as the evening sacrifice (Psa. 141:2); he will be purged with hyssop that he may be clean, and washed that he may be whiter than snow (Psa. 51:  7); he will offer to God the sacrifice of a broken spirit (Psa. 51:17); the people promise to render to God the calves of their lips (Hosea 14:2); the vengeance of God upon Edom is described as “a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea,” in which the Lord’s sword shall be filled with the blood of lambs and goats and the fat of the kidneys of rams (Isa. 34:  6); with allusions to the Levitical sprinklings God promises that he will sprinkle upon his penitent and restored people clean water that they may be clean (Ezek. 36:  25); and with allusion to the sacrificial flocks assembled at Jerusalem on the occasion of her great festivals, that he will increase them with men like a flock—­“as the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men” (Ezek. 36:37, 38).  How full the book of Psalms is of allusions to the solemn songs of the sanctuary with their accompaniment of psaltery and harp, trumpet and cornet, every reader understands.  This subject might be expanded indefinitely, but the above hints must suffice.

3.  We come now to the form of Hebrew poetry.  This is distinguished from the classic poetry of Greece and Rome, as well as from all modern poetry by the absence of metrical feet.  Its rhythm is that of clauses which correspond to each other in a sort of free parallelism, as was long ago shown by Bishop Lowth in his Prelections on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, the matter of which has been revised and expanded in later treatises.  Herein, as elsewhere, Hebrew poetry asserts its originality and independence.  Biblical scholars recognize three fundamental forms of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, which will be briefly considered, first separately, and then in their combinations.

The first is the antithetic form, where two parallel members are contrasted in meaning, a form peculiarly adapted to didactic poetry, and therefore occurring most abundantly in the book of Proverbs.  The following are examples of it: 

  The memory of the just is blessed: 
  But the name of the wicked shall rot (Prov. 10:7);

where, in the original Hebrew, each clause consists of three words.  In such an antithetic parallelism the words of one couplet, at least, must correspond in meaning, as here memory and name; while the others are in contrast—­just and wicked, is blessed and shall rot.  Sometimes the two clauses are to be mutually supplied from each other, thus: 

  A wise son maketh a glad father: 
  But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother (Prov. 10:1);

where the reader understands that a wise son is the joy, and a foolish son the grief of both father and mother.

The second form is the synonymous, where the same general thought is repeated in two or more clauses.  It is found abundantly in the whole range of Hebrew poetry, but is peculiarly adapted to that which is of a placid and contemplative character.  Sometimes the parallel clauses simply repeat the same thought in different words; in other cases there is only a general resemblance.  Examples are the following: