Job and Solomon: Or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament

by T. K. Cheyne

THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.

CHAPTER I.
HEBREW WISDOM, ITS NATURE, SCOPE, AND IMPORTANCE.

We have studied the masterpiece of Hebrew wisdom before examining the nature of the intellectual product which the Israelites themselves graced with this title. The Book of Job is in fact much more than a didactic treatise like Ecclesiastes or a collection of pointed moral sayings like the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Its authors were more than thinkers, they were poets, ‘makers,’ great imaginative artists. But we must not be unjust to those who were primarily thinkers, and only in the second degree poets. The phase of Hebrew thought called ‘wisdom’ (khokma) can be studied even better in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes than in the poetry of Job. Let us then enquire at this point, What is this Hebrew wisdom? First of all, it is the link between the more exceptional revelations of Old Testament prophecy and the best moral and intellectual attainments of other nations than the Jews. ‘Wisdom’ claims inspiration (as we have seen already), but never identifies itself with the contents of oracular communications.[^[138]] Nor yet does it pretend to be confined to a chosen race. Job himself was a non-Israelite (the Rabbis were even uncertain as to his part in the world to come); and the wisdom of the ‘wise king’ is declared to have been different in degree alone from that of the neighbouring peoples[^[139]] (1 Kings iv. 30, 31; comp. Jer. xlix. 7, Obad. 8). It is to be observed next, that the range of enquiry of this ‘wisdom’ is equally wide, according to the Biblical use of the term.[^[140]] ‘Wisdom,’ as Sirach tells us, ‘rains forth skill’ of every kind; ‘the first man knew her not perfectly: no more shall the last trace her out’ (Ecclus. i. 19, xxiv. 28). Nothing is too high, nothing too low for Wisdom ‘fitly’ to ‘order’ (Wisd. viii. I). Law and government (Prov. viii. 15, 16), and even the precepts of husbandry (Isa. xxviii. 23-29) are equally her productions with those moral observations which constitute in the main the three books of the Hebrew Khokma. The fact that the subject of practical ethics ultimately appropriated the technical name of ‘wisdom’ ought not to blind us to the larger connotation of the same word, which throws so much light on the deeply religious view of life prevalent among the Israelites. For religious this view of wisdom is, though it may seem to be so thoroughly secular. The versatility of the mind of man is but an image of the versatility of its archetype. ‘The spirit of man is a lamp of Jehovah,’ says one of the ‘wise men’ (Prov. xx. 27), by an anticipation of John i. 9. ‘Surely it is the spirit in man,’ says another (Job xxxii. 8), ‘and the breath of Shaddai which gives them understanding.’ Isaiah, too, says that the ‘spirit of wisdom’ is one of the three chief manifestations of the ‘Spirit of Jehovah’ (Isa. xi. 2), and the introductory treatise, which gives the editor’s view of the original Book of Proverbs, expressly declares that the ‘wise men’ are but the messengers of divine Wisdom (ix. 3).

The sages, whose collected wisdom we are about to study, are very different from those antique sages who like Balaam could be hired to curse a hostile people. A new kind of wisdom grew up both in Israel and in the neighbouring countries, as unlike its spurious counterpart as the spiritual lyric poetry both of Israel and of Babylonia is unlike the incantations which in Babylonia coexisted with it. Israel, never slow to adopt, received the higher wisdom, and assimilated it. The earthly elements can still be traced in it; the ‘wise men’ are not prophets but philosophers; indeed, the Seven Wise Men of Greece arose at precisely the same stage of culture as the Hebrew sages. It is true, the latter never (in pre-Talmudic times) attempted logic and metaphysics; they contentedly remained within the sphere of practical ethics. If a modern equivalent must be found, it would be best to call them the humanists, to indicate their freedom from national prejudice (the word ‘Israel’ does not occur once, the word ādām ‘man’ thirty-three times in the Book of Proverbs), and their tendency to base a sound morality on its adaptation to human nature. We might also venture to call them realists in contradistinction to the idealists of the prophethood; they held out no prospect of a Messianic age, and ‘meddled not with them that were given to change.’[^[141]] The sages whose ‘wisdom’ is handed down to us were not however opposed to the spiritual prophets. It is only ‘the fool’ (or, to employ a synonym from the proverbs, the ‘scorner’ or ‘mocker’) who ‘saith in his heart, There is no God.’ A mocking poet of a late period may demand the Creator’s name (Prov. xxx. 4), but the writer who (if I may anticipate) has perpetuated this strange poem indicates his own very different mental attitude; and though religious proverbs are less abundant than secular in the early anthologies, such as we do find are pure and elevated in tone. For instance,

(1) Who can say, I have made my heart clean,

I am pure from my sin? (xx. 9.)

(2) The eyes of Jehovah are in every place,

observing the evil and the good (xv. 3).

(3) Sheól and Abaddon[^[142]] are before Jehovah,

how much more then the hearts of the sons of men!

(xv. 11.)

(4) The hearing ear and the seeing eye,

Jehovah has made them both (xx. 12).

(5) A man’s steps are from Jehovah,

and man—how can he understand his way? (xx. 24.)

One point in which the wise men agreed with Amos and Isaiah was the inferiority of a ceremonial system[^[143]] to prayer and faithful obedience (xv. 8, xxi. 3, 27, xvi. 6), and the importance which one of the proverb-writers attached to prophecy is strikingly expressed (if only the text be sound) in the saying,

When there is no prophecy (lit., vision) people become disorderly,

but he that observes precept, happy is he (xxix. 18).

The prophets seem to have returned the friendly feeling of the sages. In tone and phraseology they are sometimes evidently influenced by their fellow-teachers (see e.g. Isa. xxviii. 23-29, xxix. 24, xxxiii. 11), and if they do not often refer to the wise men,[^[144]] yet they do not denounce them, as they denounce the priests and the lower prophets. It may perhaps be inferred from this that there was in the early times no opposition-party of sceptical wise men, such as Ewald supposes,[^[145]] and such as not improbably did exist in later times (see below on xxx. 1-4); and I notice that Ewald himself does not attempt to strengthen his view by appealing to the phrase ‘men of scorn’ in Isa. xxviii. 14, which some, following Rashi and Aben Ezra, explain of wise men who misused their talent by making mischievous proverbs.[^[146]] The inference mentioned just now commends itself to me as sound; but I admit that the saying on prophecy in Prov. xxix. 18 (already quoted) is isolated, and that the tone of the religious proverbs falls far short of enthusiasm. This is probably all that M. Renan means in a too French sentence of his work on Ecclesiastes. Religion, according to the wise men, was a necessary element in a worthy character, was even (I should say) the principal element, but the religion of these practical moralists has nothing of that delighted abandon which we find in the more distinctly religious Scriptures. ‘Happy the man who dreadeth continually,’ says one characteristic proverb (xxviii. 14; contrast the ‘not caring’ of the ‘fool’ in xiv. 16). Later on, a more devout moralist writes that ‘the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom’ (i. 7), and though ‘fear’ need not exclude ‘love’ yet there is nothing here to suggest their combination. The proverb of the Egyptian prince Ptahhotep,[^[147]] ‘To obey is to love God; not to obey is to hate God,’ has no parallel, at any rate in the early anthologies; much less does the great saying in Ps. lxxiii. 25 strike a note congenial to any of the Hebrew sages. And yet it remains true that the wise men happily supplemented the more spiritual teaching of psalmists and prophets.

There is still another important point on which both prophets and ‘wise men’ were agreed. Whatever their inward religion may have been, they (like the Egyptian moralists) were outwardly utilitarians; i.e., they invite men to practise righteousness, not because righteousness is the secret of blessedness, but because of its outward rewards both for the man himself and for his posterity (Prov. xi. 21, xx. 7; comp. Jer. xxxii. 18). The form in which the doctrine of proportionate retribution is expressed in xi. 4 would have been completely acceptable to the prophets, whose conception of the ‘day of Jehovah’ (i.e., not the last great dies ira but any providential crisis in the world’s history) is adopted in it,—

Wealth is of no profit in the day of wrath,

but righteousness delivers from death.

Proverbs expressing this idea in various forms abound in the first anthology. Not a hint is given that retribution loiters on the road; at most a warning not to envy the (temporary) prosperity of the wicked (xxiii. 17, xxiv. 1, 19; with regard to xxiii. 18 see above).

This was the ‘certitude of the golden age,’ to use Mr. Matthew Arnold’s expression; it is just what we might expect in a simple and stationary condition of society. The strange thing is that it should have lasted on when oppression within or hostile attacks from without had brought manifold causes of sorrow upon both good and bad.[^[148]] That the teachers of the people should have held up the doctrine of earthly retribution—

Behold, the righteous hath a reward upon earth;

much more the ungodly and the sinner (xi. 31)—

as long as it could reasonably be defended, was natural. But that shortly before the Maccabean rising a ‘wise man’[^[149]] should still be found to write—

The gift of the Lord remains with the godly,

and his favour brings prosperity for ever (Ecclus. xi. 17),

seems to contradict the usual correspondence between the received moral theory and the outward circumstances of society. All that we can say is that such inconsistencies are found to exist; old forms of doctrine do not, as a rule, ‘melt like frosty rime.’ There must have been circles of Jewish moralists averse to speculation, who would continue to repeat the older view of the providential government even at a time when the social state had completely exposed its shallowness.

Dean Plumptre, indeed, following Ewald, credits the ‘wise men’ of pre-Exile times with deeper views. According to him, certain proverbs, e.g. x. 25, xi. 4, xiv. 32, xxiii. 18 (Ewald adds xii. 28) imply the hope of immortality. None of these passages however can be held conclusive. x. 25, xi. 4 simply say that the righteous shall be unhurt in a day of judgment; in xiv. 32 the antithesis is between the ruin which follows upon wickedness and the safe refuge of integrity (read b’thummō with the Sept.); in xxiii. 18, ‘there is a future,’ the reference is perfectly vague—it is natural to explain by comparing Job xlii. 12, xii. 28, no doubt, on Ewald’s view of the passage, seems conclusive,

In the way of righteousness is life,

and the way of its path is immortality.

But this great word ‘immortality’ is unparalleled before the Book of Wisdom, and cannot fairly be extracted from the Hebrew.[^[150]] The Septuagint has a different view of the pronunciation of the text, and renders ὁδοὶ δὲ μνησικάκων εἰς θάνατον. The easiest plan is to correct n’thībhāh into nith’ābh, with Levy, and render,

but an abominable way (comp. xv. 9) leads unto death.

I do not deny that the idea of eternal life may have been conceived at the time of these proverbs. This may plausibly be inferred from the occurrence of the phrase ‘a tree of life’ in iii. 18, xi. 30, xiii. 12, xv. 4, and ‘a fountain of life’ in x. 11, xiii. 14, xiv. 27, xvi. 22,—phrases certainly borrowed from some traditional story of Paradise analogous to that in Gen. ii.[^[151]] It is a singular fact however that in all these passages (even, I think, in iii. 18) these expressions are simply figurative synonyms for ‘refreshment,’ which suggests that the proverb-writers shrank from using them in their literal sense of the individual righteous man.

The importance of the ‘wise men’ as a class is too seldom recognised. To the hasty reader they are overshadowed by the prophets, between whom and the rude masses they seem to have occupied a middle position. Their popular style and genial manners attracted probably a large number of disciples; at any rate, in the time of Jeremiah the ‘counsel’ of the ‘wise men’ was valued as highly as the ‘direction’ (tōra) of the priests and the ‘word’ of the prophets (Jer. xviii. 18). By constantly working on suitable individuals, they produced a moral sympathy with the prophets, without which those heroic men would have laboured in vain. Thus that friendly relation must have sprung up between the prophets and the ‘wise men,’ of which I have spoken already, and which reminds us of the sanction said to have been given to the Seven Sages of Greece by the oracle of Delphi.[^[152]]

It is a misfortune that our sources for the history of Israelitish ‘philosophy’ are so scanty. Were there ‘wise men’ in N. Israel? and if so, have any of their proverbs come down to us, besides the mashal or fable of Jotham? Did they confine their activity to the capital city or cities, or did they also, like the ‘scribes,’ settle or itinerate in the provinces? (Matt. ix. 3, Targ. of Judg. v. 9.) Did their public instructions assume anything like the form of the proverbs of our anthologies? Did they teach without fee or reward?[^[153]] At any rate, a post-Exile proverb-writer tells us with retrospective glance where the ‘wise men’ awaited their disciples—not in the quietude of the chamber, but either within the massive city-gates, or in the adjacent squares or ‘broad places’ on which the streets converged (i. 20, 21; comp. Job xxix. 7). No doubt they had a large stock of sayings in their memory, such as had been tested by the experience of past generations. Sometimes they would modify old proverbs, sometimes they would frame new ones, so that when their disciples gathered round them, they would ‘bring out of their treasure things new and old.’ From time to time they would commit their ‘wisdom’ to writing in a more perfect form, and such records must have formed the basis of the proverbial collections in the Old Testament.

CHAPTER II.
THE FORM AND ORIGIN OF THE PROVERBS.

In one of the opening verses of the Book of Proverbs (i. 6) three technical names for varieties of proverbs are put together:—(1) māshāl, a short, pointed saying with reference to some striking feature in the life of an individual, or in human life generally, often clothed in figurative language (whence, according to many, the name māshāl, as if ‘similitude;’ comp. παραβολή), (2) m’lîça, perhaps a ‘bent’, ‘oblique’ or (as Sept.) ‘dark’ saying, (3) khîda, a ‘knotty’ or intricate saying, especially a riddle. Each of these words has a variety of applications; for instance (1) is used in Num. xxiii., xxiv., for a parallelistic poem, (1) and (2) sometimes mean a ‘taunting speech’ (see below, and comp. Hab. ii. 6, Isa. xiv. 4, Mic. ii. 4), and (3) can be used, not merely of true riddles with a moral meaning, such as we find here and there in Prov. xxx., but also of didactic statements upon subjects as difficult as riddles (see Ps. xlix. 5, A.V. 4, lxxviii. 2). We have no collection of popular proverbs, such as exists in Arabic; the proverbs in the canonical collection show great technical elaboration, though some may be based on the naive ‘wisdom’ of the people. A very few specimens of the popular proverb have indeed been preserved in the canonical literature.[^[154]] ‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’ (1 Sam. x. 12, xix. 24) preserves the memory of a humorous fact in the story of that king. ‘Wickedness proceeds from the wicked’ (1 Sam. xxiv. 13) is, unlike the former, a generalisation, and means that a man’s character is shown by his actions (comp. Isa. xxxii. 6). ‘As is the mother, so is the daughter’ (Ezek. xvi. 44) is also an induction from common experience. ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’ (Jer. xxii. 29, Ezek. xviii. 2), words applied no doubt, as Lowth says, profanely, but not originally meant so, is a figurative way of saying that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. We have one specimen of the riddle (strictly so called)—that well-known one of Samson’s,

From the eater came forth food,

and from the strong one came forth sweetness (Judges xiv. 14).

The parable, too, was doubtless called mashal, and of this we have three Old Testament examples, which will at once occur to the reader (2 Sam, xii. 1-6, xiv. 4-9, 1 Kings xx. 39, 40); but it is more important to draw the reader’s attention to the rare specimens of the fable. Some may think it bold to refer in this connection to a portion of a narrative which seems at first sight to be historical (Num. xxi. 22-35). The strange episode of the speaking ass is, however, most difficult to understand, except as a sportive quasi-historical version of a popular mashal or fable (compare the four Babylonian animal-fables discovered among the fragments of King Assurbanipal’s library).[^[155]] The passage being evidently distinct from the rest of the story of Balaam, in passing this judgment upon it, we are not committed as a matter of course to a denial of all historical character to the rest of the narrative. The fables of Jotham (Judg. ix. 8-15) and Joash (2 Kings xiv. 9), in which the trees are introduced speaking, have also their parallels in Babylonian literature. One of them indeed has a claim to be called a mashal on a second account; the tree-fable of Joash is a taunt of the keenest edge, and one of the secondary meanings of mashal is ‘taunting speech’ (see Isa. xiv. 4, A.V.). It is true the ‘taunting speeches’ expressly called mashals—not only those in the prophetic writings (see above), but the verses ascribed to ‘those that speak in mashals’ in Num. xxi. 27-30—are poetical in form, but this is because the Hebrew writers never conceived the idea of a narrative poem; even the prologue of the Book of Job is in prose.

These are the principal specimens of the mashal apart from those in the three Books of Old Testament Wisdom. They are but the ‘two or three berries’ left after the beating of the tree (Isa. xvii. 6), and excite a longing for more which cannot be gratified. We may be sure that in Israel’s prime the telling of proverbs was almost as popular as the recital of stories, and became a test of ability. For—

The legs of a lame man hang loose,

so is a proverb in the mouth of fools (xxvi. 7);

and though Sirach says of the labouring class, ‘They shall not be found where parables are spoken’ (Ecclus. xxxviii. 33), it is reasonable to account for this by the aristocratic pride of the students of Scripture in the later Jewish community. At any rate, as I have said already, some at least of the early literary proverbs are very possibly based on popular sayings; these would naturally embody a plain, bourgeois experience such as marks not a few of the proverbs in our book. Dr. Oort conjectures[^[156]] that some of our proverbs were originally current among the people as riddles, such for instance as, ‘What is sweet as honey?—Pleasant discourse, for it is sweet to the soul and a medicine to the bones’ (xvi. 24); ‘What is worse than meeting a bear?—Meeting a fool in a fit of folly’ (xvii. 12); ‘What is sweet at first, and then like sand in the mouth?—Stolen food’ (xx. 17). Certainly the introduction to the ‘proverbs of Solomon’ may seem to imply (i. 6) that the collection which follows contains specimens of the riddle, but probably all the writer means is that the ‘words of the wise’ are often ‘knotty’ because epigrammatic. We may indeed reasonably hold that, like their prototype Solomon,[^[157]] the ‘wise men’ were accustomed to sharpen their intellects upon enigmas (such as lie at the root of the so-called ‘numerical proverbs’ in xxx. 15, 18, 21, 24, 29; comp. vi. 16); but a still more important discipline than the battle of wits was the habit of keen observation. We cannot reduce all the proverbs involving comparison to the form of riddles, any more than we can do this with the following Buddhist sayings, equal to the more refined specimens of the Hebrew proverb:?—[^[158]]

As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, so passion will break through an unreflecting mind.

Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly.

A tamed elephant they lead to battle; the king mounts a tamed elephant; the tamed is the best among men, he who silently endures abuse.

Well-makers lead the water; fletchers bend the arrow; carpenters bend a log of wood; wise people fashion themselves.

Another plausible hypothesis similar to that of Dr. Oort is that some of our proverbs are based on popular fables, as is the case according to Dr. Back with many of the proverbs in the Talmud and Midrash.[^[159]] The Jewish scholar referred to applies this key to Prov. vi. 6-11 (comp. the Aramaic fable of the ant and the grasshopper—see Delitzsch’s note), to the numerical proverbs in chap. xxx. (‘skeletons of fables’ he calls them), and to Eccles. ix. 4 and x. 11. Both proverbs and fables indeed are common in later Jewish literature. Fables, especially animal fables, were not perhaps appropriate vehicles of moral instruction according to the O.T. writers. But the later Jewish teachers do not seem to have felt this objection. Rabbi Meir (2nd cent. A.D.) was the writer of animal fables par excellence; Rabbi Hillel (B.C. 30), however, so noted for his versatility, was also a copious fabulist.[^[160]]

This popular origin of some at least of the proverbs sufficiently accounts for their comparatively trite and commonplace character. They were not trite and commonplace to those who first used them, and successive generations loved them because of their antiquity (Job viii. 8-10). Even to us they are not so commonplace as the far less popular and piquant Egyptian proverbs,[^[161]] though I confess that they will hardly compare with the relics of Indian gnomology,[^[162]] still less with the singularly rich and pointed proverbs of the Chinese.[^[163]] The practice of writing antithetic sentences on paper or silk to suspend in houses (contrast Deut. vi. 9) gave an edge to the shrewd earthly wisdom of the countrymen of Confucius. The Jewish intellect developed but slowly into the acuteness of the later periods which produced fables, proverbs, and riddles which can safely challenge comparison.[^[164]]

CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST COLLECTION AND ITS APPENDICES.

