books from Genesis to Samuel: in the later portions of the Old Testament, it will be remembered, it shews itself much more frequently. Why, upon these rare occasions, the construction observed uniformly elsewhere (ויאמר דוד, or the alternating ודוד אמר) was abandoned must, I think, remain an insoluble enigma: all that can be said is that in some few of the instances the novel construction introduces the mention of a fact not perhaps meant to be immediately connected with the previous narrative, while