi. 20.]
25. a FOR circumcision verily profiteth,
If thou keep the law ; But if thou be a breaker of the law, Thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.
CONCLUSION.
26. a Therefore, if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law,
Shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision ?
27. b And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law,
Judge thee who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law?
28. For he is not a JEW who is one outwardly ;
Neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh :
29. But he is a JEW, which is one inwardly;
And circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the
letter : "Whose praise is not of men, but of God.
CLAIMS OF THE JEW.
Ver. 17. IQ tne fi^ lme to which, the next ten are subordinate, _, we have the much- vaunted name of JEW, which, in his own estimation, already includes all ;
18. 1. (a) The highest privileges before God.
Ver. 19. 2. (b) An immeasurable superiority above his fellow- and men, as the teacher and light of an ignorant and wicked 20. world.
32 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
REFUTATION
Ver. 21 Of b. — How inconsistent the claim to superior enlight- 1st line, enment above others, when the teacher's own niiud is not enlightened to practise the truth !
Ver. 23. Of a. — How inconsistent the boast of privileges before God, if God is not honoured by obedience ! Both confirmed, in the intermediate triplet ("Thou that preachest," &c.), by the charge of the same three cardinal sins against the Jews, as had been charged against the Gentiles.
Ver. 24. Proof of" b — (introduced by FOR). — For, so far from teaching others to fear the name of God, the evil ex- ample of His professing worshipper makes it to be re- proached among the Gentiles.
Ver. 25. Proof of a — (introduced by FOR). — For privileges pro- fit nothing without corresponding practice.
CONCLUSION.
Ver. 26. Therefore (a), privileges will be transferred to him who has made the most of the little light given to him.
Ver. 27. And (b), the superiority shall be given to him to judge and condemn pretenders to knowledge without obe- dience.
Ver. 28. For even the name of JEW, and his distinguishing pri- Ver. 29. vilege (circumcision), will, be of no avail before the judgment-seat of God, if it is an outward show alone without the inward reality. — JEW or JUDAH means " praise," (Gen. xxix. 35, xlix. 8) ; but his praise must be of Him who searcheth the heart, " not of men, but of God."
There remains still to be noticed another variety of the five-
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 33
lined stanza, similar to what is found in all the longer stanzas, in which the lines are alternately parallel, the odd numbers of the lines corresponding with the odd, and the even with the even. Thus, in the observations with which our Saviour, in the Sermon on the Mount, introduces the Lord's Prayer, the first, third, and fifth lines contain exhortations ; the second and fourth, reasons, introduced each by the word, " For."
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do :
For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye, therefore, like unto them :
For your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye
ask him. After this manner, therefore, pray ye.
MATTHEW vi. 7—9.
The first, third, and fifth lines give directions as to the man- ner in which we are to pray, what we are to avoid, what we are to observe ; while the intermediate lines assign the reasons why we should shun the error of the heathen.
Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar,
And there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee ; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way ;
First be reconciled to thy brother, And then come and offer thy gift.
MATTHEW v. 23, 24.
Of this variety we have already seen an instance under the synthetic parallelism, p. 15 :
In labour and painfulness,
In watchings often, In hunger and thirst,
In fastings often, In cold and nakedness.
Bishop Jebb gives a fine example of this species of parallelism in the six-lined stanza :
The first man is of the earth, earthy ;
The second man is the Lord from heaven : As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy ;
And as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly : And as we have borne the image of the earthy,
We shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
1 CORINTHIANS xv. 47-49.
34 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
Here the first, third, and fifth lines correspond with one ano- ther ; and, in like manner, the second, fourth, and sixth.
In Matthew vi. 22, 23, we have a similar instance in a seven- lined stanza, except that the first line stands alone as the general proposition — the others correspond alternately ; the second, fourth, and sixth lines state a supposed case ; the third, fifth, and seventh, the resulting consequences :
The light of the body is the eye : If therefore thine eye be single,
Thy whole body shall be full of light ; But if thine eye be evil,
Thy whole body shall be full of darkness : If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness,
How great is that darkness !
This species of parallelism is occasionally varied hy inserting couplets, instead of single lines, between the alternate lines. Of this we have an instance in another stanza of the Sermon on the Mount:
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
Where moth and rust doth corrupt,
And where thieves break through and steal : But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
Where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,
And where thieves do not break through nor steal : For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
MATTHEW vi. 19 — 21.
In 1 John i. 6-10, we have a five-membered stanza, in which the odd members are couplets, and the even quatrains :
If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, We lie, and do not the truth ;
But if we walk in the light,
As he is in the light,
We have fellowship one with another,
And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins,
He is faithful and righteous,
To forgive us our sins,
And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Tf we say that we have not sinned, We make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 35
SECTION V.
The preceding are the chief varieties of the parallel lines, gra- dational, antithetic, and constructive. A few others of less note are discussed both by Bishops Lowth and Jebb ; for which the reader is referred to their respective works. We now proceed to notice a fourth species of parallel lines discovered by Bishop Jebb, or to which at least he has had the merit of directing atten- tion much more fully than had been done by any preceding writer.
IV. PARALLEL LINES INTROVERTED.
" There are stanzas so constructed, that, whatever be the num- ber of lines, the first line shall be parallel with the last ; the second with the penultimate ; and so throughout, in an order that looks inward, or, to borrow a military phrase, from flanks to centre. This may be called the introverted parallelism :" —
The idols of the heathen are silver and gold : The work of men's hand ;
They have mouths, but they speak not ; They have eyes, but they see not ; They have ears, but they hear not ; Neither is there any breath in their mouths ; They who make them are like unto them : So are all they who put their trust in them.
PSALM cxxxv. 15-18.
In the first line, we have the idolatrous heathen ;
In the eighth, those who put their trust in idols :
In the second line, the fabrication ;
In the seventh, the fabricators :
In the third line, mouths without articulation ;
In the sixth, mouths without breath :
In the fourth line, eyes without vision ;
And, in the fifth line, ears without the sense of hearing.
The parallelism of the extreme members, may be rendered yet more evident, by reducing the passage into two quatrains ; thus :
36 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
" The idols of the heathen are silver and gold ; The work of men's hand : They who made them are like unto them ; So are all they who put their trust in them.
They have mouths, biit they speak not ;
They hare eyes, but they see not ;
They have ears, but they hear not ; Neither is there any breath in their mouths." l
It will be instructive to compare with this a similar passage in Psalm cxv., which, though not a pure introverted parallelism, yet possesses a definite arrangement :
t
Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men's hands.
They have a mouth, but they speak not ; Eyes have they, but they see not ; Ears have they, but they hear not ;
A nose have they, but they smell not. There are their hands — but they feel not ; There are their feet — but they walk not ; They do not mutter in their throat. "Like unto them shall be they that make them ; Even every one that trusteth in them.
PSALM cxv. 4-8.
In the first line we have the idols ; in the last, the idol-worship- pers, equally senseless as the matters of which the former is made : in the second line, we have the fabrication, and in the tenth, the fabricators pronounced like unto their work : the com- parison thus expressly drawn in the two first and two last lines, inviting us to trace the parallel throughout the rest of the pas- sage, and to remark the righteous retribution of God in the assi- milation which takes place between idolaters and the objects of their besotted worship. " Having eyes," in like manner, " they shall not see ; having ears, they shall not hear :" having mouths given them to utter the praises of God, they shall not " glorify him as God, neither be thankful." Following the order of enu- meration in the Psalm, they shall be spiritually dumb — and blind — and deaf — devoid of discernment — powerless — and lame — no breath nor sign of spiritual life shall stir within them.
1 Jebb's Sacred Lit. pp. 57, 58.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 37
In the tliird and ninth lines, we have two of the organs of speech, the mouth and the throat., both singular (not as in our version " mouths"), with the usual gradation, or advance in the sense observable in the second of two lines, which at first appear synonymous : " They speak not, with their mouths ; they mutter not, even in their throat."
In the next couplet we have two plurals, " eyes and ears," which correspond with " hands and feet" in the parallel couplet ; while the central line is marked as standing alone by the singular noun " nose." These little niceties, which are not discernible in our version, must be carefully noted by those who would trace out for themselves the parallelisms of Scripture.
There is a farther distinction in the original Hebrew, which 1 have attempted imperfectly to imitate, in the construction of the two couplets, which to those accustomed to observe these peculia- rities at once groups the lines into pairs : —
Eyes have they )•,,/., • , . •»/ , , , J > in the first pair ; but Ears have they )
There are their hands There are their feet
>- in the next pair ;
the first couplet denying to idols the possession of all percep- tion, the second of all powers of action.
This form of parallelism Mr Boys has shown to prevail most extensively throughout the Sacred Writings ; " not only in doc- trine and discussion, but in narration and dialogue ; not only where we might expect to meet with something like stanzas, but where poetry, according to our ideas of it, is out of the question." Thus—
a Take ye heed every one of his neighbour,
b And trust ye not in any brother.
b For every brother will utterly supplant, a And every neighbour will walk with slanders.
JEREMIAH ix. 4.
In a and a we have neighbours ; in b and b brothers,
a Though he heap up silver as the dust, b And prepare raiment as the clay : 6 He may prepare it, but the just shall put it onv
a And the innocent shall divide the silver.
JOB xxvii, 16, 17._
38 SCBIPTURE PARALLELISM.
In a and a we have silver, in b and b raiment. The corre- spondence of b and b is more strongly marked in the original, than in our translation ; the noun in b for " raimenf w*\°, malboosh, being derived from the verb in b " array one's self in," or " put on" ®|^r yilbosh.
a Whom he would he slew ;
b And whom he would he kept alive ;
b And whom he would he set up ; a And whom he would he put down. DANIEL v. 19.
In a and a those towards whom he exercised severity ; in b and b those to whom he showed favour.
Ashkelon shall see it, and fear ; Gaza also, and be very sorrowful ; And Ekron :
For her expectation shall be ashamed ; And the king shall perish from Gaza ; And Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.
ZECHARIAH ix. 5.
The catalogue of Abraham's riches, given in Gen. xii. 16, seems, according to our ideas, to be very strangely arranged. " And he had sheep and oxen, and he asses, and men servants, and maid servants, and she asses, and camels." Why are the she asses separated from the he asses, and men servants and maid servants thrust in between them ? If we arrange the passage in the form of an introverted parallelism, every want of methodical arrangement disappears.
And he had sheep and oxen, And he asses,
And men servants, And maid servants, And she asses, And camels.
Here we have maid servants answering to men servants in the two central lines, and she asses to he asses in the fourth and second, and camels in the last line to sheep and oxen in the first. In one respect there seems to be some little want of symmetry ; namely, that we have two particulars, " sheep and oxen," in the first line, but only one in each of the succeeding. In the
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. • 39
Hebrew, however, sheep and oxen here go together as one kind of property ; and therefore the two words are coupled together by a hyphen (or makkaph as it is called in the Hebrew) ; thus "£=1"^, tzon oovakar, as if we were to write them " sheep-and-oxen."1
As well the stranger as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.
And he that killeth any man, shall surely be put to death,
And he that killeth a beast shall make it good, beast for beast.
( And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour, ( As he hath done, so shall it be done to him :
Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth : As he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.
And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it. And he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.
Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country : for I am the Lord your God.
LEVITICUS xxiv. 16— 22. 2
ARISE !
Shine, for thy light is come,
And the glory of Jehovah is risen upou thee. For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, And gross darkness the people ;
But on thee shall Jehovah arise, and his glory upon thee shall be seen ; And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light, And kings in the brightness of thy rising.
ISAIAH lx. 1-3.
In the first and eighth lines, we have the rising of the Church ; in the second and seventh, the light which it receives and re- flects ; in the third and sixth, the glory of the Lord : in the two central lines, the spiritual darkness of mankind.3
The entire Epistle of St Paul to Philemon, as Mr Boys has shown, forms an introverted parallelism of eighteen members. I
1 Boys' Key to the Book of Psalms, pp. 37, 38. — It is not, however, without design, that two particulars are specified in the first line, instead of the single term " cattle," which would have included both. The whole of the articles enumerated are thus made to amount to the sacred number SBVEN, the import of which we shall afterwards examine.