Upon entering what Dante in the De Monarchiâ so well calls ‘the forest’ of the canonical proverbs, we are soon struck by differences of age and growth. The central portion of the book, and in some respects the most interesting, is comprised in x. 1-xxii. 16. To this, which is indeed the original Book of Proverbs, the first nine chapters were intended to serve as the introduction. It is the oldest Hebrew proverbial anthology extant. Probably from its compiler it received the name ‘Proverbs of Solomon,’ and from this title has sprung the tradition accepted by so many subsequent ages and indeed by the editor of the whole book (Prov. i. 1) of Solomon’s authorship of the Proverbs. The title however cannot be historically correct. Those maxims in this anthology which refer to the true God under the name Jehovah (Yahvè) are too monotheistic and inculcate too pure a morality to be the work of the Solomon of the Book of Kings. That great despot’s ‘wisdom,’ so far as we can judge both from his character and from the traditional notices, cannot have had a distinctively religious character. Listen to these proverbs,—

Better a little with the fear of Jehovah

than great treasure and turmoil therewith (xv. 16).

The horse is prepared against the day of battle,

but victory is Jehovah’s (xxi. 31).

The mouth of strange women is a deep pit;

he with whom Jehovah is wroth falleth therein (xxii. 14).

A wise son (loveth) his father’s correction,

but a scorner heareth not rebuke (xiii. 1),—

and for a commentary read 1 Kings iv. 26, xi. 1, 4, 14-40, xii. 14, 15. Nor is the moral tone of the ‘Solomonic’ proverbs in its plain bourgeois simplicity any more suitable to the name they bear than the religious. Unless Solomon was like Haroun al-Rashid, and made himself privately acquainted with the ways and thoughts of the citizens, it is difficult to see how he can have written so completely as one of them would have done.

The truth is that both David and Solomon were idealised by later generations. The heroes of a grander if not better age, they towered far above the petty figures of their successors. Favoured by the contemporary depression of Egypt and Assyria, they had been enabled to rear and to retain a powerful empire, comparable to those which afflicted and oppressed the divided people of the later Israelites. Solomon in particular is represented in tradition as not only the most fortunate but the wisest of kings, not in the sense in which it is said that religion is the best part of wisdom (Prov. i. 7), but in that in which the ‘children of the east’ were accustomed to use the word. This is clear from the language of the Hebrew narrator:—

‘And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart even as the sand on the sea-shore. And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite [read, perhaps, ‘the native,’ i.e. the Israelite], and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol [probably a foreigner]: and his fame was in all the nations round about. And he spoke three thousand proverbs [or, similitudes], and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spoke of trees, from the cedar in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.’ (1 Kings iv. 29-34.)

I see no reason for not accepting the substance of this tradition. The principal point in it is the ascription to Solomon of a power of apophthegmatic composition which the author, as a devout theist, could not but trace to a divine gift, just as the author of Ex. xxxvi. ascribes the skill of the artisans of the tabernacle to the direct operation of Jehovah. But we are also informed that the talents of Solomon were neither peculiar to him, nor exercised on different subjects from those of foreign sages. The precise meaning of the Hebrew m’shālīm in 1 Kings iv. 32 is suggested by ver. 33. The word seems to mean moralising similitudes[^[165]] derived partly from the animal, partly from the vegetable kingdom (for Lord Bacon’s view,[^[166]] hinted in the New Atlantis, is more plausible than sound). Was I not right in saying that the traditional notices of Solomon’s wisdom do not agree with the title of our anthology? I wish that it were otherwise. How gladly one would see a few of Solomon’s genuine utterances (whether proverbs, or similitudes, or fables) incorporated into one or another of the Hebrew Scriptures!

I think however that it is unfair both to the compiler and to the editor who repeats his statement (i. 1) to take the ascription of these proverbs to Solomon literally. Accuracy in the details of literary history was not a qualification which would seem important to an Israelite. The name of Solomon was attached (for dogmatism here seems permissible) to these choice specimens of Hebrew proverbiology simply from a very characteristic hero-worship. Solomon had in fact become the symbol of plain ethical ‘wisdom’ just as David had become the representative of religious lyric poetry. We may see this from the alternative title of the Book of Proverbs in both Jewish and Christian writings—‘Book of Wisdom;’[^[167]] still more from the fiction of Solomon’s authorship of Ecclesiastes, and from the Targumic paraphrase of Jer. ix. 23, ‘Let not Solomon the son of David, the wise man, glory in his wisdom.’ Of course, the real names of the authors of the proverbs had been as irrecoverably lost as those of our early ballad-writers.

But though we must deny the Solomonic authorship a far-off influence of the Solomonic age may perhaps be admitted; at least, there are grounds for the opinion that some of the proverbs are as old as the ninth century. (1) The second collection of so-called Solomonic proverbs was compiled according to a credible tradition (xxv. 1) in the reign of Hezekiah; this of itself throws the earlier collection a considerable way back into the eighth century. (2) Upon examining the first anthology we find that some of the proverbs already have a history. For instance, (a) the solemn generalisation in xiv. 12 occurs in exactly the same form in xvi. 25, (b) eight other proverbs are repeated with slight changes in expression (x. 1 = xv. 20, x. 2 = xi. 4, xiii. 14 = xiv. 27, xiv. 20 = xix. 4, xvi. 2 = xxi. 2, xix, 5 = xix. 9, xx. 10 = xx. 23, xxi. 9 = xxi. 19), but except in the case of xi. 4, xiv. 27 no change in thought, (c) ten are repeated, at least so far as one line goes, either exactly or with but slight differences (x. 15 = xviii. 11, x. 6[^[168]] = x. 11, x. 8 = x. 10,[^[169]] xv. 33 = xviii. 12, xi. 13 = xx. 19, xi, 21 = xvi. 5, xii. 14 = xiii. 2, xiv. 31 = xvii. 5, xvi. 18 = xviii. 12, xix. 12 = xx. 2). It is probable that some time would elapse before a proverb attained such notoriety as to be circulated in varying forms. (3) The originality of the diction (a) and the careful observance of technical rules of composition (b) favour an early date. (a) For instance, ‘steersmanship’[^[170]] (xi. 14, xii. 5, xx. 18), as a term for practical wisdom or counsels, evidently springs from a fresh enthusiasm for commerce; a long list of striking expressions might be added from any chapter of the collection. (b) Nor is technical precision at all less conspicuous in this early anthology. Each proverb is a distich, i.e. consists of two lines, as a rule three-toned, and in most cases antithetically parallel. It is true, xix. 7 in its present form is a tristich, i.e. consists of three members, but this proverb undoubtedly arose out of two, the second of which is mutilated in the Hebrew text, but is found in a complete though not entirely correct form in the Septuagint. The incomprehensible third line of xix. 7 given in versions based upon the Hebrew now becomes the distich,

He that does much evil perfects mischief;

he that provokes[^[171]] with words shall not escape.

According to Ewald, the collection is divided into five parts by the recurrence at intervals of a proverb exhorting the young to receive instruction; see x. 1, xiii. 1, xv. 20, xvii. 25, xix. 20. If this division is intentional it may be compared with the equally mechanical triple division found by some in Isa. xl. lxvi. Of arrangement by subject there is but little trace; here and there two or more verses come in succession dealing with the same theme. Observe too the recurrence of ‘Jehovah,’ xv. 33, xvi. 1-9, 11, and of the word ‘king’ in xvi. 10, 12-15, which shows that one principle of arrangement was simply the recurrence of certain catchwords. Bickell thinks that another principle was the occurrence of the same initial letter (see xi. 9-12, xx. 7-9, xx. 24-26, xxii. 2-4).

Altogether, it is abundantly clear that we have before us works of art, and not the simple maxims handed down in Israel from father to son. There may sometimes be a traditional basis, but no more. The anthology contrasts, therefore, as Ewald remarks, with the collections of Arabic proverbs due to Abu-Obaida, Maidani[^[172]] and others. But whether we may go on to assert with the same great critic that we have here the wise men’s applications of the truths of religion to the infinite cases and contingencies of the secular life, seems doubtful. It is not clear to me that these wise men were preoccupied by religion. There are indeed not a few fine religious proverbs, but it cannot be shown that those who wrote the secular proverbs also wrote the religious. It is possible and even probable that some of the religious proverbs are the work of the author of the introductory chapters; without dogmatising, I may refer to xiv. 34 (comp. viii. 15, 16), xv. 33, xvi. 1-7, and perhaps to xix. 27, which is quite in the parental tone of chaps. i.-ix. The tone of the secular proverbs is not, from a Christian point of view (of which more later on), an elevated one. The ethical principle is prudential. Virtue or ‘wisdom’ is rewarded, and vice or ‘folly’ punished in this life. It is indeed nowhere expressly said that every trouble is a punishment; but there is nothing like xxiv. 16 in this anthology to prevent the reader from inferring it. At any rate, the writers are clearly not in the van of religious thought: no ‘obstinate questionings’ have yet disturbed their tranquillity.

We need not pause here to demonstrate what no one probably will dispute, that the origin of this first anthology is impersonal. The fact that it is so may well give us the more confidence in the accuracy of the social picture which it contains. This is certainly a pleasing one, and points to a comparatively early period in the history of Judah. Commerce and its attendant luxury have not made such progress as at the time when the introduction was written; poverty is only too well known, but there seems to be a middle class with a sound moral sense, to which the writers of proverbs can appeal. It is true, says one of these, that in daily life ‘rich and poor meet together,’ but for all that ‘Jehovah is the maker of them all’ (xxii. 2), and ‘he that oppresses the poor reproaches his maker’ (xiv. 31). And if it is true on the one hand that ‘the poor is hated even of his neighbour’ (xiv. 20), and that ‘the destruction of the wretched is their poverty’ (x. 15), it is equally so on the other that ‘he that trusts in his riches shall fall’ (xi. 28), and that

Better is the poor man who walks in his blamelessness,

than he who is perverse in his ways and is rich[^[173]] (xix. 1).

The strength of the land still consists in the number of small proprietors tilling their own ground. Two proverbs express an interest in these, e.g.

The poor man’s newly ploughed field gives food in abundance,

but there is that is cut off by injustice (xiii. 23).

Better is a mean man that tills for himself[^[174]]

than he that glorifies himself and has no bread (xii. 9).

All the farmers however were not so diligent as those indicated in these passages. One of the numerous proverbs against laziness (then as now a prevalent vice in this part of the East[^[175]]) brings before us a land-owner who is too lazy to give the order for ploughing at the right time, and so when he looks for the harvest, there is none.

When autumn comes the sluggard ploughs not;

so if he asks at harvest-time, there is nothing (xx. 4).

