is still shared by Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
--Harold Bloom, The Shadow of a Great Rock (2011), 1.
Even a litany of locusts such as that found in the prophecy of Joel--singing of agricultural devastation wrought by insects--possesses a beguiling sonority:
That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten. (Joel 1:4).
"The largest aesthetic paradox of the KJB," writes Bloom, "is its gorgeous exfoliation of the Hebrew original. Evidently the KJB men knew just enough Hebrew to catch the words but not the original music. Their relative ignorance transmuted into splendor because they shared a sense of literary decorum that all subsequent translators seem to lack." SGR, 12.
Amen and amen.
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