* Ibid. p. 41. 3 Ibid. p. 40.
40 SCRIPTUEE PARALLELISM.
give only its plan, referring those who wish to see it filled up and illustrated to the author's Tactica Sacra, pp. 61-68.
A 1-3 . — Epistolary.
B 4-7. — Prayers of St Paul for Philemon — Philemon's hospitality. C 8. — Authority.
D 9, 10. — Supplication.
E 10. — Onesimus, a convert of St Paul's.
F 11, 12. — Wrong done by Onesimus, amends made by Paul. G 12. — To receive Onesimus the same as receiving Paul. H 13, 14.— Paul, Philemon. I 15. — Onesimus. I 16. — Onesimus. H 16. — Paul, Philemon.
G 17. — To receive Onesimus the same as receiving Paul. F 18, 19. — Wrong done by Onesimus, amends made by Paul. E 19. — Philemon a convert of St Paul's. D 20. Supplication C 21. — Authority.
B 22. Philemon's hospitality — Prayers of Philemon for St Paul. A 23-25. — Epistolary.
The eighty-ninth Psalm is a remarkable instance of a series of introverted parallelisms formed by verses, not lines. Let us take as specimens two of the stanzas or strophes :
28. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, And my covenant shall stand fast with him.
29. His seed also will I make to endure for ever, And his throne as the days of heaven.
30. If his children forsake my law, And walk not in my judgments ;
31. If they break my statutes,
And keep not my commandments ;
32. Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, And their iniquity with stripes,
33. Yet my mercy will I not utterly take from him, Nor prove false in my truth.
34. My covenant will I not break,
Nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.
35. Once have I sworn by my holiness ; Unto David will I not lie.
36. His seed shall endure for ever,
And his throne as the sun before me.
37. It shall be established for evermore as the moon, And the witness in the sky standeth fast.
SELAH.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 41
38. But them hast cast off, and abhorred, Thou hast been wroth with thine anointed.
39. Thou Last made void the covenant of thy servant, Thou hast profaned to the earth his crown,
40. Thou hast broken down all his hedges ; Thou hast brought his strongholds to ruin.
41. All that pass by the way spoil him :
He has become a reproach to his neighbours.
42. Thou hast set up the right hand of his adversaries ; Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice.
43. Thou hast also turned the edge of his sword, Thou hast not made him to stand in the battle,
44. Thou hast made his glory to cease,
And his throne to the earth thou hast cast down.
45. The days of his youth hast thou shortened : Thou hast covered him with shame.
SELAH.
The parallelisms here are evident. — To God's mercy kept for David for evermore, and his covenant standing fast with him in v. 28, corresponds in v. 37 the establishment for evermore of Davids throne — sure as the witness in the sky standeth fast. In ver. 29 and 36 we have his seed enduring for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven and as the sun. Though his children prove unfaithful, v. 30. Yet will not God prove unfaithful, v. 35. Though they break God's statutes, v. 31. Yet will not God break his covenant, v. 34. In v. 32, God's chastening in measure is made to correspond with (v. 33) the exercise of his mercy and truth, to show that the two, so far from being inconsistent, may run parallel side by side.
The limits of the next introverted parallelism (ver. 38-45) are marked out by SELAH at the beginning and at the close. To God's seeming rejection of his Anointed in v. 38 corresponds the shame which he casts upon him in v. 45 — and as in Psalm xc. 7, with which psalm the one before us has many points in common, the shortening of the sufferer's days (v. 45) is connected with the wrath of God (v. 38) as its cause.
In ver. 39 and 44, his throne and crown are represented as having been profaned and cast down to the earth. In ver. 40 and 43, his defences fail him, and in ver. 41 and 42, his neighbours and enemies triumph over him.
42 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
SECTION VI.
Closely allied to the Introverted Parallelism is a peculiarity or artifice of construction, called Epanodos, which Bishop Jebb de- fines to be " literally a going back ; speaking first to the second of two subjects proposed ; or, if the subjects be more than two, resuming them precisely in the inverted order : speaking first to the last, and last to the first." The rationale of this artifice in composition he thus explains : " Two pair of terms or propositions, containing two important, but not equally important notions, are to be so distributed as to bring out the sense in the strongest and most impressive manner : now, this result will be best attained, by commencing, and concluding, with the notion to which pro- minence is to be given ; and by placing in the centre the less im- portant notion, or that, which, from the scope of the argument, is to be kept subordinate."1
Of this Bishop Jebb gives the following examples :
" No man can serve two masters :
For either he will hate the one, and love the other ; Or he will adhere to the one, and neglect the other : Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.
MATTHEW vi. 24.
" In this quatrain at large there is a clear epanodos: in the first line, the impossibility is in general terms asserted, of serving two masters ; that is, two masters of opposite tempers, issuing oppo- site commands : in the fourth line, this impossibility is re-asserted, and brought personally home to the secular part of our Lord's hearers, by the specification of the two incompatible masters, GOD and MAMMON. These two assertions, as the leading members of the passage, are placed first and last ; while, in the centre, are subordinately given the moral proofs by which the main proposi- tions are established. But the two central members are so dis- posed, as to exhibit an epanodos yet more beautiful and striking.
" For either he will hate the one, And love the other ; Or he will adhere to the one, And neglect the other.
1 Jebb's Sacred Liter, p. 335.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 43
In a divided service, the dispositions and conduct of the servant, towards the opposite powers who claim his obedience, are distri- butable into two classes ; each class containing two degrees : on the one side love, or at least, adherence ; on the other side, hatred, or at least, neglect. Now, since it was our Lord's purpose to establish the great moral truth, that every attempt to reconcile the service of opposing masters must terminate in disappoint- ment, the question is, By what arrangement of the four existing terms, may the utmost prominence be given to that truth ? The answer is obvious : let hatredbe placed first, and neglect last, and let love and adherence be relegated to the centre ; the conse- quence will be, that the first impression made, and the last left, must be inevitably of a disagreeable nature ; strongly enforcing the conclusion, that such a service cannot be any other than most irksome and most fruitless bondage."1
" Give not that which is holy to the dogs ; Neither cast your pearls before the swine ; Lest they trample them under their feet ; And [those] turn about and rend you.
MATTHEW vii. 6.
" That is, adjusting the parallelism :
" Give not that which is holy to the dogs, Lest they turn about and rend you : Neither cast your pearls before the swine, Lest they trample them under their feet.
" The more dangerous act of imprudence, with its fatal result, is placed first and last, so as to make and to leave the deepest prac- tical impression. To cast pearls before swine, is to place the pure and elevated morality of the Gospel before sensual and besotted wretches, who have
" . . nor ear, nor soul, to comprehend The sublime notion, and high mystery,
but will assuredly trample them in the mire. To give that which is holy (the sacrifice, as some translate it) to the dogs, is to pro- duce the deep truths of Christianity (the ra $a6n roS 0£oD), before
1 Jebb's Sacred Liter, pp. 336, 337.
44 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
the malignant and profane ; who will not fail to add injury to neglect ; who will not only hate the doctrine, but perse- cute the teacher. In either case, an indiscreet and over-profluent zeal may do serious mischief to the cause of goodness : but in the latter case, the injury will fall with heightened severity, both on religion, and religion's injudicious friends. The warning, there- fore, against the DOGS is emphatically placed at the commence- ment and the close." *
Mr Boys has remarked, that the introverted form of parallelism is employed in the tenth chapter of G-enesis, in giving the enume- ration of the sons of Noah and their descendants. " The first verse of this chapter runs thus : ' Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth ;' but in proceed- ing to enumerate the descendants of each, the sacred writer inverts the order. The sons of Japheth come first, then the sons of Ham, and, last of all, the sons of Shem.
Shem, Ham,
And Japheth.
The sons of Japheth, &c. (2—5.) And the sons of Ham, &c. (6-29.)
Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, &c. (21-31.) "
GENESIS x. 1-31.
The reason of this arrangement, however, Mr Boys has omitted to notice. Why should Shem be placed either first or last, since he was neither the eldest of the sons of Noah (" unto Shem also .... the brother of Japheth the elder," &c., Gen. x. 21), nor the youngest (" And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him," Gen. ix. 24) ? The inten- tion of the sacred historian evidently was to mark the pre-emi- nence which God designed for Shem in his generations, as the progenitor of the chosen people, and of that promised seed " in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed."
But the importance of attention to the epanodos will' be parti- cularly evident by taking an example in which the parallelism consists not of lines, but of periods or whole sentences. Thus in Romans ii. 12, we have two propositions stated, and in verses
1 Jebb's Sacred Liter, pp. 339, 340.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 45
13-15 we have the arguments given for each respectively, but in inverse order :
12. . f For as many as have sinned without law,
"^ Shall also perish without law ;
•n f And as many as have sinned in the law (_ Shall be judged by the law ;
13. „ ( FoR1 not the hearers of the law are just before God,
\ But the doers of the law shall be justified.
14. C FoR1 when the Gentiles, which have not the law,
Do by nature the things contained in the law, These, having not the law, A < Are a law unto themselves :
15. Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, Their consciences also bearing witness,
And their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.
Here, according to the principles of the Epanodos, the case of the Gentiles is put first and last (A and A), as furnishing the strongest apparent objection to the equity of the doctrine laid down by the Apostle, that " all are under sin, and brought in as guilty before God ;" while the statement with regard to the Jews' guilt (B), and its proof (B), are placed in the middle and subor- dinate place. An acquaintance with this common rule of Scrip- tural arrangement might have saved Whitby, Macknight, and others, from giving utterance to the very erroneous doctrinal views which will be found in their commentaries on this passage, at direct variance with the main scope of St Paul's argument in the Epistle to the Romans, but for which they imagined they found a sanction in the supposed connexion between verses 13 and 14. These two verses, however, have no immediate con- nexion, but verse 14 corresponds with the first two lines of verse 12 (A). The first proposition stated by St Paul in A is, that the Gentiles, though they " have sinned without law, shall also perish without law." The proof of the equity of this proceeding, the Apostle, after having parenthetically disposed of the case of the Jews (in B and B), reserves for the conclusion (A), to make and leave the stronger impression ; and vindicates the severity of
1 On the two consecutive FORS, see Section VIII.
46 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
God's judgment even in this case, by the argument that the Gen- tiles, though destitute of a written law, yet shewed, by their prac- tising at times, however imperfectly, certain virtues required by the law, and by the possession of a conscience, with that inter- nal conflict of opposing thoughts which it at times awakens, that they had a law written in their hearts, the violation of which rendered them also wholly inexcusable.
SECTION VII.
Though not strictly falling under the subject of parallelism, yet as being somewhat akin to the Epanodos, and closely allied to the great object of our investigation, the connexion of Scrip- ture, we may here advert to another rule of Scriptural arrange- ment, inattention to which has involved in obscurity the con- nexion of the early part of David's history. The rule is this : That wherever attention is wished to be drawn to the relation between two events separated by an interval containing important details, the sacred writer omits for the present the intermediate events, and brings into close connexion the two related circum- stances. He then returns back, and fills up the details that had been omitted.
A clear instance of this usage is to be found in the very com- mencement of the Book of Genesis. In order to present at one view the connexion between the six days occupied in the creation of the world, and the sanctifying of the seventh day as a Sabbath, and to place prominently in the very front of Revelation the solemn sanction which the Creator intended to stamp on the uni- versal observance of the Sabbath so long as the earth should endure, by His having accommodated the whole order of His creation to this purpose, the sacred historian omits some impor- tant details relating to the sixth day, and concludes his introduc- tory account of the origin of all things with the words :
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, And all the host of them.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 47
a And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made ;
b And he rested on the seventh day
c From all his work which he had made.
a And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it :
b Because that on it he had rested
c From all his work which God created and made. — GENESIS ii. 1-3.
This crowning ordinance being thus presented in its proper connexion and bearing, Moses returns back on the course of his narrative, and records in the remainder of Chap. II. a variety of interesting particulars, all connected with the sixth day.
Let us apply this rule to the elucidation of the history of David, as contained in 1 Sam. xvi.-xviii.