The right use of the gift of speech is another very favourite subject in this anthology. The charm of suitable words is best described in a Hezekian proverb (xxv. 11), but it is well said in xv. 4 that ‘a gentle tongue is a tree of life,’ and elsewhere that

There is that babbles like the thrusts of a sword,

but the tongue of the wise is gentleness (xii. 18).

The wonderful power of language could hardly at that age have been better expressed than by the saying,

The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters,

a gushing torrent, a wellspring of wisdom (xviii. 4).

The standard of family morals is high; a good wife is described as God’s best gift (xii. 4, xviii. 22, xix. 14), and the restraints of home are commended to the young (xix. 18, xxii. 6, 15), as in the Egyptian proverbs. Monogamy is throughout presupposed, and a want of respect for either parent is condemned (xiii. 1, xv. 5, xix. 26). The king too is repeatedly held up to reverence (xiv. 35, xvi. 10, 12-15, xix. 12, xx. 2, 8, 26, 28, xxii. 11); it is not so in the Hezekian collection. The king however is not identified with the Deity, as in Egypt; we are told that the will of the monarch is pliable in the hand of Jehovah (xxi. 1), and the true glory of a nation is, not in the prowess of its king, but in righteousness (xiv. 34). And even if we must confess that the spirit of the more secular proverbs is utilitarian, the utilitarianism is sometimes a very refined one, as for instance where the refreshing character of a quiet, contented mind is contrasted with the dull reaction which follows on an outburst of passion (xiv. 30). In conclusion, I will quote a few proverbs interesting chiefly as characteristic of their age, and then a few more of the gems of the collection.

(a) The poor is hated even by his neighbour,

but the rich has many friends (xiv. 20).

Whoso withholds corn, him the people curse,

but blessing is on the head of him who sells it (xi. 26).

The beginning of strife is as when one lets out water,

so leave off quarrelling before the teeth be shown (xvii. 14).

The gift of a man makes a free space for him,

and brings him before the great (xviii. 16).

‘Bad, bad,’ says the purchaser,

but when he goes away, he boasts (xx. 14).

(b) The righteous regards the life of his cattle,[^[176]]

but the heart of the wicked is cruel (xii. 10).

The heart knows its own bitterness,

and a stranger cannot intermeddle with its joy (xiv. 10).

He that covers transgression helps forward love,

but he that repeats a matter separates best friends (xvii. 9).

There are friends (good enough) acting their part,[^[177]]

and there is a loving friend who sticks closer than a brother

(xviii. 24; comp, xvii. 17).

Who can say, I have made my heart clean,

I am pure from my sin? (xx. 9.)

Say not, I will recompense evil;

wait for Jehovah, and he will deliver thee (xx. 22).

The first appendix to the original Book (appended possibly before the composition of the Introduction) is a small collection of proverbial sayings called ‘words of the wise’ (xxii. 17-xxiv. 22). Virtually the same phrase occurs again in xxiv. 23 at the head of a still shorter work, compiled or composed evidently about the same time by another ‘wise man’ (perhaps the whole work has not come down to us). In the introductory verses the compiler’s object in writing down these proverbs is said to have been that his disciple might learn virtue and religion, and might become qualified to teach others. There is one very difficult passage in it, but this has been corrected in a masterly way by Bickell:—[^[178]]

That thy confidence may be in Jehovah,

to make known unto thee thy ways.

Now, yea before now, have I written unto thee,

long before, with counsels and knowledge,

That thou mayest know the rightness of true words,

that thou mayest answer in true words to those that ask thee

(xxii. 19-21).

The construction of ver. 20b and ver. 21 in the Hebrew thus becomes more idiomatic (comp. χθές τε καὶ πρώην), though not free from ambiguity. The words may mean either that the compiler took long over his work, or that this was not the first occasion of his writing. On the latter explanation the passage may imply that the compiler of this anthology also wrote chaps. i.-ix. (comp. i. 6b). His hortatory style and predilection for grouping verses may seem to plead for this view. There are however no important points of contact in phraseology between the work before us and Prov. i.-ix.,[^[179]] and certainly the appendix falls far below the standard of the Introduction. At any rate, it is undoubted that these ‘words of the wise’ appeared long after the ‘Solomonic’ proverbs. The peculiarities of style referred to show this, and also the imitation of some of the ‘Solomonic’ proverbs in the ‘words of the wise;’ (comp. xi. 14 with xxiv. 5, 6; xiii. 9 with xxiv. 19, 20; xxii. 14a with xxiii. 27).

There is no occasion to suppose that all these proverbs come from one period; but the hand of a compiler is more conspicuous here than in the first anthology. He has not indeed removed repetitions (see xxii. 28a, xxiii. 10a; xxiii. 17a, xxiv. 1a; xxiii. 18, xxiv. 14), but the personal element preponderates so much that he might fairly have prefixed his own name as the author. Artistically, he may perhaps be found wanting. He has left one tristich (i.e. a proverb of three lines), viz. xxii. 29; two pentastichs (i.e. proverbs of five lines), viz. xxiii. 4, 5. xxiv. 13, 14; and one heptastich (i.e. a proverb of seven lines), viz. xxiii. 6-8. Unsymmetrical as these may be, it seems hazardous, unless there be any specially doubtful passage, to restore symmetry (i.e. to convert tristichs into tetrastichs, and so on) by inserting words conjecturally. There are a few distichs (xxii. 28, xxiii. 9, xxiv. 7, 8, 9, 10), thus affording a slight point of contact with the first anthology; more tetrastichs (xxii. 22, 23; 24, 25; 26, 27; xxiii. 10, 11; 15, 16; 17, 18; xxiv. 1, 2; 3, 4; 5, 6; 15, 16; 17, 18; 19, 20; 21, 22), and hexastichs (xxiii. 1-3; 12-14; 19-21; 26-28; xxiv. 11, 12). One octastich occurs (xxiii. 22-25), and one long poem, in the main a group of distichs, referred to again below (xxiii. 29-35).

Beautiful in form, the proverbs of this collection certainly are not; one cannot apply to the author the saying in xxiv. 26, ‘He kisses the lips who answers in suitable words.’ The contents however are not without points of interest. In xxiii. 1-3 we have a picture of a man of the middle class admitted to the table of a governor. Being unused to ‘dainties,’ he is tempted to excess; as a restraint, the ‘wise man’ bids him consider the capriciousness of princely favour (comp. Ecclus. ix. 13). The abuse of luxuries such as wine and meat was in fact a sore evil in the eyes of this writer (see the caution in xxiii. 20, 21 in the Septuagint version, which reminds one of vii. 14). He has even left us a poem on the evils of drunkenness (xxiii. 29-35) which contains several striking details from its satirical opening, ‘Who hath oi, who hath aboi?’ (interjections expressing pain), to the picturesque comparison of the drunkard to a man ‘that lieth upon the top of a mast,’[^[180]] which shows incidentally that sea-life was by this time a familiar experience. Another interesting passage, though marred by its obscurity, is that in xxiv. 11, 12. The innocent victims of a miscarriage of justice are about to be dragged away to execution; the pupil of the wise is exhorted to ‘deliver’ them, by intervening with resistless energy, like the St. Ives of a favourite Breton legend, and testifying to the innocence of the sufferers (see xxxi. 8). He may of course refuse, thinking to pretend afterwards that he had not heard of the case; but God knows all, and will requite falsehood, not perhaps at once, but at a future time, when ‘the lamp of the wicked shall be put out’ (xxiv. 20). The wise men, as we have seen, clung firmly to the doctrine of retribution in some one of its various forms. We are not therefore surprised that a book of proverbs should conclude with a dissuasion from consorting with lawless persons, and an earnest advice to ‘fear Jehovah and the king’ (xxiv. 21).

Much need not be said of the second appendix (xxiv. 23-34). ‘These also are by wise men,’ writes the collector, implying that he is to be distinguished from the editor of the preceding collection. The proverbs are all[^[181]] either in two, four, or six lines, except ver. 27, where however it is possible that some words have dropped out.[^[182]] At the end comes a parable or apologue professedly drawn from the writer’s experience (reminding us in this of vii. 6-23, but still more of Job v. 3-5). The scene is laid in a vineyard which has run to waste and become a wilderness from the carelessness of its owner (comp. xx. 4). The mashal (xxiv. 30-32) has been lengthened by the addition of two verses from vi. 9, 10, originally no doubt a marginal note. It was needless; the story (if story it can be called) is more vivid in its brevity, and forms a fitting close to this section of proverbial wisdom.

CHAPTER IV.
THE SECOND COLLECTION AND ITS APPENDICES.

The next proverbial anthology (xxv.-xxix.) like its chief predecessor is described in the heading as ‘Proverbs of Solomon.’[^[183]] The social state however presupposed in many of them is so different from that of the Solomonic age that we may at once reject the theory of the wise king’s authorship. Another name with which in xxv. 1 the work is connected is that of Hezekiah, who has been suggestively called ‘the Pisistratus of Judah.’ The comparison halts, no doubt; for Pisistratus and his ‘companions’ meant to collect the whole of the Homeric poems, whereas completeness can hardly have been the object of those ‘friends (or counsellors) of Hezekiah’ who ‘collected’[^[184]] the ‘Proverbs of Solomon’ in xxv. 2-xxix. 27; at least, we know that there was much proverbial wisdom in circulation which had as good or as bad a claim to be called ‘Solomonic’ as the sayings which they have admitted into their anthology. It may indeed well be doubted whether the compilers had any thought of collecting the relics (now already more than 200 years old) of the wise king. The style of these proverbs makes such a hypothesis even more improbable than in the case of x. 1-xxii. 16. The words with which the heading begins are of course not decisive, especially as the whole verse appears to be due, not to the royal officials who are spoken of, but to the author of the heading in xxiv. 23a (both headings begin with ‘these also’). That Hezekiah was the instigator of the compilation, need not however be disputed. Even if not himself an author,[^[185]] he may well have shared his friend Isaiah’s interest in literature; and besides, it was at that time one of the glories of a great king to be the founder of a library.[^[186]] The word used in describing the activity of his commissioners means literally ‘transferred’ (from one place to another), and will equally well apply to the noting down of oral traditions and to the making extracts from existing collections. Among the latter, the ‘Proverbs of Solomon’ in x. 1-xxii. 16 are of course to be included, though it is not quite certain whether the compilers of the later anthology had the book before them. It is true that nine proverbs are the same in the two books either absolutely (xxv. 24 = xxi. 9, xxvi. 22 = xviii. 8, xxvii. 12 = xxii. 3, xxvii. 13 = xx. 16) or virtually (xxvi. 13 = xxii. 13, xxvi. 15 = xix. 24, xxviii. 6 = xix. 1, xxviii. 19 = xii. 11, xxix. 13 = xxii. 2), besides two which agree in one line (xxvii. 21 = xvii. 3, xxix. 22 = xv. 18; comp. also xxvii. 15, xix. 13). But there still remains the question, Why the collectors took so little and left so much of manifest antiquity, and to this question we cannot expect to find an answer. All that we can say is that their compilation has striking characteristics of its own. In technicalities they admit a greater variety than those of the first anthology. They allow not only distichs but tristichs (xxv. 8, 13, 20, xxvii. 10, 22, xxviii. 10), tetrastichs (xxv. 4, 5, xxv. 9, 10, xxv. 21, 22, xxvi. 18, 19, xxvi. 24, 25, xxvii. 15, 16), and in one case a pentastich[^[187]] (xxv. 6, 7), agreeing in this respect with the two appendices of the first anthology. There is also a long mashal, analogous to some we have had already, which can only with some laxity be called a proverb, and which extends over ten distichs (xxvii. 23-27). With regard to parallelism, the antithetic kind, which predominates in the first ‘Solomonic’ anthology, is rare in this collection, except in chaps. xxviii., xxix.; sometimes indeed there is no parallelism at all (see xxv. 8, 9, 10, 21, 22, xxvi. 18, 19, xxvii. 1, xxix. 12). As a compensation, similitudes abound in the three first chapters of the collection. Sometimes the comparison is expressed, e.g.

