Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT it.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Ian wrote:-

>Each of the terms has a normal clear simple significance. (And I commend
>Peter Kirk for his attempt to read a parallelism in Is 61:2, though he
>himself points out the flaw in his attempt: 'the parallel between "favour"
>and "vengeance" seems odd.' 

It doesn't seem at all odd to me. Of the textbooks I've read on
Hebrew poetry, they all cover this type of parallelism. A fairly
accessible book is Alter's ``The Art of Biblical Poetry''.

This is sometimes called complementarity. Take an example from
Ps 18 (my translation)

With the loyal, You deal loyally 
With the blameless man, blamelessly 
With the pure, You act purely 
With the perverse, You are perverse 

Whether we consider this as two sets of parallels or one of four, it's
reasonably clear that the pairs complement each other with the second
versette giving additional elements to round out the thought. The first
pair is loyal-blameless, obviously qualities found in good people, one
would expect they would be found together.

The second pair I would also count as complementary, but it goes for a
contrast. Still explaining how God acts, it takes the pure first then
rounds out the picture by adding how he acts with the perverse.  The
picture is almost of God as a mirror, your own behaviour is reflected
back at you.



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