To the form of Hebrew poetry belongs also its _peculiar diction_. To one who reads the Hebrew poets in the original, this is a striking characteristic. He meets with words, and sometimes with grammatical forms, that do not occur in the prose writers. Many of these peculiar words are _Aramean_; that is, they are words current in the Aramean branch of the Shemitic languages. Chap. 14, No. 1. They are to be regarded as _archaisms_--old words that were once common alike to the Hebrew and the kindred Aramean, but which have been dropped out of prose usage in Hebrew. They must not be confounded, as has too often been done, with _true Aramaisms_, that is, Aramean words and forms borrowed by later Hebrew writers from their intercourse with those who spoke Aramean. 4. As it respects the _office_ of Hebrew poetry, it is throughout subservient to the interests of revealed religion. This is implied in what has been already said of the loyalty of the Hebrew poets to the institutions of the Theocracy. It follows that the poetry of the Bible is all _sacred_ in its character. It contains no examples of purely secular poetry except here and there a short passage which comes in as a part of history; for example, the words of "those that speak in proverbs," Numb. 21:27-30; perhaps also the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan. 2 Sam. 1:19-27. It is certain that the song contained in the forty-fifth psalm and that of the Canticles were received into the canon solely on the ground that they celebrate the mutual love between God and the covenant people, considered as his bride; or, in New Testament language, between Christ and "the bride, the Lamb's wife."