As the cold of snow in the heat[^[188]] of harvest

is a faithful messenger to those that send him:

he refreshes the soul of his master (xxv. 13);

at other times it is implied by the juxtaposition of the two objects, e.g.

Apples of gold in chased work of silver,

a word smoothly spoken[^[189]] (xxv. 11).

Let us pause on this favourite proverb of Goethe’s. The Hebrew ‘wise men’ would not have agreed to a later sage’s depreciation of speech.[^[190]] ‘A word in due season, how good is it’ (xv. 23); but when not only seasonable but set off by charms of style, how much better is it! The ‘apples of gold’ in xxv. 11 are probably oranges; the ‘chased work of silver’ means either baskets of silver filagree, or, as I should like to think with Mr. Neil, the brilliant white blossoms among which the golden fruit is seen peeping out. If the ‘gold’ is figurative, why not also the ‘silver’? We are reminded of Andrew Marvell’s lines in the ‘Emigrants’ Song,’

He hangs in shades the orange bright,

Like golden lamps in a green night,

though Marvell forgot what Addison (Spectator, No. 455) well knew, that flowers as well as fruit and leaves continue on the orange-tree for the best part of the year.

But to return to our anthology. It would almost seem as if two editors with different tastes had been concerned in it, the one responsible for chaps. xxv.-xxvii., and the other for chaps. xxviii, xxix. According to Ewald, the proverbs in the latter section are mostly somewhat older than those in the former. This is perhaps an impression rather than a judgment; and few will deny that some at least of the parabolic proverbs in the first section may be as old as those of the same class in x. 1-xxii. 16.

It is difficult to suppose that many of the proverbs in either part of the book go back to a remote date. The cheerfulness of Israel’s ‘golden prime’ is gone; society seems to have changed, not altogether for the better, even since the first great anthology was made. The king is still looked up to with awe; the book begins with a group of four sentences on the true glory of a monarch, followed by two on the right behaviour for a subject (xxv. 2-7). The king is described (surely with a touch of idealism) as inquisitive in the best sense; his ‘heart,’ or understanding, is unsearchable. But this happy view of monarchy passes away. There are several proverbs complaining of the wickedness of kings, which are almost without a parallel in the earlier collection. Ungodly rulers have made the people ‘sigh’ (xxix. 2); they have been like ‘roaring lions and ravenous bears’ to the ‘poor folk’ (xxviii. 15, 16), and have completely destroyed the freedom of social intercourse (xxviii. 12, 28). Sometimes, as in the northern kingdom after the death of Jeroboam II.,[^[191]] the crown has become the object of competition to a crowd of pretenders (xxviii. 2). The misery of the people has been heightened by the greed of petty tyrants, according to the forcible saying,—

A man who is rich[^[192]] and oppresses the poor

(is) a rain which sweeps away and gives no bread (xxviii. 3).

What kind of oppression is meant we may learn from Micah (ii. 3),—

And they covet lands and take them by violence;

houses, and take them away;

and they oppress the owner and his house,

a man and his inheritance.

It is in short the same unscrupulous accumulation of landed property to which Isaiah devotes one of his solemn ‘woes’ in his earliest prophecy, and which is one of the causes of the threatened captivity (Isa. v. 8-10 13). Exile has indeed become a familiar idea to those who admitted xxvii. 8 into the anthology, if, as most think, in the pathetic words of xxvii. 8 we may hear an echo of the march of Assyrian armies, ‘to wander’ being an euphemism for going into banishment.

As a bird that wanders from her nest,

so is a man that wanders[^[193]] from his home (xxvii. 8).

As a rule, however, the proverbs relate to ordinary bourgeois life. Religious proverbs occur but rarely.[^[194]] ‘Folly’ too is not so often mentioned as in the first collection, and the censure which it has to bear is mostly indirect and more or less satirical; see e.g. the proverb—

Though thou shouldest beat a fool in a mortar

in the midst of bruised corn with a pestle,

his folly would not depart from him (xxvii. 22),

and especially the paradoxical exhibition of the two sides of a truth—

Answer not the stupid man according to his folly,

lest thou thyself also become like unto him:

Answer the stupid man according to his folly,

lest he regard himself as wise (xxvi. 4, 5),

where the first distich dissuades from retaliating on a fool by a word or an action on his own low moral plane, while the second recommends giving his folly the exposure or the sharp answer which it so richly deserves.[^[195]] The wide meaning of ‘folly’ in this pair of proverbs may be illustrated by xvii. 12, where it evidently means a paroxysm of passion. Next to this noisy passionate ‘folly,’ if we may judge from the arrangement of chap. xxvi., comes the vice of idleness (xxvi. 13-16). How dangerous this was felt to be we have seen already, and the exhortation to agricultural industry in xxvii. 23-27 forms a counterpart to the meditation on the ‘field of the slothful’ in xxiv. 30-32. If the motives urged for this and other duties are not lofty, the standard is at least an easily attainable one.

Sometimes, indeed, the eye sharpened by a regard to prudence discerns moral points of some refinement.[^[196]] This proverb, for instance, strikes one as delicate, in spite of the prudential motive attached to it in the next verse,—

Conduct thy quarrel with thy neighbour,

but expose not the secret of another (xxv. 9);

and the well-known precept on showing kindness to one’s enemies, though partly supported by the prospect of a reward (comp. xxiv. 17, 18), is so nobly expressed that an apostle can adopt it without change (Rom. xii. 20),—

If one that hates thee hunger, give him bread to eat,

and if he thirst, give him water to drink,

for thou heapest coals of fire thereby

upon his head, and Jehovah shall recompense thee (xxv. 21, 22).

Let us pause a moment on this proverb, which contrasts so strongly with the advice on the treatment of enemies given by Sirach. ‘Coals of fire on the head’ is probably here a metaphorical expression for what St. Augustine calls ‘urentes conscientiæ gemitus’ (De doctr. Christ., l. iii., c. 16). The appositeness of the phrase will be heightened if we suppose the enemy spoken of to be one who has never heard of the wise man’s rule—a man of rude, uncultured nature, and perhaps of alien race. To such a one, the being fed by the very man whom he ‘hated’ would give first of all a shock of surprise, and then a pang of intolerable remorse for his own unworthiness.[^[197]] I wish one could be sure that this pang was referred to as purifying as well as painful to the sufferer. A parallel passage would be a great boon. Of course we can apply the passage in the same sense as St. Paul when he followed his quotation with the words, ‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’

But we should wrong our ‘wise men’ by treating them as pure utilitarians; they are often sympathetic observers of character and circumstance. For instance,—

Vinegar falling upon a wound,[^[198]]

and he who sings songs to a heavy heart (xxv. 20).

Silver dross spread over an earthen vessel—

fervent lips[^[199]] and a bad heart (xxvi. 23).

Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth:

a stranger, and not thine own lips (xxvii. 2).

Faithful are the wounds of one who loves,

but the kisses of a hater are profuse[^[200]] (xxvii. 6).

Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not;

and go not to thy brother’s house in the day of thy calamity:

better is a near neighbour than a far off brother[^[201]] (xxvii. 10).

He who blesses his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning,

it is reckoned to him for a curse[^[202]] (xxvii. 14).

Iron is sharpened by iron,

and a man sharpens the face (or edge) of his friend (xxvii. 17).

The three appendices to the Hezekian collection (xxx., xxxi. 1-9, xxxi. 10-31) are, to take the most conservative position possible, obviously not earlier than the closing century of the Jewish state. The art of proverb-writing has declined ever since the compilation of the previous anthology. The marks of simplicity and naturalness are wanting; the enigmatical and artificial seem to be sought for. Each part of these two chapters has moreover something of its own pointing in the direction of a late origin. The two first appendices are very possibly even later than the return of the Jews from Babylon.

The first appendix begins—‘The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, the prophecy’ (or, divine utterance)[^[203]] (comp. xxxi, 1). The heading is enigmatical; in what sense are the ‘words’ ‘a prophecy,’ and who are the persons spoken of? The latter question we have no means of answering. The names are not found elsewhere, and have been thought to be pseudonyms (Agur might mean ‘collector’ and Jakeh ‘obedient,’ i.e. ‘religious’).[^[204]] As to the title ‘the prophecy,’ it must be admitted that it is not by any means an appropriate one. It is too bold to accuse the proverb-writer of claiming prophetic inspiration. (And why should the article be prefixed?) The only alternative to this is to read, with Prof. Grätz, (for hammassā ‘the prophecy’) hammōshēl ‘the proverb-writer.’ After the heading comes a group of four verses complete in itself.

The oracle of the man ‘I have wearied[^[205]] myself about God’ (?),

I have wearied myself about God and have not prevailed.[^[206]]

For I am too stupid for a man,

and am without human reason;

I have not learned wisdom,

nor have I knowledge of the All-holy.[^[207]]

Who has gone up to heaven and come down?

who has gathered the wind in his fists?

who has bound up the waters in a garment?

who has established all the ends of the earth?

what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou knowest?