From a very early period, the difficulties which have been found in reconciling the supposed discrepancies in these chapters have appeared so great, that in the Vatican copy of the Septua- gint translation, an attempt has been made to remove them by omitting very considerable portions of the text, particularly of Chap, xvii., and several modern critics, such as Kennicott, Michaelis, Dathe, Houbigant, and Boothroyd, have seen no other resource but to resort to this violent remedy, and to reject about thirty verses as interpolations.
Some of the difficulties on the face of the narrative are these. In ch. xvi. 18, David is described as "a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters ;" and yet, in the fol- lowing chapter, he is spoken of as a youth, unused to arms, ver. 33, 39. In xvi. 19-22, we have an account of David's introduc- tion to Saul, of Saul's loving him greatly, and making him his armour-bearer, and his residing constantly at his court : yet in ver. 56 of the next chapter, Saul bids Abner " enquire whose son the stripling is :" and when David is brought before him after the combat, Saul speaks to him as an entire stranger, " Whose son art thou, thou young man ?"
In order to remove these difficulties, it has been supposed by Bishops Hall, Warburton, and Horsley, that the encounter with Goliath took place previously to David's being required to play the harp before Saul. Bishop Horsley's arguments seem most satisfactorily to establish this point. " It appears," he remarks, " from many circumstances of the story, that David's combat with Goliath was many years prior in order of time to Saul's madness,
48 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
and to David's introduction to him as a musician. 1. David was quite a youth when he engaged Goliath (xvii. 33-42) : when he was introduced to Saul as a musician, he was of full age (xvi. 18). 2. His combat with Goliath was his first appear- ance in public life (xvii. 56) : when he was introduced as a musician, he was a man of established character (xvi. 18). 3. His combat with Goliath was his first military exploit (xvii. 39) : he was " a man of war" when he was introduced as a musi- cian (xvi. 18). He was unknown both to Saul and Abner at the time he fought with Goliath. He had not, therefore, yet been in the office of Saul's armour-bearer, or resident in any capacity at the court."
Founding on these premises, Bishop Horsley concludes that the last ten verses of ch. xvi. which relate Saul's madness and David's introduction to the court upon that occasion are misplaced. "The true place for these ten verses (xvi. 14—23)," he affirms, " seems to be between the ninth and the tenth of the eighteenth chapter. Let these ten verses be removed to that place, and this seventeenth chapter be connected immediately with the 13th verse of ch. xvi., and the whole disorder and inconsistency that appear in the narrative in its present arrangement will be removed."
There are two great objections to this solution of the difficulty.
1. We are obliged to resort to a violent dislocation of the text, and to suppose that ten verses, by some unaccountable accident, have been transposed.
2. If some inconsistencies are removed by this supposition, others equally great remain, as Dr Davidson has shown : e.g. From the reception which Saul gives to David when introduced to play the harp before him, it is evident that he was a stranger, whom if he had ever before seen he had forgotten. But is this within the bounds of probability if we adopt the connexion of the events as proposed by Bishop Horsley ? According to his arrangement, David, after the conquest of Goliath, continued with Saul, " went out whithersoever he sent him and behaved himself wisely, and Saul set him over the men of war, and he was accepted in the sight of all the people," insomuch that Saul be-
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 49
came jealous of his rising reputation, and eyed David with suspi- cion and envy. Can we suppose that, after all this, Saul so entirely forgot David and his jealousy, that when David came again before him, it could be said, that " he loved him greatly," and that he made him " his armour-bearer" P1
Dr Davidson's own solution, in his last work on Biblical Criti- cism, is still more unsatisfactory, as he attributes the disjointed and contradictory appearance, which the narrative in his estima- tion presents, to " the compilatory, fragmentary character of the books, the writer of which put together materials derived from various sources, without believing it to be either necessary or essential to bring them into exact accordance in their historical sequence and relationship," — a theory which seems hardly recon- cilable with a belief in the inspiration of the Books of Samuel.
The solution which we would propose, requires no omission nor transposition of any part of the text. It is simply to consi- der the whole of chap, xvii., and the first four verses of chap, xviii. as an episode introduced, detailing the earlier circumstances of David's conflict with Goliath, which had taken place many years previously. If the end of chap. xvi. and the fifth verse of chap, xviii. are read in connexion, the discrepancies will be found to vanish.
To enable the reader to judge the more readily, we give as much of the narrative as is necessary to shew the connexion, and shall distinguish the part which we consider to be episodical, and relating to an earlier period of David's history, by Italics :
1 SAMUEL xvi. 13 — xviii. 11. CHAP. xvi.
Ver. 13. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren : and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
Ver. 14. But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil
,, 15. spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul's servant said unto
him, Behold now an evil spirit from God troubleth thee. Let
,, 16. our Lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to
seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp : and it shall
come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that
1 For other objections see Dr Davidson's Hermeneutics, pp 542, 543. D
50 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
CHAP. xvi.
Ver. 17. he shall play with his hand, and them shalt be well. And Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can play well,
„ 18. and bring him to me. Then answered one of the servants and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in nfatters, and a comely person, and the Lord
,, 19. is with him. Wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and
„ 20. said, Send me David thy son, which is with the sheep. And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a
„ 21. kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul. And David came to Saul, and stood before him ; and he loved him greatly ;
,, 22. and he became his armour-bearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, say- ing, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me ; for he hath found
,, 23. favour in my sight. And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp and played with his hand : so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.
Earlier incident in David's history :
CHAP. xvn.
Ver. 1. Now the Philistines had gathered1 together their armies to battle, and were gathered together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, and pitched between Shochoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim. And
,, 2. Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in array against the Philis-
„ 3. tines. And the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side : and there was a valley
,, 4. between them. And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span
,, 10. And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day ; give
„ 11. me a man that we may fight together. When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.
1 So ought the verb ^a.^!* (vaiyaas'phoo), we conceive, to be translated, as is fre- quently the case with the Future in Hebrew, with 1 conversive. See Exod. xxxii. 29, xxxiii. 5, &c.
The connexion of the whole of this episode with the preceding context seems evi- dently to be this. The introduction of David into Saul's court, which has just been narrated in the end of chap, xvi., was not, the historian informs us, the first time that Saul and David had met. It was preceded by an interesting interview many years pre- vious, which led indeed to no continued intercourse or intimacy, yet was not without its effect in preparing David for his future destiny, as it occasioned his being detained in the army, and gradually trained up till he had acquired the character of which we find him in possession (ch. xvi. 18) on his subsequent introduction at a later period of life to Saul.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 51
ClJAP. XVII.
Ver. 12. Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem- Judah, whose name was Jesse ; and he had eight sons : and the man went
„ 13. among men for an old man in the days of Saul. And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle ; and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the first- born, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah. And
,, 14. David was the youngest : and the three eldest followed Saul. But
,, 15. David v:ent and returned from Saul1 to feed his father's sheep at
,, 16. Bethlehem. And the Philistine drew near morning and evening,
and presented himself forty days.
Ver. 17. And Jesse said unto Dacid his son, Take now for thy brethren an ephah of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the
,, 18. camp to thy brethren; and carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their
„ 20. pledge And David rose up early in the morn- ing, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him
„ 81. And when the words were heard which David spake, they rehearsed
„ 32. them before Saul: and he sent for him. And Dacid said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him ; thy servant will go and
,, 33. fight with this Philistine. And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him : for thou art but
,, 34. a youth, and he a man of war from his youth. And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, ifc
„ 42. And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him : for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair counten- ance
" 48. And it came to pass when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag, fyc.
„ 54. And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jeru- salem ;a but he put his armour in his tent
1 This, and the preceding verse, as Horsley remarks, are to be taken in connexion. " The three eldest followed Saul," that is, remained constantly with the army. " But David went and returned from Saul," that is, from the army, going only occasionally when his father commanded him to inquire after the welfare of his brethren. See ver. 17 and 18.
2 This is evidently a proleptical statement, as is also the one immediately succeeding, " he put his armour in his tent.1' As David was not attached to the army, this must either refer to the tent which Was now assigned him, as Saul retained him in the army (see ch. xviii. 2) : or perhaps, as Otto Thenius thinks (Exegetisches Handbuch zum alten Testament), he took the armour with him home, when he returned to his father's house. One's TENT, at this period of the Hebrew history, was the usual expression for his house or home. Compare 1 Sam. xiii. 2, 2 Sam. xix. 8, xx. 1. " Every man to his tent, O Israel," xx. 22, 1 Kings xii. 16, &c.
52 SCKIPTURE PAKALLELISM.
CHAP. xvii. Ver. 55. And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine, he
said unto Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this
youth ? And Aimer said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell. „ 56. And the king said, Inquire thou whose son the stripling is. And „ 57. as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took
him, and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine „ 58. in his hand. And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou
young man 2 And David answered, I am the son of thy servant CH. xvni. Jesse the BethleJiemite. And it came to pass, when he had made
an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit
with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. „ 2. And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home
to his father's housed Then Jonathan and David made a cove- „ 4. nant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan
stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to
David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and
to his girdle.
Kesumption of the narrative broken off at the end of chapter xvi :
Ver. 5. Now David went out whithersoever Saul sent him, and be- haved himself wisely ; and Saul set him over the men of war, and he -was accepted in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants.
Ver. 6. And it came to pass, as they were coming in, on David's re- turning from the slaughter of the Philistine [army, or, as in the margin, of the " Philistines "}, that the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing to meet king Saul, with „ 7. tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music. And the women answered one another as they played and said,
Saul hath slain his thousands, And David his ten thousands.
,, 8. And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him ; and he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands ; and what can he have more
1 As he had been in the habit of doing hitherto, going and returning, as we have already seen (xvii. 15), to keep up intelligence between his father and brethren. The true import of the expression, " Saul took him, and would let him go no more home to his father's house, appears from chap. xiv. 52. " And there was sore war against the Philistines all the days of Saul ; and when Saul saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took him unto him." Concluding from the adventure of the day that the young man was likely to form a good soldier, Saul kept him to serve in the army, and made him, like his brothers (xvii. 14), " follow him'' : but there is nothing said of his being, as at a later period, about Saul's person. When the campaign was over, he would return to his father's house, till his services were again required.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 53
CHAP. XVI.
Ver. 9. but the kingdom ? And Saul eyed David from that day and
forward. Ver. 10. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from
God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the
house ; and David played with his hand as at other times ; and „ 11. there was a javelin in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the javelin ;
for he said. I will smite David even to the wall with it. And
David avoided out of his presence twice.
Let us first observe the reason that led to the present arrange- ment of the narrative, and to the anticipation, in the end of chap xvi., of part of David's history. If we read over chap. xvi. carefully, we shall see that the evident object of the historian is to contrast the king who ruled after his own will and for his own purposes, with " the man after God's own heart," whom He chose while yet quite a youth to supply the place of Saul, that he might rule not for himself but for God ; and to enforce on his readers the great principle of God's moral government, illustrated by the opposite destinies of the two, that " whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance ; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." (Matt, xiii. 12.) Accordingly, immediately after narrating the selec- tion and anointing of David by Samuel, xvi. 1-12, consequent on the rejection of Saul, the sacred historian remarks, " And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward," (ver. 13). This naturally leads him, without regarding any of the intermediate events (which are afterwards introduced episo- dically in chap, xvii-xviii. 4), to remark the opposite dealings of God's providence with Saul. " But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul., and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him" — and to pass on by anticipation to the time when events were now approaching a crisis by the two principal personages of the succeeding narrative being brought into close relation with each other. Saul's fortunes had now manifestly begun to wane, while David's were on the increase. The hand of the Lord had fallen heavily on Saul, To alleviate his malady, his servants sought him out a man who could play skilfully, and David is recommended, not only as one whose fame as a practised musician was high, but who was by this time become distinguished for his prowess in war and his prudence in counsel. He is brought into
54 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
the presence of Saul ; and we need not wonder, that after the lapse of many years, Saul, who perhaps had never seen David again after his conflict with Goliath, and who, amidst the multi- plicity of his wars and cares, and those anxious self-tormenting thoughts which now so often troubled him, had probably forgot- ten all the circumstances, should not recognize the ruddy strip- ling whom he had before seen in the manly form of the son of Jesse. He pleases the king ; is introduced as a resident member into his court, " for Saul had sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me : for he hath found favour in my sight ;" and he is promoted to the high and responsible office of armour-bearer.
