The Poetry of the Hebrew Pentateuch

Page 76

'

ESSAY

6o

divine

was

happy

less

II.

in his translation

and

strictures

of the following verses.

The dying

had well marked,

patriarch

learnt,

and

sum and substance of the Holy Ghost had moved him to

inwardly digested, the blessings which the utter.

His poetic genius arranged them, clothed and

adorned them symbols, as to

in

such beauteous

make

figures,

and charming

those benedictions ever

memor-

He

able to the hearts and ears of the blessed ones.

up the spirit and essence of the simile which he used, at the end of Naphtali's blessing, and therefore follows

begins the benediction of his especial favourite thus: Joseph

A

is

fruitful

a

fruitful

bough,

bough beside a

Whose branches run

adTenturS^' ^^'^'

Joseph.

Thc foud

father

—

well,

over the wall.

proceeds to enumerate the cruel

whom he thought dead, but whom he thought lost, but who

adventures of that son,

who was alive again was found again. One seems ;

to perceive the long

pauses which the speaker makes between the succeeding words,

each

of

which

is

pregnant

of the

with

One seems to hear the throbbings sympathising paternal heart, which the memory

significant meaning.

F]DV \v-'b'S

ms p mo ]i

Gen.

xlix. 22.


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