450) has objected against this, that “this is diametrically opposed to the nature of rhythm = parallelism, which cannot stand on one leg, but needs two, that the distich is therefore the rhythmical unit.”
But does it therefore follow, that a strophe is to be measured according to the number of distichs? The distich is itself only the smallest strophe, viz. one consisting of two lines. And it is even forbidden to measure a greater strophe by the number of distichs, because the rhythmical unit, of which the distich is the ground-form, can just as well be tristichic, and consequently these so-called rhythmical units form neither according to time nor space parts of equal value. But this applies still less to the Masoretic verses. True, we have shewn in our larger Commentary on the Psalms, ii. 522sq., in agreement with Hupfeld, and in opposition to Ewald, that the accentuation proceeds upon the law of dichotomy. But the Ma- soretic division of the verses is not only obliged sometimes to give up the law of dichotomy, because the verse (as e. g. xviil. 2, xxv. 1, xcii. 9,) does not admit of being properly divided into two parts ; and it subjects not only verses of three members (as e. g.i. 1, ii. 2) in which the third member is embellishingly or synthetically related to the other two — both are phenomena which in themselves furnish proof in favour of the relative in- dependence of the lines of the verse — but also verses of four members where the sense requires it (as i. 3, xviii. 16) and where it does not require it (as xxii. 15, xl. 6), to the law of dicho- tomy. And these Masoretic verses of such various compass
the arrangement of the Psalms in stichs; those which we possess only break the Masoretic verse, (if the space of the line admits of it) for ease of writing into the two halves, without even regarding the general injunction in c. xiv of the tractate Sofrim and that of Ben-Bileam in his Horajoth ha-Kore, that the breaks are to be regulated by the beginnings of the verses and the two great pausal accents. Nowhere in the MSS., which divide and break up the words most capriciously, is there to be seen any trace of the recognition of those old פסוקים being preserved. These were not merely lines determined by the space, as were chiefly also the στίχοι or ἔπη according to the number of which, the compass of Greek works was recorded, but lines determined by the sense, κῶλα (Suidas: κῶλον ὁ ἀπηρτισμένην ἔννοιαν ἔχων στίχος), as Jerome wrote his Latin translation of the Old Testament after the model of the Greek and Roman orators (e. g. the MSS. of Demosthenes), per cola et commata i. e. in lines breaking off according to the sense.
