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In Shabbos Morning Davening, we read:

אין כערכך ואין זולתך אפס בלתך ומי דומה לך. אין כערכך ה' אלוקינו בעולם הזה ואין זולתך מלכנו לחיי העולם הבא. אפס בלתך גואלנו לימות המשיח ואין דומה לך מושיענו לתחיית המתים.

I had recently been saying this, when it occurred to me that the first sentence seems to be a hybrid of the following 4 phrases, as bolded above. I was wondering if someone has proposed that the first sentence, אין כערכך ואין זולתך אפס בלתך ומי דומה לך, was a shortened form of the following sentences, or if it may have been originally printed in a siddur as אין כערכך etc. ואין זולתך etc. אפס בלתך etc. ומי דומה לך etc., and the other verses were not present.

Do any siddur commentaries comment on this sentence in a similar fashion?

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    ArtScroll claims that the paytan wrote these four phrases, then in the next sentence expanded on what he meant by them. A similar thing appears in Nishmas - הקל הגדול הגבור והנורא קל עליון קונה שמים וארץ...הקל בעצמות עזך הגדול בכבוד שמך הגבור לנצח והנורא בנוראותיך המלך היושב על כסא רם ונשא. That one isn’t as obvious because there’s another sentence in the middle, plus most Siddurim print a paragraph break there. I don’t remember if they quoted anyone, but if they did, free answer for somebody.
    – DonielF
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 18:14
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    @DonielF R' Hirsch Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 18:21
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    This seems just like normal poetic parallelism.
    – Double AA
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 18:36
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    @DoubleAA OK, examples please? Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 19:23
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    פסח. מצה. מרור.
    – Double AA
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 23:09

1 Answer 1

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T'fila L'Moshe by Rav Aharon Lopiansky quotes Rav Y'huda ben Yakar as linking the two components in this way, with each later line being an explanation of its preceding word pair(+) (emphasis mine).

אלו ארבעה לשונות נאמר כנגד ארבע עולמות שהוא אדון יהיה לכולם, ובא המתפלל לפרשם

Akin to DonielF's and DoubleAA's suggestions, it seems to be a common deliberate structure - in which an opening itemization is expanded upon piece by piece - even in non poetic contexts.

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  • Re your final point about Mishnayos, don’t forget masechtos like Bava Kamma where you have one Mishnah which is elaborated upon across the next several Perakim, not just Mishnayos.
    – DonielF
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 21:05
  • @Shmuel Which line are you referring to in ר"ה? And in זבחים are you talking about the איבעית אימאs?
    – WAF
    Commented Sep 4, 2018 at 17:24

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