It is not easy to interpret this little passage. Evidently the speaker is a ‘wise man,’ who, according to some critics, inculcates a reverent humility by reporting the fruitlessness of his own theological speculations. After long brooding over the problems of the divine nature (so they explain), the Hebrew sage was compelled to desist with the feeling of his utter incapacity. Like Israel the patriarch he strove with God, but unlike Israel he did not prevail. He knows indeed what God has done and is continually doing; He is the Omnipresent One, the Lord of wind and flood, the Author of the boundaries of the earth. But what is this great Being’s name, and (to know Him intimately) what is His son’s name? On this view of its meaning, the passage reminds one of the words of Goethe’s Faust, ‘Who can name Him, or who confess, I believe Him? Who can feel, and can be bold to say, I believe Him not?’ Or perhaps we may still better compare Max Letteris’ masterly Hebrew translation or adaptation, in which the medieval doctor has been transformed into Ben Abuyah (or Acher אַחֵר), the famous apostate from Judaism in the second century of our era. The passage with which we are concerned as illustrative of the passage before us is on page 164, and begins מִי יַזָכַּירֵהוּ וּמִי יְבַנֵּהוּ. Notice the delicate tact in the choice of the second verb, ‘Who can give Him an honourable surname?’ (comp. Isa, xliv. 5, xiv. 4.) Later on, after other names suggested by the German original, the modern Hebrew poet continues, אוֹׂ בְּיָהּ שְׁמוׂ כִי נִשְׂגָּב הַזְכּירוּ, and in a note refers to a parallel passage in a Hebrew poem by Ibn Gabirol.

I must make bold to doubt the correctness of this explanation. (1) Because it does not sufficiently account for the language of ver. 2. (2) Because upon this view of the questions of ver. 4, an Israelite’s answer would simply be, Jehovah (comp. Job xxxviii. 5, Isa. xl. 12). (3) Because it is so difficult to see why the poet should have asked further, What is His son’s name? Is not the passage rather a philosophic fragment from a school of ‘wise men,’ not so much unbelieving as critical? The speaker declares, soberly enough, that he has tried in vain by thinking to find out God. Then comes in a piece of irony. No doubt it is his own stupidity; grand theologians, such as the writer of Isa. xl. 12 &c., Job xxxviii., Prov. viii. 22 &c., may well look down upon the dullard, who has not passed through their school! ‘But who is it that is ever and anon coming down[^[208]] to earth, and that performed all these creative works of which you delight to speak? I have never seen him; tell me his name and his son’s name since you are so learned.’ The latter phrase may be an allusion, either (anticipating Philo, who calls Wisdom God’s Son) to the ‘I was brought forth’ in viii. 24, or more probably[^[209]] the primeval man (who might be called a ‘son of God’ in the sense of Luke iii. 38) spoken of in Job xv. 7, who was the embodiment of all wisdom and sat in the council of Elohim.[^[210]] The satirical turn of this secularistic ‘wise man’ is even perhaps traceable in the heading of his poem. He calls his work an ‘oracle,’ taking up a favourite word of the disciples of the prophets, and flinging it back to them with a laugh. Obviously too the name of the writer, if genuine, is best explained as an assumed name. [But the emphatic haggebher is very difficult. I cannot believe, with Ewald, that haggebher is said ironically, as if ‘the mighty one in his own conceit;’ comp. Isa. xxii. 17 (?), Ps. lii. 3. The analogy of Num. xxiv. 3, 15, 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, suggests that there is a corruption in the text, and that haggebher, ‘the man,’ was originally followed by words descriptive of the person referred to. Grätz boldly corrects (haggebher) lō-khayil ‘the man without strength.]

Are we surprised at this? But a strikingly parallel confession of honest scepticism is found in the Rig Veda (x. 129), though I would not of course identify the opinions of the Sanskrit and the Hebrew poet,

Who knows, who here can declare, whence has sprung—whence, this creation?... From what this creation arose; and whether [any one] made it, or not,—he who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he verily knows, or [even] he does not know.[^[211]]

The poet who ‘takes up his parable’ after Laithi-el calmly and uncontroversially indicates his own very different religious position. He earnestly prays that he may not ‘become a liar and ask, Who is Jehovah?’ (xxx. 9); for him the divine revelations (the outward form of which is already sacred) are amply sufficient. ‘Every utterance of God [Eloah, the sing. form, as in Job] is free from alloy’ (xxx. 5; see the commentators on Ps. xviii. 31); the divine ‘name’ declared in Ex. xxxiv. 6, should satisfy the wisest of men. Thus, like the editors of Ecclesiastes, this later writer neutralises the doubtful expressions of the poem which he has saved from perishing.

Can we avoid the impression that both these poets lived in an age of advanced religious reflection and of Scripture-study? The one is more of a philosopher, the other of a Biblical theologian; both would be at home only in the Exile or in the post-Exile period, when doubt and even scepticism lifted their heads side by side with Biblical study. Our second more believing poet seems to be thinking of Ps. xviii. 30; but the portion of that verse which he adopts assumes another colour through the warning which follows, derived from Deut. iv. 1, xiii. 1. It is no longer the ‘promise of God’ which is ‘tried’ or ‘pure,’ but the revelation of which the Jewish Church is gradually finding itself the possessor.

The poet’s prayer for himself (vv. 7-9) is followed by eight groups of proverbs, each of which describes some quality or character which is either commended or warned against, and (with the exception of the first) contains a similitude. In most of these the number four is conspicuous generally as the climax after ‘three’ (vv. 15, 18, 21, 29). The fact that similar ‘numerical proverbs’ were popular in the early Rabbinical period,[^[212]] gives a certain support to the view that this collection is of late origin. The groups referred to are—

The four marks of an evil generation vv. 11-14

The four insatiable things — 15, 16

The fate of the disobedient son — 17

The four incomprehensible things — 18-20

— — intolerable things — 21-23

— — wise animals — 24-28

— — comely in going (see p. [175]) — 29-31

A warning against strife — 32, 33.

One of these (vv. 15, 16) has probably suffered a slight mutilation, which has been thus remedied by Bickell,—

The leech has two [three [^[213]]] daughters,

they say continually, ‘Give, give:’

there are three things which are never satisfied,

four which never say, ‘Abundance.’

Sheól is never satisfied with dead,

and the closing of the womb is never satisfied with men,

the earth is never satisfied with water,

and fire never says, ‘Abundance.’[^[214]]

‘Daughters of the leech’ is a quasi-mythical expression, which no one could misunderstand (comp. ‘upon a hill the son of oil,’ Isa. v. 1). We find a similar group of four insatiables in the Sanskrit Hitopadesa.[^[215]]

Fire is never satisfied with fuel; nor the ocean with rivers; nor death with all creatures; nor bright-eyed women with men.

The verses are of course older than the trumpery story of the cowherd’s wife which they serve to illustrate. The coincidence with the Hebrew, being obviously accidental, is worth remembering in other connections. The two parallels, present in the Hebrew but not in this Sanskrit quaternion, are given in a quatrain of a Vedic hymn to Varuna—

The path of ships across the sea,

The soaring eagle’s flight he knows.[^[216]]

The second appendix (xxxi. 1-9) consists of a single group of sayings, described as ‘the words of Lemuel, a king, the prophecy [better the proverb, reading māshāl] with which his mother instructed him.’ Possibly, as Ewald suggests, Lemuel (or rather, Lemoel, as the word is pointed in ver. 4) is an imaginary name, descriptive of the character of an ideal monarch (‘God’s own;’ comp. Lael, Num. iii. 24). It is not necessary to suppose that the poet himself lived under a native king; he may, like the author of Koheleth, have thrown himself back in imagination to Israel’s golden prime. His own period was late, judging from the unclassical Hebrew (notice the Aramaisms in vv. 2, 3, and the strange expressions in vv. 5, 8). The form of the heading suggests that these ‘words of Lemuel’ formed part of the same collection as the ‘words of Agur;’ and there is at least nothing in the contents to forbid this view. The warnings of this queen-mother[^[217]] (whose relation to Lemuel reminds us of that of Bathsheba to Solomon) are very homely and practical; one is against sensuality, another against drunkenness; upon which follows an admonition to defend the cause of the poor. Even if there were no native king at the time, the advice would be appropriate for all members of the upper class of society.

The third appendix (xxxi. 10-31) contains the praise of the virtuous woman. In style it is quite unlike the two preceding sections; it must come therefore from another source. It is an alphabetic poem; each distich begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This, combined with the position of the work at the close of the various collections of proverbs, of itself suggests a date not far removed on the one side or the other from the Exile period, when Hebrew literature became undoubtedly more artificial and technical. From xxxi. 23 (‘the elders of the land’) we may perhaps infer that it was written in Palestine. It is very interesting to see the ideal of womanhood formed by a late Hebrew poet. Activity appears to him the one great feminine virtue—not however the activity which is entirely devoted to trifling details, for the ideal woman ‘is like the ships of the merchant; from far she brings her food’ (ver. 14). Nor is she a stranger to sympathetic impulses; ‘she holds out her hand (with something in it) to the afflicted, and stretches forth her hands to the needy [to bring them in],’ ver. 20. Nor must we forget ‘one of the most beautiful features in the portrait’ (Delitzsch): ‘she opens her mouth with wisdom, and a law of kindness is on her tongue’ (ver. 26). But for this verse, indeed, it would read almost like satire that ‘far above pearls is her value’ (ver. 10), since no higher estimate than this has been offered for God’s choicest blessing, ‘Wisdom.’[^[218]]

The poet does not say that he has found such a woman (comp. Eccles. vii. 28). The picture is perhaps too brightly coloured to be drawn from reality, unless with Hitzig we bring down the composition of the poem as late as the Greek period. Most probably, it is idealistic.

CHAPTER V.
THE PRAISE OF WISDOM.

