The metre describes pairs of unbalanced lines, the first having three stresses, the second having two.[1] For example Lamentations 2:7 is three such line-pairs:
The Lord has rejected his altar, spurned his sanctuary;
He has handed over to the enemy
the walls of its strongholds.
They shout in the house of the Lord as on a feast day.[2]
where bold syllables are stressed.
In the Bible this 3:2 stress pattern is found in some (not all) dirges, for which the Hebrew technical term is qinah. Consequently, this term also became applied to the metre itself.[3][4]
The metre is often described as a "limping beat", sometimes characterised as "three beats of weeping followed by two beats of sobs".[3] Thus, qinah may also be considered a form of catalexis.[5]
Rather than Budde's late nineteenth century description of this as "metre", many scholars nowadays prefer the description of "rhythm", which is less tied to syllable counting.[6]
Not all biblical dirges or laments are written in this metre, such as David's lament over Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:17–27. And other, brighter passages do use this metre such as Song of Songs 1:9–11 and the hopeful Isaiah 40:9–11.[6]