Let us now read on, in connexion with the end of chap, xvi., the 5th verse of chap, xviii. : " And David went out whitherso- ever Saul sent him, and behaved himself wisely ; and Saul set him over the men of war, and he was accepted in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants." Now that David had risen to so eminent a station, and was beginning to rival the martial fame and popularity of the king himself with all ranks of the nation, we see how natural was the jealousy excited in the mind of the suspicious monarch by the superior honour ascribed to David above himself, as they were returning on one occasion from battle, by the women who came out of all the cities of Israel singing,
Saul hath slain his thousands, And David his ten thousands.
That this occurrence is not to be referred to the time of David's first appearance and victory over Goliath, but to a long subse- quent period when David was now resident in Saul's court, for the purpose of alleviating his malady with his harp, seems placed beyond question by the words immediately succeeding : " And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house : and David played with his hand, as at other times : and there was a javelin in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the javelin," &c.
The ascription of such praise too (" David hath slain his ten thousands") to a mere stripling, till that day unknown, for having slain with a sling and a stone the single champion of Gath,
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 55
would have been so extravagant and exaggerated, that it could scarce have called forth jealousy, but rather a smile on the part of Saul. Besides, had Saul's envy been thus early excited against David on his very first appearance, and continued to pursue him (for we are told that " Saul eyed David from that day and for- tvard"), David's career would have been checked at the very com- mencement, and Saul would certainly have given him no farther opportunities of becoming distinguished as a warrior, far less would have made him " his armour-bearer, set him over his men of war," and changed his hatred of him into love — for " he loved him," we are expressly told, " greatly." Only when David was come to mature age, and had acquired such influence as to render him a dangerous rival, even to the monarch, by his known valour, and prudence, and acceptance " in the sight of all the people and of Saul's servants," was such a manifestation of public feeling calcu- lated to excite so inveterate rancour in the breast of Saul ; " They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands ; and what can he have more but the kingdom ? And Saul eyed David from that day and for- ward.''
" The slaughter of the Philistine," therefore (as our translators seem to have seen by their marginal rendering "of the Philis- tines)," in ch. xviii. 6, has nothing to do with the slaying of Goliath ; but refers to some one of those numerous engagements with the common enemy, "the Philistine," ("for there was sore war against the Philistines all the days of Saul ;" xiv. 52) that took place when David was now captain, after Saul had " set him over the men of war" (xviii. 5). " The Philistine" is here used, as Gentile nouns frequently are, to denote the whole people, as in Exod. xxxiii. 2. " And I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite," &c. Compare Gen. xii. 7, xiii. 7, &C.1
1 Should it be objected that throughout the rest of this history ^T^rr (p'lishtim), the Philistines, in the plural, is always used when the whole people are intended, though averse in general to have recourse to conjectural criticism, yet we see a very natural explanation in the present instance how the mistake might have been committed of writing the singular, while the plural was the true reading. The transcriber having but a lew verses before written, " And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine," (ih. xvii. 57) and finding almost the very same words occurring again so soon after- waids, would be very apt to assimilate them to the former: or if he attended as little as has
56 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
SECTION VIII.
For tracing the connexion and dependencies of the sacred text, it is important also to keep in view a peculiarity of construction which has been well illustrated by Bishop Jebb. " It sometimes happens," he remarks, in the Parallelisms of the New Testament, " that a precept is delivered, an assertion made, or a principle laid down, co-ordinate reasons for which are independently assigned ; without any repetition of the common antecedent, and without any other indication of continued reference to the original propo- sition, than the repeated insertion of some causative particle ; a FOR (rAP), for instance, or a BECAUSE ('OTI).
Of this peculiarity of construction, he brings several examples from the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you,
And shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake :
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad :
FOR great is your reward in heaven ;
FOR so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
MATTHEW v. 11, 12.
Here two co-ordinate reasons are assigned, why our Lord's perse- cuted disciples should rejoice : 1. they shall obtain a great reward in heaven ; 2. they are assimilated to the prophets. The re- ference to a common antecedent is, in this place, too clear to be overlooked : it could never be supposed, that the resemblance in point of suffering between the disciples and the prophets was assigned as the cause why the former should obtain a great re- ward." '
Be not, therefore, anxious, saying,
What shall we eat ? or what shall we drink ?
Or wherewithal shall we be clothed ?
FOR after all these things do the Gentiles seek :
FOR your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
since been so generally done to the real connexion of the narrative, and hastily concluded that they referred to the immediately preceding incident, he might think himself justi- fied in altering the text as being an error of previous transcribers. 1 Jebb's Sacred Lit., pp. 375, 376.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 57
Here the precept against worldly solicitude is supported by two reasons : 1. this solicitude is heathenish ; 2. it is needless.
Enter ye in at the strait gate : FOR wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction ;
And many there be that go in thereat : FOR strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life ;
And few there be that find it.
MATTHEW vii. 13, 14.
The difficulties found by commentators in this passage are at at once " removed by resorting to the principle of a double refer- ence to a common antecedent. Two co-ordinate reasons are assigned, why we should enter in through the strait gate ; 1. a negative reason ; the wide gate is the way, not to life, but to destruction : 2. a positive reason ; the strait gate is the way to life. The passage, accordingly, may be thus reduced to a six- lined stanza :
Enter ye in at the strait gate ;
For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction j
And many there be which go in thereat ; Enter ye in at the strait gate ;
For strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life ; And few there be that find it.
To each reason a powerful corroboration is annexed. The wide gate is frequented by multitudes ; we should be heedful, there- fore, lest we be drawn into the vortex : the strait gate not only is not frequented by multitudes, it is found only by a few ; since, therefore, it is freely and plainly disclosed to us, we ought thank- fully to use our privilege, and enter in." x
" Who hath not daily necessity, like the high-priests, First, for his own sins to offer sacrifice, Then, for the sins of the people :
FOR this {latter] he did once for all, when he offered up himself : FOR the law constituted men who have infirmity, high-priests ; But the word of that oath, which is beyond the law, [constituted] the Son, perfected for evermore.
HEBREWS, vii. 27, 28.
The division of the proposition in this passage is clear and expli-
* Jebb's SacivdLit, pp. 381, 383.
58 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
cit : 1. Our great High-priest is under no necessity of offering daily sacrifice for his own sins ; 2. He is under no necessity of offering daily sacrifice for the sins of the people : the two-fold proof, of this two-fold assertion, is divided also with much dis- tinctness into two clauses ; each commencing with the causa- tive particle TAP, FOR : the proofs, however, are arranged in the inverted order, so as to form an epanodos : the second assertion is first proved ;
He needs not offer daily for the sins of the people ;
FOR this he did, once for all, when he offered up himself:
The first assertion is then proved ;
He needs not offer daily for his own sins :
FOR he is not, like the legal high-priests, a man with sinful infirmity ;
But, in virtue of the covenant, is the sinless Son perfected for evermore.
The non-necessity of offering for his own sins, is first asserted, and last proved, in order to give prominence to the grand dis- tinction between him and the legal high-priests : he DID, once for all, offer sacrifice for the sins of the people : he NEVER did, NEVER could, and NEVER will, offer sacrifice for his own sins ; because he is, and was, and shall be, everlastingly PERFECT, and FREE FROM SIN." 1
Another most important passage, in respect to the general arrangement of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 17-20) has also been happily explained on this principle by Bishop Jebb — but I shall reserve his explanation till we come to its consideration in our examination of the exquisite order which pervades the whole of the Sermon on the Mount.
SECTION IX.
The examples that have been adduced may serve to indicate so far the advancement made by Bishop Jebb in the study of paral-
1 Jebb's Sacred Liter, pp. 385, 386.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 59
lelism : but to all who wish to prosecute this interesting investi- gation for themselves we would beg strongly to recommend the study of the whole of the examples and illustrations which he has given in his " Sacred Literature."
If, however, the Bishop's views are correct, it seems scarcely possible to stop short without extending them much farther than to the arrangement of a single paragraph. A people trained, as the Hebrews thus were, to trace an orderly connexion between the different lines and members of a paragraph, must have soon come to feel the want of a similar correspondence and harmony as necessary to unite together the separate paragraphs of an en- tire composition, so as to form one connected and consistent whole. To illustrate what we mean, let us take one of the Bishop's own examples — that perhaps in which he himself has made the nearest approach to the view now advocated.1 Acts iv. 24-30.
1 O Lord, thou art the God,
Who didst make heaven and earth ;
And the sea and all things that are in them :
"Who by the mouth of thy servant David didst say :
2. " Why did the heathen rage,
" And the peoples imagine vain things, " The kings of the earth stand up, " And the rulers combine together,
" Against the Lord, and against his anointed ?"
3. For of a truth there have combined,
Against thine holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed,
Both Herod and Pontius Pilate,
With the heathen, and the peoples of Israel,
To do -whatsoever things thy hand,
And thy counsel predetermined to be done.
And now, Lord, look down upon their threatenings,
4. And give unto thy servants,
With all boldness to speak thy word : •
While thou art stretching forth thine hand for healing, And while signs and wonders are performed, Through the name of thine holy child Jesus.
1 See Jebb's Sacred Liter, p. 132.
60 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
" This noble supplicatory hymn," he observes, " poured forth at once by the whole Christian people, under the immediate influ- ence of the Holy Spirit, is worthy of that inspiration from whence it flowed. No one part of it can be deemed inferior to another,1 the same sacred vein of poetry animates the whole : and yet, amidst all this poetic fervour, we may discern much technical nicety of construction.
" The entire of the third stanza is an exact and luminous com- mentary on the prophetical quotation which forms the second stanza. Commencing with the illative particle ya>° (For) it leads us to understand a short previous sentence ; which, according to an elegant usage in the Greek language, is not verbally expressed, somewhat to the following effect : ' This prophecy is now fulfil- led ; FOR, of a truth,' &c. We are thus prepared to expect in what follows, a full equivalent for every part of the preceding prophecy ; nor is our expectation disappointed ; no topic of the citation is omitted.
" The combination is first re-asserted as fulfilled :
For, of a truth, there have combined :
" The rebellious nation [nature ?] of that combination is then declared, together with the nature and office of that kingly po- tentate, against whom it was formed :
Against thine holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed.
" In the next couplet, the heathen, the peoples, the kings of the earth, and the rulers, that is all the rebellious personages of the second psalm, are brought forward as fulfilling what- soever it was pre-appointed they should do ; but, in a diversified order :
Both Herod, and Pontius Pilate ;
With the heathen, and the peoples of Israel :
" This is an epanodos : ' Herod, with the peoples of Israel ;
1 This passage is adduced by the Bishop as an instance of the mode in which, in the Ts'ew Testament, " passages quoted from the poetical parts of the Hebrew Scriptures are connected and blended with original matter, so that the compound forms one homogeneous whole : the sententious parallelism equally pervading all the component members, whether original or derived."
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 61
Pontius Pilate, with the heathen ;' Herod, the Jewish ' ruler' or tetrarch, is mentioned, first, and the peoples of Israel are men- tioned last, to mark the greater forwardness, and more grievous criminality of the Jews : he ' came unto his own, and his own received him not :' Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, repre- sentative of ' the kings of the earth,' with the heathen under his control, as subordinate actors, are placed in the centre.
" The equivalent terms, in the prophecy, and in the declara- tion of its fulfilment, may be thus exhibited :
PSALM II. ACTS IV.
The rulers. Herod!
The kings of the earth. Pontius Pilate.
The heathen. The heathen.
The peoples. The peoples of Israel.
1 The Lord and his anointed. ] Thine holy child Jesus whom thou
hast anointed."9
•
" The last two lines of the third stanza form the connecting link between that stanza and the fourth :
1 Instead of the last pair of equivalent terms, as here stated, Bishop Jebb has given
The Lord (Jehovah). Thine holy child Jesus.
The Lord's anointed. Whom thou hast anointed.
