The great find of cuneiform tablets at Ugarit in 1929 gave new impetus to the study of ancient poetry and its craft. Those texts, written before the Bible about 1400 to 1100, use a language close to Hebrew. Unlike other discoveries filled with economic texts, the Ugaritic texts tell stories about the Canaanite deity, Baal, and other heroes. Moreover, they tell these stories in poetry that uses word pairs as the building blocks of its parallelism, and examples of the “. As Adele Berlin states:

there existed a stock of fixed word pairs which belonged to the literary tradition of Israel and Canaan, and that poets, specially trained in their craft, seemingly drew on this tradition to aid in the oral composition of parallel lines” (65-66).

As noted above, oral composition is challenging to explore since we have only written documents. Still, the Canaanite and biblical poetry shows that word pairs were a common feature of that literature.

Psalm 19’s opening verses provide an easy example of word pairs and their variety.

The first example pairs the whole with a part: heaven and firmament. In the Hebrew world, the “firmament” was a dome separating the waters above from the earth and the waters below. (The sky is blue because of the water above the dome or firmament.) So, the firmament becomes a part for the whole heavens.

The second example is a similar pair: “tell and proclaim.” Communication stands at the heart of both words. Still, they are not the same in English. “Proclaim” has a more formal and emphatic sense than “tell.” They are also parallel to the verbs of the next two lines: “pours forth speech” and “declares.” The four verbs make clear the main point of the stanza: Creation speaks.

“Day” and “night” give us half and half. Taken together, they embrace all time, which is the point.

The last two elements of the first couplet equate the glory of God” to “his handiwork.” Though they are somewhat different ideas, the impetus of parallelism to form word pairs invites the reader to look for connections between them. It is not difficult to see that the line suggests that God’s handiwork is also God’s glory. Creation then becomes something like a word that communicates God’s power, and this “speech” conveys real “knowledge.” While word pairs are often synonyms, they can also invite us to find similarities between seemingly different elements.

4.1. Word Pairs: Natural, Cultural, and Personal

We generate word pairs first of all through association. Berlin notes that the time available to generate a pair plays a role. If the time is short, a person reaches for an easy connection. She uses the example of “man,” which generates the connection of “woman.” However, if a person has time to think, they may find a less common association, such as “boy.” If there is even more time, or if the person is particularly imaginative, other possibilities appear depending on the context: groom, farmer, king (68-69). A close study of biblical and Canaanite poetry reveals that some pairs occur frequently while others are rare. Familiarity with the tradition would have given a biblical poet both an understanding of the poetry’s parallelism and a treasure chest of traditional word pairs. Still, poets have an uncanny ability to find connections even where none seem to exist. We should not dismiss unconventional pairs that do not fit our expectations. The yoking of the unexpected may well be the point.

Pairs may be natural, cultural, or personal. Natural pairs reveal themselves to anyone alive in this world. “Night” and “day” would be a natural pair, and they appear together in a number of psalms, including Ps 1:2. Even so, the two come with many connections. The night can be a time of rest, but also of blindness, danger, and mystery. The day is the time of the known, of clarity, scrutiny, reality, and more. In the ancient Near East, both the sun and moon were deities for many. Some of these connections are natural, but some are cultural. There is no sharp line between the two. We encounter them in so many ways, and they offer us many possibilities. By personal, I mean pairs unique to the poet and the poem. If repeated in a poem or a prophet’s book, they gather meaning.

“Heaven” and “firmament,” seemed a natural pair to the psalmist, but they represent that culture’s understanding of the universe. Sometimes their understanding fits easily with ours, but sometimes it does not. The psalmist lived in a three-story universe with heaven up, the underworld down, and earth in the middle. For us, the world is more complicated, with “up” continually changing directions as our world turns.

While much study has gone into identifying and categorizing traditional word pairs in Hebrew and Ugaritic, poets are forever generating new connections in their pursuit of defamiliarization. As a result, a complete list would be impossible and unnecessary. Still, some basic categories are helpful if only to provide us with a reference point.

4.2. Similar Pairs

a. pairs with the same word

In addition to anaphora, discussed above, the word may repeat and link two lines together, as in Ps 27:8, where both “seek” and “face” repeat with new grammar that creates a difference between the two lines.

“Come,” my heart says, “Seek his face!”
Your face, LORD, do I seek.

b. pairs of similar words

Similar pairs join words with much the same meaning, and they can, more or less, substitute for each other, such as “guard” and “protect” in Ps 12:7.

You, O LORD, will protect us;
you will guard us from this generation forever.

These pairs form the basis for Lowth’s understanding of parallelism.

c. pairs of contrasting words

Contrasting pairs depend upon a common foundation but name its positive and negative aspects, its fullness and void (Berlin, 11). Of the many possibilities, here are five contrasting pairs:

• good and evil (Ps 36:4)
• righteous and wicked (Ps 1:6)
• wise and foolish (Prov 10:1)
• peace and war (Ps 120:7)
• light and darkness (Ps 139:11).

d.  a word with an explanatory phrase

A word is sometimes parallel to an explanatory phrase. Isaiah often pairs “the LORD” with “the Holy One of Israel” (Isa 1:4; 5:24; 29:19; 31:1; 41:14, 16, 20; 43:3, 14; 45:11; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5; 60:9, 14).

4.3.   Pairs with Associated Words

If someone says “salt,” people will likely answer “pepper,” but they are not synonyms. You could not replace salt in a recipe with pepper. If someone says “pen,” another might answer “pencil,” or “paper, “or ink.” These pieces belong to what linguists call the same “cognitive domain.” Salt and pepper are both condiments with an association to all other spices. Pen and pencil, paper, and ink all belong to the realm of writing with other pieces.

