graphs of Sonntag (1687), Celsius (1718), Irhof (1728) take with regard to them, should at length become a subject for criticism; but the custom which has gained ground since the last decade of the past century of rejecting what has been historically handed down, has at present grown into a despi- cable habit of forming a decision too hastily, which in any other department of literature where the judgment is not so prejudiced by the drift of the enquiry, would be regarded as folly. Instances like Hab. iii. 1 and 2 Sam. i. 18, comp. Ps. Ix. 1, shew that David and other psalm-writers might have appen- ded their names to their psalms and the definition of their pur- port. And the great antiquity of these and similar inscriptions also follows from the fact that the LXX found them already in existence and did not understand them; that they also cannot be explained from the Books of the Chronicles (including the Book of Ezra, which belongs to these) in which much is said about music, and appear in these books, like much besides, as an old treasure of the language revived, so that the key to the understanding of them must have been lost very early, as also appears from the fact that in the last two books of the Psalter they are of more rare, and in the first three of more frequent occurrence.
VI. THE STROPHE-SYSTEM OF THE PSALMS.
The early Hebrew poetry has neither rhyme nor metre, both of which (first rhyme and then afterwards metre) were first adopted by Jewish poesy in the seventh century after Christ. True, attempts at rhyme are not wanting in the poe- try and prophecy of the Old Testament, especially in the te- philla style, Ps. cvi. 4—7 cf. Jer. iii. 21-25, where the ear- nestness of the prayer naturally causes the heaping up of similar flexional endings; but this assonance, in the transition state towards rhyme proper, had not yet assumed such an established form as is found in Syriac.[1] It is also just as difficult to point out verses of four lines only, which have a uniform or mixed metre running through them. Notwith- standing, Augustine, Ep. cxiii ad Memorium, 1s p<rfectly war- ranted in saying of the Psalms: certis eos cunstare niumeris
- ↑ Vid. Zingerlo in the Deutsch. Morgenlind. Zeitschrift. K. 110 ff.