He bespeaks the particular attention of his readers to these, and endeavours to deduce from them an argument for the divinity of our Lord : and this notwithstanding that lie is aware of the objection that thus the anointer would be represented as the same with the anointed, and the Lord Jehovah with his own Jio/y child Jesus ; that is, that the Father would be confounded with the Son ! This startling proposition he en- deavours to found on the supposed necessity of maintaining a mathematical exactness of relative proportion between the respective parallel terms of the lines : and as all the other terms of the Psalm find their corresponding equivalents in the interpretative stanza, he argues that least of all could we suppose the most important, the incommu- nicable name of Jehovah or the Lord, to have been left without equivalent, especially as " this name is the keystone at once of the argument and the prayer." Strange that it should not have occurred to so acute a critic, that in the prayer of the Christian dis- ciples the highest prominence is given to the LORD (the Father) by his being made the direct object of their address, and that the LORD of Psalm ii. finds its complete equiva- lent in the thine and thou of the comment. Besides the LORD was opposed when he " whom He had anointed" was opposed.
1 need scarce remark that the example which the Bishop adduces in justification from Psalm xlv. (v. 6 and 7) gives no countenance whatever to such a confusion of ideas as making God's holy child Jesus to anoint the Messiah. The divinity of the Saviour stands in need of no such strained arguments for its support.
2 Jebb's Sacred Lit. pp. 132-135.
62 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
To do whatsoever things thy hand,
And thy counsel predetermined to be done ;
( thy hand/ that is, thine overruling power ; ' thy counsel/ that is, thy predisposing wisdom. These two topics give the subject of the next stanza ; in which, by an epanodos, they are taken up in the inverted order. First, an appeal is made to the wisdom or ' counsel' of God :
And now, Lord, look down upon their threatenings,
And give unto thy servants,
With all boldness to speak thy word :
that is, ' And, as thy wise counsel predetermined, that, through the confederacy of Jews and Gentiles, of kings and rulers, Christ should surfer ; so, let the same wise counsel be now made conspi- cuous, in the undaunted preaching of Christ crucified/ *c Next, the { hand/ or power of God, is brought forward :
While thou art stretching forth thy hand for healing ; And while signs and wonders are performed, Through the name of thy holy child Jesus :
that is, ' What is now taking place, is to us thy servants an ar- gument of confidence : thy hand was lately raised, to give that power to Christ's enemies, which, without thy permission, they could not have attained: the same hand is now miraciilously raised to heal diseases, and to work wonders, through the name of Jesus : we accept the blessed indication ; arid, trusting in thy mighty power, we will go forth, to proclaim the glories of that name, which we now behold thus signally efficacious.' " 1
Thus far Bishop Jebb has traced most successfully the train of ideas in this supplicatory hymn : and while in almost every other instance which he has adduced, we find only single lines corre- sponding to single lines, he has in this instance observed that a whole triplet, or combination of three lines, may l>e parallel to a single line : for the two triplets that form the concluding stanza correspond respectively to the two last lines of the third stanza.
Still, we feel the want of some associating link to combine more closely together all the parts of this hyrnn, and especially to con-
1 Jebbs Sacred Lit. pp. 140, 141.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 63
nect with the subsequent topics the opening address of the prayer,
O Lord, thou art the God,
Who didst make heaven and earth,
And the sea, and all things that are in them :
which, so far as the Bishop's exposition goes, seems to stand dis- jointed from the rest, and has been passed over by him, as if a mere general form of address to God for which almost any other might with equal propriety have been substituted; whereas it constitutes a most essential part of the whole. It is a quotation from Psalm cxlvi. 6 ; and we have but to turn to the Psalm to see how apposite is its application to the circumstances in which the Apostles were placed, threatened by the rulers of the Jews ; and commanded to be silent, while God on the contrary required of them to preach boldly in the name of Jesus. The question for their consideration was, whether they were to " obey God or man." Acts iv. 19. Under such circumstances, what quotation could be more appropriate, or what passage of Scripture could be adduced better calculated for allaying their fears and strengthening their faith, than that wherein the Spirit of God commands them,
3. Put not your trust in princes,
Nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
5. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in the LORD his God :
6. Which made heaven, and earth, The sea, and all that therein is :
who therefore had all power in heaven and in earth to defend those that hearkened unto Him, and not unto " man, in whom there is no help " !
To Jews, to whom, from having their Scriptures mostly by heart, the quotation of a few words was sufficient to recal instantly the whole context, the exceeding appositeness of almost every part of the Psalm to their present circumstances would be obvious.
6. The LORD keepeth truth for ever :
7. He executeth judgment for the oppressed.
The LORD looseth the prisoners:
64 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
8. The LORD raiseth them that are bowed down : The LORD loveth the righteous :
9. But the way of the wicked he turneth upside down. 10. The LORD shall reign for ever,
Even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations.
In short, the appeal throughout the whole Psalm is to thepotuer of God, as being all sufficient to protect his servants from the utmost might of their enemies. Thus of the two attributes of God, to which as we have seen from Bishop Jebb's analysis appeal is made throughout the hymn, the prominence is given to the one which was fitted, under the circumstances, to impart the highest consolation — the power of God — by assigning to it the first and last place.
The true division of the hymn we conceive to be that which is far the most usual in Scripture, into three parts or stanzas, in each of which it will be observed, God's power and wisdom are brought forward.
I. (Past.)
( O LORD, thou art " the God, Power. •< Who didst make heaven and earth ;
( And the sea and all things that are in them ; "
Wisdom.
Who, by the mouth of thy servant David, didst say : "Why did the heathen rage,
" And the peoples imagine vain things, " The kings of the earth stand up,
" And the rulers combine together,
" Against the LORD, and against his Anointed?"
II. (Present.)
For of a truth, there have combined,
Against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou hast anointed,
Both Herod, and Pontius Pilate,
With the heathen, and the peoples of Israel,
Power. •< To do whatsoever things thy hand,
Wisdom. -< And thy counsel predetermined to be done.
SCHIPTUHE PARALLELISM. 65
IJI. (Future.)
( And now, Loan, look down upon their threatenings, Wisdom. •< And give unto thy servants,
( With all boldness to speak thy word ;
( While thou art stretching forth thine hand for healing, Power. -< And while signs and wonders are performed, (^ Through the name of thy holy servant Jesus.
The argument of the whole prayer will thus be found to be :
I.
1st. Thy poiver, 0 God, is almighty ; 2d. Thy wisdom foresees and predisposes all things : the first, as avouched to us in Psalin cxlvi. ; the second, as exhibited in Psalm ii. In Psalm cxlvi., thou hast enjoined us, in the hour of trial and persecution from ungodly men, to look not to man, but to the Lord. In Psalm ii, thou hast given us a most remarkable proof of thy foreknow- ledge and predisposing wisdom in predicting so clearly before- hand the opposition that would be made by a combination of Jews and Gentiles against thine own Son, when he should appear on earth, whom, to accomplish thy wondrous purposes of mercy to our race, " it behoved to suffer these things :" assuring us neverthe- less that their " imaginations against him would be vain : " warn- ing therefore the mightiest to submit themselves to thy Son, and pronouncing those " blessed who put their trust in him."
II.
These things are now beginning to be realized in our expe- rience. As therefore thy power and thy wisdom have been exhi- bited in our enemies, in making them the instruments to work out what we now see clearly to have been the doing of the Lord, and "known unto God from the beginning:" for "those things which God before had shoived by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled ;v Acts iii. 18.1
1 Compare Acts ii. 23. " Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge, of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain."
E
66 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
III.
So let now thy wisdom and thy power be exhibited in us thy servants. Let thy wisdom be exhibited in thy word preached boldly and in all fulness by us : let thy power-be exhibited in our continuing to be enabled to perform miraculous cures and to work wonders through the name of thy blessed Son and in attestation of his Gospel.
The prayer indeed may be said to form a regular syllogism or logical argument, of which Stanza I. is the major proposition, Stanza II. the minor, and Stanza III. the conclusion.
In the three stanzas, as frequently in the threefold division in Scripture, we find a reference to the Past, the Present, and the Future. The first stanza is retrospective, looking back to the declarations of God's perfections " in past times by the prophets :" the central stanza describes the striking fulfilment and illustra- tion of these exhibited in the present circumstances of the church : while the last stanza is prospective, supplicating the continuance of the manifestation of God's wisdom and power in his servants for the future.
Before leaving this passage finally, I would beg to draw parti- cular attention to the great importance of parallelism in enabling the student to discriminate between words that at first sight appear to be synonymous. In the first two verses of Psalm ii :
Why have the heathen tumultuously assembled,
And the people meditate a vain thing ? [Why] do the kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers have sat together consulting, Against Jehovah, and against his Anointed ?
commentators in general have seen in the first four lines but a mere tautological repetition of synonymous terms, " the people" being considered equivalent to " the heathen," and " the rulers" to " the kings of the earth." But when by attending to the paral- lelism of the lines we observe that " the heathen" and " the kings of the earth" are connected, and " the people" with " the rulers," we are led, in the very opening of the Psalm, to see that we have a prediction of a combination of Gentiles, and Jews, with their
SCKlPTUltE PARALLELISM. 67
respective kings, and rulers* against the Lord and his Anointed, such as found no fulfilment in any event in David's life, and con- sequently that a greater than David is here.
That such is the true interpretation is placed beyond doubt by the inspired commentary in Acts iv. 27 :
For of a truth there have combined,
Against thine holy servant Jesus whom thou hast anointed,
Both Herod —
and Pontius Pilate.,
with the heathen — and the people of Israel 5
where, as we have seen (p. 61) we have four terms corresponding exactly to those in the Psalm, though arranged in a different order, " Herod (the head and representative of the Jewish rulers) with the people of Israel being placed first and last, to mark the greater forwardness and more grievous criminality of the Jews ; while Pontius Pilate, the Koman governor (representative of the kings of the earth) with the heathen, as subordinate actors, are placed in the centre."
The next example which we shall give is also taken from Jebb's Sacred Literature.2 The first four stanzas of the follow- ing passage (John v. 19-30) the Bishop has adduced (p. 171) as examples of quatrains or four-lined stanzas, without seemingly the slightest suspicion that these themselves form but parts of a
1 These four lines, though alternately parallel as Bishop Jebb has stated, yet, viewed in another light, may, as is frequently the case, be regarded as directly parallel, " the heathen" corresponding with " the people" in the first two lines, while " the kings of the earth" correspond with " the rulers" in the last two. Still in this view, according to the principles of the yradational parallelism, there must be a difference, and advance in meaning, in the second line of each couplet above the first, and greater cause for astonishment and reprehension in dispeople taking part in such an unhallowed con- spiracy than the Jieathen, and in the rulers than the kings of the earth. In either view, therefore, we are conducted to the same conclusion.
2 This example, which occupies the remainder of section IX., has already appeared in Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature for Oct. 1851. Though introduced here for the reason just specified, we would recommend to less critical readers to reserve its perusal till they have studied the rest of the volume, as it requires closer attention and more sustained thought to follow the reasoning in all the details into which we have entered, than perhaps any of the examples which succeed. Indeed, judging from the experience of some friends who have read the work in manuscript, we would ad- vise the general reader to pass on at once to the Decalogue (Section XIII.) and the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, and then to return back and to conclude with the inter- vening sections.
G8 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
long introverted parallelism, the component parts of which, how- ever, are stanzas, not lines.
But we have a farther object in the selection of this passage : not only as it is extremely interesting and important in itself from the doctrinal views which it contains, but as it affords an opportunity of refuting an objection which has been brought against the study of parallelism, that it seems " incapable of eliciting any new meaning in Scripture, not known before."
The whole of the passage, John v. 19-30 (or indeed to the end of the chapter) is but an extension and farther vindication of the brief reply which our Saviour had given in John v. 17 to the objection of his adversaries against his healing on the Sabbath day, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The meaning which we are led to assign to these words from attention to the principal point of Christ's argument, as indicated by the parallel- istic arrangement in John v. 19-30, presents, if we mistake not, our Lord's reply to the Jews in an altogether new, beautiful, and consistent point of view.
JOHN v. 19-30.
Verse
19. ( The Son can do nothing of himself,
' "A TC t. But what he seeth the Father do : < For what things soever he doeth, ( These also doeth the Son likewise.
