Nevertheless it may be questioned whether a further extension of the strophic formation in Hebrew poetry may be recognized from any other peculiarities. In parts of these poems line may succeed line, just as, for instance, in many poetical works of the Greeks, the hexameters follow each other, in uninterrupted succession.
However, not the whole of the poetical part of the Old Testament is in this sense strophic. Another sign of the strophic arrangement of the poem is the succession of the initial letters in the following alphabetic poems: Psalms 9 and, where each two lines are connected Lamentations 3, where every three lines begin with the same letter and Psalms 119, where the same letter introduces every group of eight lines. But again, in Psalms 136, every second line (stichos) is identical, and the same refrain, "For His mercy endureth for ever," is met with fourteen times in the newly discovered Sira text ("The Wisdom of Ben Sira," ed. 370 et seq., cites other poems in which this special kind of epanalepsis occurs, though only sporadically: 2 Samuel 1:19,25,27 Psalms 56:5,11 et seq. Philippson, in his "Kommentar zu den Psalmen" (1856), pp.
Such identical, or similar, phrases, marking the end of the symmetrical parts of a poem, may be called refrains similar instances are met with in Psalms 49:13,21 (A.V. Certain evidence points to the occurrence of strophic formations in poems of old Hebrew literature for instance, a number of passages in Psalms contain phrases which are repeated at the end of a regular number of verses: Psalms 39 (end of verses 6 and 12 ): "Every man is but vanity" Psalms 42 (verses 6 and 12) and (5): "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? For I shall continually praise Him who is the health of my countenance, and my God" Psalms 46 (verses 8 and 12): "Yhwh Sebaoth is with us the God of Jacob is our refuge." In the last example cited two sections of four verseseach are terminated by this formula, while the preceding part contains only three verses accordingly it has been suggested with good reason that, originally, the same confession of faith stood after verse 4 also. The strophe may be defined as a union of several lines into one rhythmic whole.
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