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Hebrew parallelism

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The balancing of phrases or clauses in Hebrew poetry, often synonymous or antithetic.

Detailed Definition
Hebrew parallelism is a structural principle in biblical poetry where successive lines echo, contrast, or expand upon each other semantically rather than rhyming—such as synonymous parallelism (“The heavens declare the glory of God; / the skies proclaim the work of his hands”) or antithetic parallelism; this technique emphasizes meaning through repetition and variation, forming the backbone of much ancient Near Eastern lyric.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hebrew parallelism repeats ideas with variation: Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”; Proverbs 10: “A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother”; modern adaptations in Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (“who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking”); Denise Levertov’s liturgical poems echo biblical parallelism; contemporary poet Alicia Ostriker uses parallelism in feminist psalms.
Additional Notes
A core feature of ancient Hebrew poetry (e.g., Psalms, Proverbs) where a line is balanced or completed by a second line that repeats, contrasts, or elaborates the first; a structural device that focuses on semantic rather than phonetic pattern.
Also Known As
parallelism (Hebrew) Biblical parallelism sacred parallelism Hebraic pairing Ancient Hebrew/Biblical
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