20.
21.
22.
23.
B
( For the Father loveth the Son, (. And sheweth him all things that himself doeth ; , ( And he will shew him greater works than these, (. That ye may marvel.
FOR as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them ;
Even so the Son quickeneth whom he will :
FOR the Father judgeth no man,
But hath committed all judgment unto the Son :
T ( That all men should honour the Son, (. Even as they honour the Father : ( He that honoureth not the Son, ( Honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.
Ven«
21.
25.
27.
28.
29.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
f f Verily, verily, I say unto you,
I He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, j Hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, I But is passed from death unto life.
I Verily, verily, I say unto you, , J The hour is coming, and now is,
1 When the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, I And they that hear shall live.
FOR as the Father hath life in himself, So hath he given to the Son to have life in himself: AND hath given him authority to execute judgment also, Because he is the Son of man.
f Marvel not at this : , J For the hour is coming,
] In the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, I And shall come forth :
They that have done good, Unto the resurrection of life : And they that have done evil, Unto the resurrection of damnation.
30. Negative I can of mine own self do nothing : p«,uiTe As I hear, I judge : A And my judgment is just :
Because I seek not mine own will,
But the will of the Father which hath sent me.
The occasion which gave rise to the weighty discourse of our Saviour, of which this forms a part, was his having healed an impotent man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath-day ; on which the rulers of the Jews accused him of breaking the Sab- bath. Christ's reply to this accusation, according to the view suggested by the parallelistic arrangement which follows, is most conclusive and unanswerable. " My Father [it is that] worketh hitherto [in all that I do], and I work." The work of healing which you censure is not mine only, but my Father's. If there- fore you find fault with me, you find fault with my Father.
The interpretation usually put upon these words by all com- mentators, so far as we are aware, is, that " as the Father had not ceased to work in carrying on the great operations of nature and providence even on the Sabbath-day, so the Son was authorized to
70 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
perform works of mercy and goodness on the same day, without being justly chargeable with any breach of the Sabbath." The other interpretation, however, needs, we think, but to be men- tioned to commend itself at once as the true one ; and, did any doubt remain, it would be dispelled by observing its exact coinci- dence with the idea to which such prominence is given in the subsequent Introverted Parallelism, or Epanodos (v. 19-30), by placing it first and last. The leading proposition, with which the Epanodos opens, is (v. 19), " The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do ;" which is equivalent to " My Father worketh hitherto [in all my works], and [in concert with him] I work :" and the conclusion from the whole reasoning in the close of the Epanodos (v. 30) runs in the same terms : " I can of mine own self do nothing," that is, inconsistent with my Father's will. My work of healing therefore on the Sabbath-day, so far from being a violation of God's holy Sabbath, is, on the contrary, a work of my Father's, and an attestation to my divine mission.
Let us now trace the course of thought as pointed out to us by the parallelistic arrangement.
Our Lord, instead of softening the enmity of the Jews by his first reply, had given them still deeper offence by the terms which he employed. By calling God " my Father," instead of " our Father," he had evidently implied that God was, in a peculiar sense* his Father, thus, as they accused him, " making himself equal with God." So far from denying the justice of this infer- ence, he re-asserts it in the most emphatic manner, affirming, with the strongest asseverations,9 that there was the most entire union, both of purpose and of agency, between the Father and himself. This he does, first negatively (v. 19, " The Son can do nothing of himself, but," &c.) by denying the possibility of his performing any self-willed act, which was not at the same time the Father's act ; and secondly, positively (" For what things soever he doeth, these," &c.) by asserting that every power which the Father possessed the Son possessed. The negative assertion is intended to remove the objections of the Jews, as if any act of
1 Uartoa 75 /Of t^-fyt rov Situ. John V. 18.
2 '• Verily, verily, I say unto you."
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 71
Christ's, such as healing the lame man on the Sabbath, could be inconsistent with the mind of the Father, and a breach of his commandment: while the positive view is intended to elevate their minds, if possible, to an apprehension of the majesty of his person and office, and the honour and obedience due to him as the alone Mediator and Saviour.
These two topics accordingly are taken up, but in inverse order, and enlarged upon in the two central members of the Intro- verted Parallellism, B and B ; the first of which, B, directs the attention chiefly to the person of Christ ; the second, B, more to the Jews themselves,1 to warn them of the awful responsibility under which they were now laid by his appearance in the midst of them, and the momentous consequences which would result to themselves from their acceptance or rejection of him.
B. As regards me.
I have said (A, 2d distich), " What things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." Now (v. 20) this arises from the perfect unity between me and my Father, and his love to me, which leads him to communicate to me, even in my mediatorial capacity, every power. Not only, therefore, has he imparted to me the power of performing such miracles as those you have heretofore witnessed, but he will manifest to me still greater ; even his own two highest and distinguishing preroga- tives : the power, 1st, (v. 21,) of imparting life (spiritual as well as bodily) ; and 2dly, (v. 22,) of judging, or deciding the destinies of all mankind (both here and hereafter, according as they believe or
1 Compare a similar division in John vL 39, 40 :
Ver. 39. " And this is the Father's will which hath sent me,
[viz. with regard to my conduct,] " That of all which he hath given me, " I' should lose nothing, " But should raise it up again at the last day."
Ver. 40. " And this is the will of him that sent me,
[viz., with regard to your conduct towards me,] " That every one which seeth the Son, and bellevelh on him [and none
else]
" May have everlasting life ; " And I will raise him up at the last day."
72 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
not on me). And the object, he concludes (v. 23), for which the Father had communicated to him all this dignity and authority was, that the same honour might be paid to him through whom the Father revealed himself, as to the Father himself. Whoso- ever, therefore, did not pay him this honour, resisted the will of the Father, and did not honour Him, however much he pretended it. This was in answer to the Jews, who pretended to be so jealous of the honour due to God, as to be indignant at our Sa- viour in any way trenching upon it, or pretending to claim an equality of honour and power with God.
This leads him naturally to the second part of his subject, viz. the duty of the Jews to believe on him, and the momentous con- sequences which were dependent upon their acceptance or rejec- tion of his claims.
B. As regards you.
I have ended by saying negatively, " He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him." I now say affirmatively, " He that heareth my word/' and so evidences his belief in him that sent me, can alone be saved.1 On this is suspended your doom as to the two all-important points which I have mentioned, life and judgment.
V. 25. Now, I conjure you3 to reflect; is the accepted time. Hear me, and your souls shall live, though dead in trespasses and sins : for the time is at hand, on the completion of my work, nay is already begun, when the spiritually dead (and as a pledge and emblem thereof, some of the naturally dead) shall hear my voice and live.
V. 26 and 27. For again I would repeat (see v. 21 and 22) as
1 Compare John iii. 18, " He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
It will be observed that verses 23 and 24 are so connected as to form a transition between the two stanzas B and U. In verse 23 Jesus had said, " He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him." This proposition is again taken up in the beginning of verse 24, with the difference only that it is now- expressed affirmatively instead of negatively, " He that heareth my word, and (so) believeth on him that sent me," &c., which is equivalent to, " He that honoureth the Son, and (thereby) honoureth the Father," &c.
3 " Verily, verify, I say unto you."
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 73
the main point on which I would have all your thoughts to centre i1 — To the Son the Father directs you as the one to whom are committed by him the sovereign powers of creation and of judgment — life now, and deliverance from all fear of judgment already : (see v. 24).
V. 28, 29. Which need excite no astonishment in you, when I farther assure you that the final resurrection to life and judgment of all are entrusted to me.
V. 30. I sum up, therefore, this part of my subject as I began :
1st. (negatively). " I can of mine own self do nothing," that is, without the co-operation of my Father. Therefore the miracle which I have performed, so far from being, as you unjustly allege, a breach of God's holy Sabbath, is on the contrary a work of the Father's as well as of mine, and thus a proof of the truth of my pretensions.
2dly, (positively.) If you reject it and me, then when I claim the high prerogative of the Father to judge you for your unbelief, I do but what the Father has already done. As I before said (v. 19, 2d distich), " For what tilings soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise ;" so now I say with peculiar application to you, " As I hear [from the Father], I judge" — and as my work of healing on the Sabbath-day was just, unless you will impugn the works of the Father himself, so " my judgment" of you " is just" also : because I pursue no private ends of my own, but act in entire accordance with the commission intrusted to me by my Father.
Having thus seen the structure and connexion of the whole Introverted Parallelism, let us next advert to the arrangement of its parts, which will be found to be constructed with equal nicety and care.
B and B are themselves each Introverted Parallelisms.
First let us examine B.
The two distichs of v. 20 correspond to the two distichs of v. 23 respectively, a to a, and b to 6, while the two central verses, 21 and 22, mutually correspond.2
1 Marked out by these verses being the central lines in each stanza.
2 Observe the two co-ordinate reasons introduced by For in each verse. See pp. 56-58. So also in verses 26 and 27 ; only that here the second For is exchanged for And.
74 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
In verses 20 and 23 (especially in a and a), we find one of those profound harmonies, which exist not so much in any paral- lelism of words as of thoughts. In both distichs a and a, the subordination of the Son to the Father in one respect, as media- tor and man, is prominently brought forward. It is the Father that sheweih him all things (a), that has sent him as his ambas- sador to men (a). Still in both cases, in what the Father sheivs to the Son, and in the treatment wherewith men receive him whom he has sent, our Saviour impresses earnestly upon his hearers that the Father identifies himself so completely with him that the Son could truly say, " All thine are mine, ( = a), and mine are thine," (= a). Not only in good but in evil, the love and sympathy of the Father towards the Son are entire. Every good that he him- self possesses, he imparts to the Son (a) : every dishonour that is offered to the Son, he counts as done to himself (a).
The other two distichs, b and b, correspond, in both expressing the end which the Father has in view in the gifts which he im- parts to the Son ; in order, if possible, to overpower their minds with believing admiration, and honour of the Son — " that ye may marvel"1 — " that all men should honour the Son."
In B the correspondences are so obvious as to require little remark. Verses 24 and 25 are parallel to verses 28 and 29. On the all-powerful voice of the Son of God depend everlasting life and judgment: verses 24 and 25, in this world ; verses 28 and 29, in the world to come.
c and c are connected thus. Everlasting life and escape from judgment depend upon the conduct of individuals :
c) — on their believing, or not believing on the Son of God.
c) — on their consequent works.
In d and d, the last three lines of each quatrain answer almost verbally to each other :
Line 2. " The hour is coming."
,, 3. " The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God." ,, 4. " And shall be quickened thereby."
1 The words in the original are "vet vpCts 3-auftti%rl<n. This is one of the few out- standing instances still quoted as a proof of the supposed ecbatic use of "v«, " so that ye shall marvel.'' That it here retains, however, its usual telic sense, " in order that " is proved not only by the far nobler signification thus given to our Saviour's words, but by the parallelism, which requires that the same meaning should be attached to the word in verse 20 as in the corresponding distich of verse 23, "vet -reivris -rip.uai TOV vlei.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 75
We are thus led to observe that in the first lines of each, the reiterated earnestness of Jesus' exhortations (" Verily, verily, I say unto you") corresponds with the " marvelling" unbelief which he discerned growing in their hearts, on their hearing such lofty claims preferred by so lowly an individual.1
The two central quatrains of stanzas B and B are extremely similar, verses 26 and 27 being almost a repetition of verses 21 and 22. Both stanzas, it will be observed, are divided into three parts ; and here it may be as well to remark, for the benefit of the student of parallelism, one of the principal relations of the num- ber Three, or the Ternary division, by far the most common in Scripture. It forms a perfect whole, consisting of a Beginning, Middle, and End, or, as the parts are usually denominated in compositions of any length, the Introduction, the Main Subject, or Body of the Discourse, and the Conclusion.
The first division will be found to have always something of an initiatory, introductory, preparatory character ; the middle term
1 In accordance with the principles of the Gradational Parallelism, we may observe a regular gradation or advance in the meaning in the last stanzas, above the first to which they correspond, both in B and in B.
