Note 144 — Chapter IV

The measure, as said above, is elegiac: alternate lines long with a rising, and short with a falling, cadence. There is a play upon the names, at least on the first and last—“Gazzah” or “‘Azzah ‘Azubah”—which in English we might reproduce by the use of Spenser’s word for “dreary”: For Gaza ghastful shall be. “‘Eḳron te’aḳer.” LXX. Ἀκκαρων ἐκριζωθήσεταὶ (B), ἐκριφήσεται (A). In the second line we have a slighter assonance, ‘Ashkĕlōn lishĕmamah. In the third the verb is יְגָרְשׁוּהָ; Bacher (Z.A.T.W., 1891, 185 ff.) points out that גֵּרַשׁ is not used of cities, but of their populations or of individual men, and suggests (from Abulwalid) יירשוה, shall possess her, as “a plausible emendation.” Schwally (ibid., 260) prefers to alter to יְשָׁרְשׁוּהָ, with the remark that this is not only a good parallel to תעקר, but suits the LXX. ἐκριφήσεται.—On the expression by noon see Davidson, N. H. and Z., Appendix, Note 2, where he quotes a parallel expression, in the Senjerli inscription, of Asarhaddon: that he took Memphis by midday or in half a day (Schrader). This suits the use of the phrase in Jer. xv. 8, where it is parallel to suddenly.