‘Thou hast kept the good wine until now,’ for ‘good wine’ well describes the glorious little treatise at the head of our Book of Proverbs (i. 7-ix. 18). I do not think it is right to infer from the heading in i. 1 that its unknown author assumed the mask of Solomon. In itself such a hypothesis would not be incredible. We have the analogy of the Egyptian scribe who represents Amenemhat I. ‘rising up like a god’ and addressing to his son some instructions on the royal art of governing.[^[219]] But it is more natural to explain the heading as a repetition of the formula in x. 1, for the ‘Praise of Wisdom’ (to coin another title) is in fact the introduction to the following anthology,[^[220]] together with which and its appendices it forms the ‘older book of Proverbs.’ If we ask why an introduction was prefixed, the answer must be that the writer wished to recommend his own inspiring view of practical ethics as a branch of divine wisdom; in other words, to counteract the sometimes commonplace morality of the earlier proverbs by enveloping the reader in a purer and more ethereal atmosphere. The key-note of the anthology is nothing but Experience; that of the introductory treatise is Divine Teaching. It is a sign of moral progress that the editor of an anthology of Experience should have thought his work only half-done till he had prefixed the ‘Praise of Wisdom.’ As a wise teacher of our own time[^[221]] has observed, ‘It would not be untrue to say that in all essential points Experience is the teacher only of fools, of those who have gone astray through turning a deaf ear to the voice of a prior and more legitimate teacher.’ The nature of the wisdom so earnestly commended by this self-forgetting writer, we will consider presently; and our study will probably convince us that such a writer can only have arisen at an advanced period of Israel’s history. The class or circle to which he belonged, and its characteristics, can easily be determined; but the precise period only with some degree of hesitation. Without anticipating the discussion which will be given at another point, I think it may safely be laid down that each of those kindred poems—the ‘Praise of Wisdom’ and ‘Job’—must have arisen at one of three periods, marked respectively by the composition of Deuteronomy, by the Captivity, and by the Restoration. The progress of the higher Israelitish wisdom was so gradual that it does not perhaps, to the exegete as distinguished from the historian, greatly matter which of these periods we select. For my own part, however, I incline to connect at any rate the former of these works with the age of Deuteronomy. Apart from the details to be mentioned elsewhere, it is clear (I speak now of Prov. i.-ix.) that the tone of the exhortations, and the view of religion as ‘having the promise of the life that now is,’ correspond to similar characteristics of the Book of Deuteronomy. And if we turn from the contents to the form of this choice little book, the same hypothesis seems equally suitable. The prophets had long since seen the necessity of increasing their influence by committing the main points of their discourses to writing; some rhetorical passages indeed were evidently composed to be read and not to be heard. It was natural that the moralists should follow this example, not only (as in the anthologies) by remodelling their wise sayings for publication, but also by venturing on long and animated quasi-oratorical recommendations of great moral truths.

Such a recommendation, addressed especially to the young and impressionable (i. 4), lies before us in chaps. i.-ix. In grave but harmonious accents the opening verses (which refer chiefly to i. 7-ix. 18, but not without a secondary reference to the anthology which follows) describe its object and character. Then follows a motto, the first line of which occurs again near the close of the book in ix. 10 (Job xxviii. 28, Ps. cxi. 10), and which stamps the author as belonging to a new and more religious class of ‘wise men’ (see p. [121]),—

The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom,

i.e. the foundation of true wisdom (its ‘root,’ Ecclus. i. 20) is reverence. The disciple is to begin by taking this upon trust, but when further advanced he will see that it is the shortest way to his goal, true wisdom having an objective existence in the unseen world. At present he is simply to follow the ‘direction’ of those wiser than himself:—our moralist is as zealous for a tōra as the author of Deuteronomy. But though serious and authoritative, he is never stern; indeed, to enforce his appeal he breaks through a Hebrew writer’s usual veil of reticence and describes his own home-life (iv. 3, 4). He can enter into the feelings of the young, for he too has ‘borne the yoke in his youth’ (Lam. iii. 27), and learned to prefer it to ‘unchartered freedom.’ The whole of chap. iv. is devoted to a summary of the wise doctrine which he received from his father; indeed, throughout the book he shows a wonderful appreciation of the parental and the filial relations, and, according to Ewald’s arrangement (see below), begins each section with an exhortation to listen to parental instruction. He himself feels like a father to his young disciples (iv. 1).

The errors to which his hearers are specially tempted are highway robbery (i. 11-18, iv. 16, 17) and unchastity (ii. 16, v. 3-20, vi. 24-35, vii. 5-27, ix. 13-18). From the time that the simplicity of the ancient life began to give way to the inroads of luxury, we meet in the Biblical writings with complaints of acts of violence leading to murder (see, for instance, in the prophecies, Isa. i. 15, v. 7, xxxiii. 15, Mic. iii. 10, Jer. ii. 34, xxii. 17, Isa. lix. 3, 7, and in a collection of proverbs contemporary with our book, Prov. xxiv. 15, 16). ‘At no time,’ as Dean Plumptre well remarks, ‘has Palestine ever risen to the security of a well-ordered police-system;’ even down to the fall of Jerusalem, bands of robbers defied the authority of the central government. The remarkable thing is that young men in the higher circles of society (for such our moralist appears to address) should be thought capable of joining the banditti, at a time when ‘bandit’ could not be synonymous with ‘patriot.’ Our moralist contents himself with dissuading his disciple from doing so, on the ground of the retribution which will follow (i. 18, 19). The exhortation to industry, with its slow but sure profits, comes later, and in a less appropriate place (vi. 6-8). But the other besetting sin of youth is still more earnestly denounced as the most glaring specimen of ‘folly.’ Once indeed the ‘strange, or alien, woman,’ i.e. the adulteress, is introduced dramatically as ‘Madam Folly’ (ix. 13). The picture is remarkable, and forms a designed contrast to that at the beginning of the chapter. She sits at the door of her house, counterfeiting her great rival Wisdom (comp. ver. 14 with ver. 3, and ver. 16 with ver. 4), like Dante’s Siren; but the disciple of the ‘wise man’ knows

... that phantoms are there,

and that her guests are in the depths of Sheól

(ix. 18; comp. ii. 18, xxi. 16).

‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?’ is the problem for our moralist to solve. He does so by insisting on an education conducted in reliance on divine Wisdom. The reward of diligent attention to the earlier lessons (for each chapter is a lesson, and its repetitions have a pedagogic justification) is the famous portrait of Wisdom in viii. 22-31. She (for Wisdom, khokma, is a feminine word) has indeed been mentioned before (i. 20, iii. 13-20, iv. 5-9), but from viii. 1 to ix. 6 the poet is absorbed in his grand personification. Wisdom is now presented to us, in the familiar dialect of poetry, as the firstborn Child of the Creator. There is but one Wisdom; though her forms are many, in her origin she is one. The Wisdom who presided over the ‘birth’ of nature is the same who by her messengers (the ‘wise men’) calls mankind to turn aside from evil (ix. 3). There can therefore be no real disharmony between nature and morality; the picture leaves no room for an Ahriman, in this and other respects resembling the Cosmogony in Gen. i. and portions of the striking descriptions in Job xxvi., xxviii., xxxviii. There is also no time when we can say that ‘Wisdom was not.’ Faith declares that even in that primitive Chaos of which our reason has a horror divine Wisdom reigned supreme. The heavenly ocean, the ancient hills, the combination of countless delicate atoms to form the ground, the fixing of the vault of heaven on the world-encircling ocean, the separation of sea and dry land[^[222]]—all these were later works of God than the Architect through whom He made them. And how did the Architect work? By a ‘divine improvisation’ which allowed no sense of effort or fatigue, and which still continues with unabated freshness. But though her sportive path[^[223]] can still be traced in the processes of nature, her highest delight is in the regeneration of the moral life of humanity. The passage runs thus—

Jehovah produced[^[224]] me as the beginning of his way,

as the first of his works, long since.

From of old I received my place,

from the beginning, from the first times of the earth.

When there were no floods, I was brought forth,

when there were no fountains rich in water.

Before the mountains were settled,

before the hills was I brought forth;

While as yet he had not made the earth with (its) fields,

and the atoms of dust which form the ground.

When he established the heaven, I was there,

when he marked a circle upon the face of the flood,[^[225]]

When he made firm the sky above,

when he strengthened the fountains of the flood,

When he appointed to the sea his bound,

that the waters should not transgress his command,

when he fixed the foundations of the earth,

Then was I beside him as architect,

and was daily full of delight,

sporting[^[226]] before him at all times,

I who (still) have sport with his fruitful earth,

and have my delight with the sons of men.

The bold originality of this passage requires no proof. It cuts away at a blow the old mythical conception of the world as the work of God’s hands, and of an arbitrary omnipotence. ‘God,’ as Hooker says, ‘is a law both to himself and to all things beside;’ ‘his wisdom hath stinted the effects of his power.’ ‘Nor is the freedom of the will of God any whit abated, let, or hindered, by means of this; because the imposition of this law upon himself is his own free and voluntary act’ (‘Jehovah produced me’). The idea, then, of the world as a Cosmos was not adopted by the Jews from the Greeks; it arose of itself as soon as religious men pondered over the phenomena of nature. The author of Job took up the idea, and reexpressed it worthily in xxviii. 12-28, the chief difference between him and his predecessor being that he denies the attainableness for man of wisdom in the larger sense, while the author of the ‘Praise of Wisdom’ does not raise the question whether the higher department of wisdom is open to human enquiry.

At the subsequent history of the conception of Wisdom we can barely glance.[^[227]] The cosmogonist in Gen. i., a sublime thinker, but addressing untutored minds, preferred to convey truth in forms borrowed from mythology. The moralists however saw the poetical and religious importance of the personification of Wisdom, and repeatedly introduced it into their didactic works (see Ecclus. i., xxiv., Wisd. vi.-ix.,[^[228]] and comp. Bar. iii. 29-37). Sirach even takes a step in advance of his original, and at least for a moment identifies Wisdom with the Law of Moses.[^[229]] It became indeed a tradition of Jewish exegesis (see Pirke Aboth, vi. 10) to interpret the absolute Khokma of the Tora, either in opposition to Hellenistic views of the higher wisdom, or from a practical instinct such as Wordsworth followed when in praise of Duty he employed figures which had occurred long before in the ‘Praise of Wisdom,’ or (a closer parallel) Richard Hooker, when he described the Scripture as one embodiment of that divine Law which he so splendidly eulogises at the close of his first book. That Jewish legalism degenerated into a mechanical formalism, should not blind us to the practical instinct in which it originated.