In B, the two parts of verse 23 rise above the two corresponding parts of verse 20.
a) Not only does the Father shew the Son all things, and impart to him every power that he himself possesses — but
a) Even that which is the highest aim that he proposes to himself in all that he does — his own glory and honour — he desires to communicate in full measure to the Son.
In b) " That ye may marvel " is heightened in b) into " that all men should honour the Son," &c., and " marvel" in b) into divine " honour " in 6.)
In the two parts of the central quatrain, a similar advance is perceptible in verse 22 above verse 21. " Raising up the dead and quickening them " is the initiatory act in the great work of man's redemption ; "judgment" is the final act, which shall fix his everlasting fate.
In _B, the advance is equally evident from the present partial resurrection and judg- ment in verses 24 and 25, to the final and universal in verses 28 and 29. In order, if possible, to awaken the minds of his hearers to belief in him as the Saviour from spiritual death and judgment in this world, Jesus assures them that he was invested with what they regarded as the greatest work of divine omnipotence and glory, the power of raising all men to life at the last day, and judging an assembled world. It is what logicians term an argument a majori ad minus.
The advance too from faith to works is observable in verse 29 as compared with verse 24, and the appropriate place and character of each are briefly but distinctly in- dicated. Faith must begin the believer's life and introduce the great change (c) : but it will avail nothing unless followed and proved to be genuine by works, since by these the eternal state of each will be decided at the last day (c}.
76 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
or division marks the medium or means through which the final issue or conclusion is reached — the connecting link which stands midway between the beginning and the end, uniting the first steps with the last, the premises with the conclusion, &c. ; while the third division marks the end to which the initiatory steps tend, and in which they terminate. Thus, in the ternary division of B, the first quatrain, v. 20, indicates the great Source from whose love all things are communicated to the Son, while the third, v. 23, as evidently marks the end for which these are com- municated, viz. that equal honour should be paid to the Son as to the Father. But verses 21, 22, contain what forms the grand central point of the whole, the means through which the end designed is to be attained, viz. that the Son of God is in actual possession and in sovereign exercise,1 even as mediator, of the powers of Creator and Judge of all.
His possession of these exclusively divine prerogatives is, in short, the main point on which our Saviour desires the thoughts of his hearers to be centred in both departments of his argument ; in B as the convincing proof of the justice of his claims to equal powers and honour with the Father himself ; in B as the argu- ment of all others best calculated to arouse his unbelieving coun- trymen to the danger of longer resisting him, in whose hands were the issues of life and of death. In the threefold division of the latter stanza B, the introductory character of the resurrection and judgment of the first division, verses 24, 25, as compared with theymaZ resurrection and judgment in verses 28, 29, has already been noticed.
Still, closely resembling each other as are the central quatrains of both B and .5, the variations in each are most significant, and admirably adapted to the peculiar object of each stanza. In verses 21 and 22, which are intended to draw the attention more directly to Christ himself, the points more prominently insisted upon are such as are calculated to elevate our ideas of the dignity of his person, and the sovereignty of his attributes. Even as the Father docth so doeth the Son, " quickening whom he will" Not the Father, but he, shall be the immediate judge of all.
1 " The Son quickeneth whom he will."
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 77
But in verses 26 and 27, where it is his more immediate de- sign to direct the attention of his hearers to their duty towards him, and to lead them from acknowledged premises to the intended conclusion, he dwells more upon the derivation of his prerogatives from his Father, that they might be alarmed by the .thought that if they " heard not his word" they were shewing a disregard of " him that sent" him. (Compare v. 24). " As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself: and hath given him authority to execute judg- ment," &c. And though in human form, which had been the reason of their opposing him on this occasion, and accusing him of blasphemy, " because that he, being man, made himself equal with God," he on the contrary assures them that the very reason why the Father had committed those powers to liim as mediator was, that he had humbled himself to become " the Son of man," and to be made in all things like his brethren, since thus alone could he redeem man's fallen nature, become a merciful and sym- pathising High Priest, and a confessedly impartial Judge.
Lastly, we remark that there is a deviation from the regular form of the Epanodos in v. 30. Taken as a whole, indeed, this verse is parallel to v. 19 ; but the separate propositions in each do not follow the usual arrangement, 1, 2 : 2, 1, but are placed 1, 2 : 1, 2, or, in the present case, instead of Negative, Positive : Positive, Negative, the two last are like the first, Negative, Posi- tive. The reason of this is evident. Had the discourse ended at v. 39, and our Lord's reply been only apologetical, intended prin- cipally to repel the objections of the Jews, he would have con- cluded as he began, with the negative proposition, " I can of mine own self do nothing" (unauthorized by my Father). Our Saviour's design, however, was not merely defensive but aggres- sive, directed to convict the Jews of their great guilt in rejecting his claims. As he was, therefore, now about to leave the nega- tive side of the argument (= " I am not guilty"), and in the remainder of his discourse (31-47) to insist rather on the posi- tive (=- " But ye are guilty"), he reverses with propriety the usual order of the propositions, summing up in a single sentence the defence of himself, " I can of mine own self do nothing," and placing last, and in order to draw attention more particularly to them, dwelling, throughout the rest of the verse, on the proofs
78 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
which he is now about to adduce of his right to pass judgment on their unbelief, and of the justice of his sentence.
Though I fear I may have already exhausted the reader's pa- tience by the minuteness of my criticisms on this instance of the Introverted Parallelism, or Epanodos, I cannot refrain from tres- passing a little longer upon it, and availing myself of the oppor-. tunity which this passage offers of rebutting the charge against Parallelism of its inutility in eliciting the true meaning of Scrip- ture, and of exemplifying the great importance, for the correct interpretation of the sacred volume, of the Epanodos in concen- trating the attention upon the leading point of the argument, by placing it first and last.
We have already seen that the true meaning of our Saviour's first brief reply to the objection of his adversaries, which had escaped all the commentators (v. 17, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work") is immediately elicited by attention to the equivalent words with which the Epanodos, in his more ex- panded answer, begins and ends, verses 19 and 30. In like manner, the true meaning of the words, with which the second part of the discourse, in which he goes on to adduce in judg- ment the testimony for himself and against his opposers, begins, " If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true," (v. 31,) will, we think, be found to have been equally misapprehended. Comparing these words with the preceding, / can of mine own self* do nothing " i. e. apart from the Father, a new light is im- mediately thrown upon the succeeding proposition, " If P bear witness of myself" that is apart from my Father, " my witness is not true." Neither in my works, nor in my words, Christ evi- dently means to say, do I stand alone.3 " I can of mine own self do nothing," without the Father's doing it at the same time. So " if T bear witness of myself" without the Father's bearing witness of me at the same time, believe me not : * " my witness is not true." But I am not alone : 5 " there is another that beareth wit- ness of me," even my Father.
1 tya . . . O.T' IfiKurfv. " iyu, emphatically.
3 Compare John xiv. 10, " Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself ; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."
4 Compare John x. 37, " If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not."
5 See John viii. 16.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 79
In this verse, as usually interpreted, our Lord is represented as condescending to reason with the Jews on their own principles, and for argument's sake to admit that his testimony in his own behalf was not to be accepted, on the ground that no man is a sufficient witness in his own case; from the inherent untruthful- ness of human nature. Nothing, we conceive, could be more en- tirely at variance with the whole scope of our Saviour's reasoning in what follows, the great object of which is to enforce upon the Jews the truth, indispensable for their acceptance of hint as the Son of God, that the Divine alone can testify of the Divine. " I receive not testimony from man" (v. 34.). To facilitate your faith in me I indeed refer you to John (verses 33 — 35), whom, for a time at least, you regarded as a messenger from God, and who bare witness to me. Nevertheless John, as John — as a mere man — can never convince you of my divine nature and office. " Flesh and blood cannot reveal my true glory unto you, but my Father which is in heaven," (Mat. xvi. 17. Unless you recog- nize the voice of God as speaking through John, you can never overcome your carnal prejudices against me, so as truly to believe that in my human form " dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily." No — God alone can testify of God. Ye must " all be taught of God" John vi. 45. " No man can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him," John vi. 44. " I have greater witness than that^of John," John v. 36) ; more direct and immediate evidence of God's having spoken. The divine works which you behold, are my testimony. They are my Father's witness to me ; they are my witness to myself,1 as being performed by the conjoint power of the Father and of the Son.
" I have greater witness than that of John :
For the works which the Father hath given me to finish, The same works that / 2 do, Bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me."
JOHN v. 36. Compare with this —
" My Father worketh hitherto, [in these works,] And / work."
1 Compare John viii. 18, " I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me."
2 7 is emphatical in the original, a. \yu irotu.
80 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
I bear witness in them to myself, by the almighty power and sovereign authority with which, as the Son of God, you have heard me, in my own name, command the evil spirits to go forth, and they obeyed ; and say unto the leper, " 1 will:1 be thou cleansed." " If I bear witness of myself," apart from God, and as a mere man ; if my work of healing the impotent man were a human work, as your position of holding it a breach of God's law would require you in consistency to maintain, then, indeed, my witness that 1 am equal to God were not true. But if on the contrary this work, like all that I have hitherto2 performed, is beyond ques- tion a work of divine power, then, as unquestionably, my witness is true. It is coincident with the Father's : it is no human testi- mony, " for I receive not testimony from man : " "I am not alone" John viii. 16. "There is another that beareth witness of me," even my Father.
Regarded as a concession on the part of Jesus, this verse would be equivalent to a virtual surrender of the very point to be proved, which was that he was equal with God. It would have been de- scending from the lofty position which he had taken up, and to which he wished to raise the minds of his hearers, that they must listen to him with the same reverence, and pay to him the same honour as to the Father himself. It represents our Saviour as reasoning inconclusively. " Let it be granted that lam but a man, as you suppose, and that therefore my witness with regard to my- self is not to be accepted : still I will prove to you, even on this supposition, that I am God, possessed of his very highest attri- butes." Our Lord's argument, there seems to be no question, must have been the very reverse. " I must bear witness to myself, if I am ever to convince you that I am the Son of God. Unless I bear witness to myself by works displaying a power, a wisdom, and a goodness, equal to those of the Father, you cannot and ought not to believe me." " If, indeed, I bear witness to myself" as a mere man, without performing works equal to those of the Father, such as alone could prove that he was at the same time bearing witness to me, " my witness would not be true : " but as,
1 Whereas Moses' miracles were always prefaced, " And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod," &c., Exod. vii. 19.
2 tut fligT/, John V. 17.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 81
without doubt, my works can proceed from God alone, my witness is true.
This verse is thus brought into perfect accordance with ch. viii. 14, "Though I bear witness of myself, my witness is true,"1 and there will be not even the semblance of contradiction between them. In ch. v. 31, the proposition is stated hypothetically, " If I bear witness of myself" apart from the Father, then indeed " my witness is not true." But the Father does bear evidence along with me, my works being indubitably works of divine power, and therefore my witness is true.
In ch. viii. 14, the proposition is stated directly, " Though I bear witness of myself, yet my witness is true : " for (however little you recognize my divine origin, as proceeding from, and again about to return to, the Father) " I know whence I come and whither I go." You regard me as a man, and you object that no man's testimony is to be accepted in his own favour. Should this be granted in the case of man, still the very opposite, as I before argued with you, is the truth with regard to God. God alone can testify'of God. My witness of myself is true, because I am God's Son who came forth from the bosom of the Father, and return to his bosom. " If I bear witness of myself" alone without the Father, then indeed my witness is not true : but " I am not alone, but I, and the Father that sent me." Now, in your law it is written that the testimony of even two men (a.vd^--u\>) is true and valid, and though divine testimony is not to be restricted to the same rules, even this double testimony I can adduce to my divi- nity. " I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me."
In ch. viii. there is no recall, on the part of our Lord, as gene- rally supposed, of any concession that he had made to the Jews for the sake of argument. Both parties maintain their original position. The Jews still obstinately persist in looking on Jesus as a mere man, and in closing their eyes wilfully on the mani- festation of divine perfections which he was continually exhibit- ing ; while our Lord is still anxiously endeavouring, as frequently throughout the intermediate chapters, to impress on their minds,
1 The words in the Greek are exactly the same as in chap. v. 31, though our trans- lators have here used " record" instead of " witness."
