very different portraits of the female are thus associated through assonance; yet this association yields a radical transformation with the positive image superseding the negative in Yahweh’s new creation. Hence, the climactic affirmation that female surrounds man moves beyond other female images even as it includes them.42 The male images, on the other hand, are reinforced by the poem’s last word, man (geber). In strophes one through four, the male vocabulary has terms designating youthfulness: