Morphological and Syntactic Parallelism - Ps 2:1

לָמָּה רָגְשׁוּ גוֹיִם
וּלְאֻמִּים יֶהְגּוּ־רִיק ׃

  Why do the nations conspire,
and the peoples mutter emptiness?

Note that "the nations" and "the peoples" are words of the same form (masculine plural nouns); the verbs, "conspire" and "mutter", are both similar and different, רָגְשׁו is a 3rd common plural qal completed form while יֶהְגּוּ is 3rd masculine plural qal incompleted form. So, while there is a measure of morphological parallelism there is also variety creating interest.

In terms of syntax, allowing for the ellipsis of the question word in the second line the two are again similar but different:

  question  noun-subject  verb
                noun-subject  verb  object

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© Tim Bulkeley, 1996-2005, Tim Bulkeley. All rights reserved.