In Ps 104:14-15, food serves as the overarching category: animals have “grass” while humans have “plants,” “wine,” “oil,” and “bread.” The individual pieces often point not just to themselves but to the whole. Their specificity helps to make the whole more concrete.

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth,
and wine to gladden the human heart,
oil to make the face shine,
and bread to strengthen the human heart.

Here “human heart” and “face” evoke the whole person: “people”. As parts of the body, they belong to the same domain. Likewise, “people” and “cattle” are both animals, unlike plants.

Below are some basic types of associations, a topic we shall consider again as metonymy in Part III.

a. pairs with words from the same cognitive domain

Here in Ps 94:9, parts of the body point to the whole person and to their senses: seeing ad hearing:

He who planted the ear, does he not hear?
He who formed the eye, does he not see?

b. pairs with the general and the specific

Typically, the first line will name the general category, and the second will focus on a specific. The movement from “hand” to the more specific “right hand” appears in Pss 21:8; 26:10; 80:17; 89:13; 138:7; 139:10; 144:11.

c. pairs of the whole and the part

“Jerusalem,” the city, is often paired with “Zion,” the biblical name of the temple mount, which is a part of the city, as in Ps 147:12.

Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!

The two are paired together five times in the Book of Psalm: Ps 51:18; 102:21; 128:5; 135:21; 147:12. See also Isaiah 2:3; 4:3, 4; 10:12, 32; 24:23; 30:19; 31:9; 33:20; 37:22; 40:9; 41:27; 52:1-2; 62:1; 64:10.

d. merismus: half & half and polar pairs

The Greek term “merismus” means “to divide,” and it describes something divided into two (or three) essential parts to convey a sense of the whole. Alonso Schökel stated in class that the gathering of parts to create wholes was a fundamental movement of biblical poetry.

Ps 96:11-12a divides creation into the heavens and the earth and then divides the earth into the sea and field:

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it.
let the field exult, and everything in it.

Two main categories fall under merismus:

1) half and half: The two halves indicate the whole. Examples would be heaven and earth, day and night, male and female, life and death. As Alonso Schökel notes, the parts are not always exactly half and half but nonetheless evoke the whole. Moreover, the pieces chosen may be significant for the context (Manual, 83-84).

2) polar pairs: The extremes indicate the whole, such as “your going out and your coming in” (Ps 121:8). The expression does not refer just to the beginning and end but also to everything in between.

Ps 148:11-12 provides an easy example of both categories.

“Young men and women” represent half and half, while “old and young” are a polar pair naming the endpoints of humanity. Also, notice how the second line expands “kings of the earth.” The third and fourth lines expand “all peoples.”

Sometimes individual pieces represent larger wholes. Ps 148:10 gathers the whole animal kingdom together in two lines:

Wild animals and all cattle,                       wild and tame four-footed animals
creeping things and flying birds!             many legs and two legs with wings

4.4. Sequential Pairs

Sequence lies at the center of Kugel’s insight, and sequential pairs contribute to that movement. They have the logical expectation that one follows the other, as in Ps 86:7 with  “call” and “answer.”

In the day of my trouble I call on you,
for you will answer me.

This English pair appears in many other places: Ps 4:1; 17:6; 20:9; 81:7; 91:15; 99:6; 102:2; 118:5; 138:3.

In Ps 48:12-13, the psalmist invites people to walk throughout the city of Jerusalem while counting its various towers and appreciating its fortification.

a   Walk about Zion
a’  go all around it

b   count its towers,
c   consider well its ramparts

a” go through its citadels

The first pair of verbs are similar. The second pair asks the hearer to “count” and then “consider.” Those actions follow. The last line reiterates the invitation with the result following:

that you may tell the next generation
that this is God,
our God forever and ever.

The psalmist invites the hearer to visit the city and discover “her” as a manifestation of God. The word “city” is feminine in Hebrew.

4.5. Lists of 3 and 3+1, 7 and 7+1

Groups of three and seven are typical in many cultures (Propp 74). The first or the last element is often the most important. In some cases, we find two plus one (2+1), three plus one (3+1), or seven plus one (7+1), with the added element being the most important because it begins a new sequence.

Ps 83:1 gives us three verbs with similar meanings:

Ps 115:5-7 has a group of seven.

Note that the first and last lines say essentially the same thing: mouth and throat cannot speak or make a sound. That repetition shows what the text wants the reader to notice. The couplet that follows says:

Those who make them are like them;
so are all who trust in them (115:8).

The psalm asserts that idol-makers are like the things they make, with an emphasis on being without a voice. This psalm ends by saying:

The dead do not praise the LORD,
nor do any that go down into silence” (115:17).

The psalm argues that those who make and worship idols have gone down into the silence and are dead. On the other hand, those who praise God are alive (115:18).

4.6. Exercises:

Vocabulary

• contrasting pairs: words that are opposite in some respect, such as the wise and the foolish. §4.2c
• half and half: a type of merismus that names the two halves to convey the whole, as in “day and night” for all time. §4.3d
• merismus: something divided into two (or three) essential parts to convey a sense of the whole. §4.3d
• polar pairs: the naming of the beginning and the end to convey the whole, as in “head to toe.” §4.3d
• similar pairs: two words that are similar and could stand for each other. §4.2
• word pairs: words that connect through similarity, contrast, sequence, and metonymy. They form the building blocks of biblical poetry. §4.0

Questions

1. Mark the word pairs in Psalm 91. Draw circles and connecting lines or use colors to indicate your findings. Everything does not make a pair, but the parallelism suggests that we connect things we might not usually connect.
2. Do the same for Psalm 26.