82 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
that " spiritual things are only spiritually to be discerned," and that instead of listening to their own carnal reasonings, they should humbly ask of God himself to teach them (John vi. 45), and to give them willing minds to " do his will, that they might know of Jesus' doctrine whether it were of God, or whether he spake of himself." John vii. 17.
SECTION X.
In the examples which follow, a new element will be observed to be introduced, a parallelism of numbers, which enters much more largely into the arrangements of Scripture than has been generally suspected, and attention to which will often enable us to detect the divisions of a subject, or, when these are discovered by other means, will give assurance, by the symmetry of parts which it introduces, of our having , discovered the true order and connexion.
The xxviii. and xxix. Psalms, which form one connected com- position, the subject of which is THE LORD is THE STRENGTH OF HIS PEOPLE/ are each divisible into three parts or strophes, ar- ranged in the most systematic form according to the numbers of the verses.
PSALM xxvin. [A Psalm] of David.
1. Unto thee will I cry, O LORD ; My Rock, be not silent to me : Lest, if thou be silent to me,
I become like them that go down into the pit.
2. Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, "When I lift up my hands towards thy HOLY ORACLE.
1 Compare Psalm xxviii. 7, 8, " The LOUD is my strength," " The LORD is their strength," and Psalm xxix. 11," The LORD will give strength unto his people ;" and Ps. xxix. 1, " Give unto the LOUD glory and strength."
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 83
3. Draw me not away with the wicked, And with the workers of iniquity, Which speak peace to their neighbours, But mischief is in their hearts.
4. Give them according to their work, and the wickedness of their
endeavours :
Give them after the deed of their hands : Render to them their desert.
VOICE from the HOLY ORACLE.
5. Because they regard not the works of the LORD, Nor the deed of his hands, He shall pull them down, and not build them up.
6. Blessed be the LORD,
Because he hath heard the voice of my supplications.
7. The LORD is my strength and my shield ; My heart trusted in him, and I am helped :
Therefore my heart exulteth, and with my song will I praise him.
8. The LORD is their strength,
And he is the saving strength of his anointed.
9. Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance : Feed them also, and lift them up for ever.
The plan of this Psalm may be thus represented.
Verses Verses
2 Personal-
The words of David.
2.'}
3. ) 3 1
>" f I A f Relating to others.
5. The VOICE in reply from Jehovah.
6- .
7 "ersona'-
-l 1 6.")
f 71
The words of David.
H
J 9.}
The words of David.
e ~»
Relating to others.
The great object of David in this Psalm seems to have been to comfort the heart of God's people in trouble with that same " comfort wherewith he had himself been comforted of God." The answer of Jehovah to his supplication, which forms the cen-
84 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
tral subject of the Psaltn, was originally, in all probability, the answer of faith given by God to David in secret prayer. But his own experiences and private coinmunings with God, are here as usual prepared by " the sweet Psalmist of Israel" as a hymn for the use and edification of the Church. In order to enter into the full significance and beauty of many of these compositions, we must keep in mind that to adapt them for the Temple service they were frequently thrown into a dramatic form, where, as in the ii. and xxiv. Psalms for instance, different persons are intro- duced as speaking. These distinctions would be marked in the public worship by assigning the various parts to the different choirs into which the singers appointed for the service of the Temple were divided.
In following the train of thought suggested by the divisions of this Psalm, let us endeavour to call up to ourselves the whole accompaniments and associations of the scene as they would pre- sent themselves to an Israelite.
In a season of great distress, when iniquity seemed triumphant, David alarmed lest he and his people should be involved in one common ruin with the wicked, whose acts were marked by treach- ery towards their fellow-men (ver. 3), and with utter disregard of the purposes of God (ver. 5), enters the court of the Tabernacle, accompanied by a crowd of worshippers, and turning his face towards the Holy Oracle, which was in the inner sanctuary (ver. 2) prefers to God his petition.
After an introductory supplication contained in verses 1 and 2, that God would not be silent to him, but would hear and answer the voice of his prayer, while he lifted up his hands towards His Holy Oracle, in verses 3 and 4 he brings the great subject of his prayer before God that He would not confound the righteous with the wicked,1 but would speedily execute judgment on the ungodly despisers of his appointments.
A solemn pause ensues. At length, amidst the profound
1 Such is the interpretation usually given, by most at least of the more recent com- mentators, of ver. 3, " Draw me not away with the wicked," which they compare with Psalm xxvi. 8 "Gather not my soul with sinners." But we cannot help thinking that a farther and still more important meaning is involved, and that this prayer is dictated not so much by the Psalmist's distrust, of a righteous discrimination being made by God between the pious and the ungodly in the hour of judgment, as of his own weak heart, lest if God should longer delay to punish the wicked, he might be tempted
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 85
silence, a voice is heard issuing as from the Holy Oracle, assuring him of God's interposition in his behalf, aud vindication of His own honour against the godless workers of iniquity (ver. 5.)1
Ver. 6. David now resumes. In verses 6 and 7 we have his thanksgiving for his prayer having been heard, and his resolution to make known to others God's mercy towards him by his offer- ing " a song" of praise before the congregation of God's people. These indeed are ever present to David's mind, as being the flock over which God had made him overseer, and the chief object of his care on earth. He therefore speaks of them at first without naming them— when the Psalm was publicly sung in the Taber- nacle, perhaps pointing them out more definitely by turning round towards them — and declares that the Lord as He is his strength ver. 7, so is He theirs ver. 8 ; he is God's " anointed" pastor over the people ; and in the Lord's hearing and saving him, He has heard and saved them : he therefore concludes with a prayer in their behalf, that as the Lord had now done, so He would continue for ever to " save His people and bless His inhe- ritance," Himself to feed them as their true Shepherd, and while He pulls down the wicked ver. 5, to " lift them up for ever."
Observe how beautifully God is represented as hearing and answering with the minutest attention the prayers of His ser- vants, by the exact correspondence of the reply in ver. 5 to the petition in ver. 4, not in substance merely, but of line to line, and almost word to word.
PRAYER OF DAVID.
4. a Give them according to their work, and the wickedness of their
endeavours :
b Give them according to the deed of their hands : c Render to them their desert.
in despair to give over the struggle against the example of " the ungodly who prosper in the world," and yield to the current and say, " Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency," (Ps. Lxxiii. 13).
The prayer, " Draw me not away with the wicked," would thus be equivalent to, Suffer me not to be drawn away and enticed to ray ruin ; like the similar petition in the Lord's prayer, " Lead us not into temptation," that is, Let us not, by our being placed in circumstances too trying for our faith| be led away into sin.
1 In the Temple service, this answer was probably pronounced by the High Priest, or chaunted by a chorus of priests within the Holy Place, as being the mediators be- tween God and his people.
86 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
ANSWER FROM THE HOLY ORACLE.
5. a Because they regard not the works of the LORD, b Nor the deed of his hands : c He shall pull them down, and not build them up.
In his supplication against the wicked ver. 4, David urges as pleas for God's interposition,
1. The mischievous working and wicked endeavours of the ungodly against the righteous (a).
2. The deed of their own hands (b).
3. The necessity of God's retributive justice interfering and causing their evil to return on their heads (c).
In the answer of the Lord, each of these points is taken up in its regular order :
1. God will " give them according to their work," " because they regard not the works of the Lord" (a).
2. God will " give them according to the deed1 of their hands," because they regard not the deed of His hands" (b).
3. The full recompense which David invoked shall be " ren- dered to them according to their desert." God will " pull them down and not build them up" (c).
Most commentators refer the origin of this Psalui to the time of Absalom's rebellion : but in the sudden outbreak of that conspiracy, no time was permitted to David, who was obliged to flee instantly from Jerusalem for his life, to enter into the Taber- nacle, and to present his supplication " towards the Holy Oracle"
1 Our translators, by their want of uniformity in rendering the same words in these two verses, have in a great measure concealed from the English reader the mutual re- lation between David's prayer and the Lord's answer. The Hebrew word ??3 (poal) " work" is rendered by " deeds'* in ver. 4, line 1st, and by " works" in ver. 5, line 1st ; and, as if to render the confusion complete, a different word altogether r'^?.^. (maaseh) " deed" in ver. 4, line 2d, is translated " work," while in ver. 5, line 2d, it is translated " operation" ! Excellent as our version is on the whole, this is but one of many instances in which these delicate allusions, and plays on words (parono- masias), of which the Hebrews were particularly fond, have been obscured by our Translators from their undue fondness for varying the expression.
The verb '?" (raaO " to work," when distinguished as in this instance from i"1*** " to do,'' refers more to the first contriving and setting about any work (moliri, parare, Gesenii Lexic.), while •"':•'? (asah) denotes more the actual execution. This is evi- dent from the order in which the two verbs are placed in Isaiah xli. 4. " Who hath wrougld and done, it ?" £c. Compare Psalm Iviii. 2 (3). " Yea, in heart ye work [contrive] wickedness." See also Micah ii. 1.
SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM. 87
(ver. 2). A more appropriate occasion seems to be that imme- diately succeeding the treacherous murder of Abner by Joab, when David yet felt himself too weak to inflict the merited punisliment on this overbearing " son of Zeruiah," while the ten tribes still rejected him as their sovereign, and might be expected to rise and overwhelm him in righteous indignation and vengeance for his supposed participation in the assassination of their favour- ite captain. Viewed in this light, several passages of the Psalm will be found to gain in significance. Verse 3 would strikingly depict the character of Joab and his perfidious conduct towards Abner. " Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the ivorkers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbours, but evil is in their hearts." Compare 2 Sam. iii. 26, 27. Verse 4 coin- cides remarkably with the words of David in 2 Sam. iii. 39, " And I am this day weak, though anointed king ; and these men, the sons of Zeruiah, be too hard for me : the Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness." The very sin of Joab in respect to God is exactly described in v. 5, his disregard of the working of God's providence in seeking, by criminal means, pre- maturely to secure for David the sovereignty, which the Lord had promised, without waiting for God's time. The designation of David in v. 8, as being " the Anointed' of Jehovah, though not yet installed fully into the kingly office, would be especially in point (compare the passage just quoted from 2 Sam. iii. 39) ; — and in like manner in Psalm xxix. the allusion to the kingdom being the Lord's, v. 10, and the prayer in v. 11 for the restoration and full establishment of the blessing of peace unto God's people would be most appropriate.
PSALM xxix. A Psalin of David.
1. Give unto tbe LORD, O ye Mighty, Give unto the LORD glory and strength.
2. Give unto the LOKD the glory due unto his name : Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.
3. The VOICE of the LORD is upon the waters : The God of glory thundereth :
The LOUD is upon many waters.
88 SCRIPTURE PARALLELISM.
4. The VOICE of the LORD is powerful :
The VOICE of the LORD is full of majesty :
5. The VOICE of the LORD breaketh the cedars ; Yea, the LORD breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
6. He inaketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.
7. The VOICE of the LORD divideth the flames of fire.
8. The VOICE of the LORD shaketh the wilderness ; The LOUD shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.
9. The VOICE of the LORD maketh the hinds to calve, And strippeth bare the forests :
And in his temple doth every one speak of his glory.
10. The LORD sat upon the Flood : Yea the LORD sitteth King for ever.
1 1 . The LORD will give strength unto his people ; The LORD will bless his people with peace.
Psalm xxix. forms the sequel or complement to Psalm xxviii. David Lad lifted up the voice of his supplication to the Lord Ps. xxviii. 2, and was answered by the voice of Jehovah from the Holy Oracle Ps. xxviii. 5. In the fulness of his gratitude for the consolation thus imparted, David had promised " a song" of praise (Ps. xxviii. 7). But he feels how incompetent is the feeble voice of man adequately to celebrate the praises of that mighty voice which He has but to " utter and the earth melts and the pillars of heaven tremble."
In the exordium, therefore, which consists of two verses (v. 1 and 2), David calls upon the mighty angels to ascribe the glory due unto God's name. Then follows, in a grand chorus of seven verses, a description of the various powerful effects produced by the voice of God, in that most magnificent and awful form in which it reveals itself to mortals, in the thunder of heaven. To appreciate aright the sublimity of this chorus, we must conceive