The title ‘The Praise of Wisdom’ has now, I hope, been justified. The passage quoted above forms the high-water mark of this elevated poetry, and points the way to the grand things in the poem of Job. Regularity of structure is not a merit of our treatise, but the repetitions are not feeble, and are perhaps deliberately made. The author is a didactic poet, and only after he can presume that his lessons have been assimilated will he venture on his highest flights. Does Ewald bear this in mind when he divides the book into three sections, I. a general exhortation to wisdom, in which the whole of the truth is touched upon, but no part is completely unfolded (i. 8-iii. 35); II. an exhaustive treatment of a few details (iv. 1-vi. 19); III. a gradual rise to the highest and most universal truth, closing in almost lyric enthusiasm (vi. 20-ix. 18)? Or Hitzig, when, to suit an artificial arrangement, he omits as later additions iii. 22-26, vi. 1-19, viii. 4-12, 14-16, ix. 7-10? These are the two extremes of critical theory; their failure may be taken as a proof that the only possible division is one like that of Delitzsch into fifteen poems, rather loosely connected together, but presenting the same peculiarities of style and diction. Mashals we can only term them in a wide sense of the word; not condensation but expansion is the characteristic of this book; the discourse flows on till the subject has been exhausted, and then, after a brief pause, it gushes forth anew. One of the chapters (ii.) actually forms a single carefully elaborated sentence. Now and then the matter is more broken up; we meet with some small groups of detached sentences (e.g. iii. 27-35, vi. 1-11, 12-19), which introduce some variety into the style, and suggest that the author revised his work with the view of making it an ethical manual, as well as an introduction to the anthology. In one of these groups we find the interesting similitude of the ant, which the Septuagint has supplemented by one of purely Greek origin (see Hitzig and Lagarde) on the bee.

The author has the pen of a ready writer, and his work shows that he has studied the literature of his time. He was familiar[^[230]] with the phraseology of the ‘Solomonic’ proverbs, though he struck out a style of his own, in harmony with the altered conditions of the teaching office. He addresses those who have time to listen, and taste to appreciate his flowing rhetoric. He implies throughout that his audience belongs to the wealthier class, and his favourite images are drawn from the life of the merchant.[^[231]] Clearly too he has a strong hold upon the doctrine that prosperity and adversity are indicative of moral character. Thus, speaking of ethical Wisdom, he says,

Length of days is in her (Wisdom’s) right hand,

in her left riches and honour (iii. 16).[^[232]]

And yet there is evidence, even in Prov. i.-ix., of a nascent scepticism on this point, originating probably in some recent event, such as the captivity of the Ten Tribes. In words which remind us of Psalms xxxvii. and lxxiii. the writer exclaims—

Envy thou not the man of violence,

and have thou pleasure in none of his ways....

The curse of Jehovah is in the house of the ungodly,

but the habitation of the righteous he blesses (iii. 31, 33);

and to furnish his disciples with an answer to the sceptic—

Truly, whom Jehovah loves, he corrects,

and as a father the son in whom he delights

(iii. 12; comp. Job v. 17).

With this sweet saying I take leave for the present of this beautiful work. How true it is that the doubts of a believer are the stepping-stones to higher attainments of faith!

CHAPTER VI.
SUPPLEMENTARY ON QUESTIONS OF DATE AND ORIGIN.

There are two extreme views on the date of the Book of Proverbs, between which are the theories of the mass of moderate critics. The one is that represented by Keil in his Introduction and Bishop Ellicott’s Commentary, that the whole book except chaps. xxx., xxxi., and perhaps the heading i. 1-6, is in substance of Solomonic origin;[^[233]] the other is that of Vatke and Reuss (the precursors of Kuenen and Wellhausen) that our proverbs as a collection come from the post-Exile period. Much need not be said on the first of these extreme views. It has been pointed out already that the ethical and religious character even of the earliest proverbial collection stands far removed from that of the historical Solomon. It is indeed a pure hypothesis that any Solomonic element survives in the Book of Proverbs. I doubt not that many bright and witty sayings of Solomon came into circulation, and some of them might conceivably have been gathered up and included in the anthologies. But have we any adequate means of deciding which these are? It would appear from 1 Kings iv. 33 that the wisdom of the historical Solomon expressed itself in spoken fables or moralisations about animals and trees. A few, a very few, of the proverbs in our book may perhaps satisfy the test thus obtained, and be plausibly represented as a Solomonic element. But why Solomon should be singled out as the author, it would tax one’s ingenuity to say, and the judgment of Hitzig (in such matters a conservative critic) must be maintained that the survival of Solomonic proverbs is no more than a possibility.[^[234]]

The other extreme view requires some little explanation. Vatke does not deny that Solomon composed proverbs, but only that his proverbs can have resembled those in the canonical book. Putting aside some sayings of earlier date Vatke holds that the stamp of the post-Exile period (and more particularly of the fifth century) is as marked in the Book of Proverbs as it is, according to him, in that of Job; in short, that both works imply, equally with the still later Ecclesiastes, a long and earnest struggle between the principles represented respectively by the higher prophets and by the priests. The result of this struggle has become to the authors of these books an objective truth which it is henceforth their business to realise as true subjectively.[^[235]] The existence of a free-minded school of thought in the post-Exile period is very plausibly defended both by Vatke and by Kuenen,[^[236]] and if our only choice lay between the extreme alternatives mentioned above, we should be shut up to the acceptance of the latter.

I shall not however discuss here the post-Exile origin of the Book of Proverbs as a whole, but only that part of the hypothesis which relates to the very interesting section designated by Ewald the ‘Praise of Wisdom.’ If this portion is not of Exile or post-Exile origin, I do not see how it can be maintained that any other part of the book is so, except indeed the sayings of Agur and Lemuel (xxx. 1-xxii. 9).

The following are some of the leading arguments for the late origin of Prov. i.-ix. I. These chapters are said to contain a few parallels to passages in works belonging probably to the Exile or post-Exile period (II. Isaiah,[^[237]] Job). I lay no stress on the occurrence of Prov. i. 16 (with the addition of ‘innocent’) in Isa. lix. 7a, because this verse is not in the rhythm of the rest of Prov. i.-ix., and is not found in the Septuagint. There may however be a parallelism between Prov. ii. 15 and Isa. lix. 8; the prophet is, at any rate, influenced by some proverbial work similar to Prov. i.-ix. There may also be one between Prov, i. 24, 26, 27 and Isa. lxv. 12, lxvi. 4. More striking are the affinities already pointed out between Prov. i.-ix. and the Book of Job, which may be taken to prove that these works proceeded from the same circle of ‘wise men,’ but not necessarily that they are of the same period (see above, p. 85).

II. As to the religious ideas of these chapters, (a) The Theism expressed is both pure and broad. Polytheism is not even worthy to be the subject of controversy; the tone is throughout positive. Jehovah’s vast creative activity fills the writer’s mind, and begins to stimulate speculative curiosity; from this point of view comp. Prov. viii. 22-31 with Job xv. 7, 8,[^[238]] xxxviii. 4-11, and Gen. i. (The affinities with the cosmogony are only general,[^[239]] but perhaps gain in importance when taken together with the possible allusion to Gen. ii. in Prov. iii. 18, ‘She is a tree of life’ &c.) (b) It is no objection to the Exile or post-Exile date that the doctrine of invariable retribution is presupposed in this treatise. We find this doctrine both in the speeches of Elihu (Job. xxxii.-xxxvii., a separate work in its origin) and in the Wisdom of Sirach. There is some weight in these arguments. But it can, I think, be shown that the age of Jeremiah contained the germs of various mental products which only matured in the later periods, and Reuss seems to me singularly wilful in assuming that the personification of Wisdom of itself proves the late date of Prov. i.-ix.

III. The luxurious living implied in Prov i.-ix. would suit the Exile and post-Exile period. As soon as the Jews had the chance of participating in the world’s good things, they eagerly availed themselves of it. The prominence of the retribution doctrine in these nine chapters might possibly be accounted for by the prosperity of many of the dispersed Jews. To me however the expression ‘peace-offerings’ (vii. 14) points away from Babylon, just as the expression ‘yarn of Egypt’ in vii. 16 points away from Egypt.

IV. The phraseology of these chapters (as well as of the rest of the book) is said by Hartmann[^[240]] to be late. His instances of late and Aramaising words and forms require testing; an argument of this sort (except in more extreme cases) is not conclusive as to date. Reuss appears to base his linguistic argument rather on the clearness of the style, which ‘betrays this section to be the latest part of the book.’[^[241]] Nöldeke however more soberly infers, from the ‘flowingness and facility of the language,’ that the author lived subsequently to Isaiah.[^[242]]

On the whole, I am compelled to reject the hypothesis of either the Exile or the post-Exile origin of Prov. i.-ix. The Exile-date seems to be excluded by Prov. vii. 14, which implies the sacrificial system; the post-Exile by the want of any sufficient reason for descending so late in the course of history. The fifth century in particular, to which Vatke refers the whole Book of Proverbs, seems to me out of the question for this section of the book. Before the time of Sirach, I cannot find a period in the post-Exile history in which the life of Jerusalem can have much resembled the picture given of it in Prov. i.-ix. But Sirach’s evident imitation of the ‘Praise of Wisdom’ (we shall come back to this in studying Ecclesiasticus) seems of itself to suggest that Prov. i.-ix. is the monument of an earlier age, and this is confirmed by Sirach’s different attitude towards ceremonial religion.

There remains the hypothesis that the treatise, Prov. i.-ix., was written towards the close of the kingdom of Judah. There seems to me no sufficient argument against this view, which agrees with the result above attained on the relation of Prov. i.-ix. to the Book of Job (p. 85). The collapse of the state was sudden, and for some time after the composition or at least promulgation of the Deuteronomic Tōra the Jews appeared to be in the enjoyment of national prosperity. Now the author of Prov. i.-ix. depicts a state of outward prosperity and is evidently familiar with the exhortations of Deuteronomy. Who, as Delitzsch remarks, can fail to hear in Prov. i. 7-ix. an echo of the Shemà (‘hear’), Deut. vi. 4-9 (comp. xi. 18-21)? This is quite consistent with the opinion that Prov. i.-ix. is later than the proverbs in the two principal collections of our book, an opinion which commends itself to most[^[243]] especially on account of the higher moral standard of Prov. i.-ix., and its advance in the treatment of literary form.

I have said ‘the composition or at least promulgation’ of Deuteronomy. If Deuteronomy was written (which is at least possible) as early as the reign of Hezekiah,[^[244]] we may perhaps follow Ewald, who places the ‘Praise of Wisdom’ in the period of relative prosperity which, he thinks, closed the reign of Manasseh.[^[245]] It is noteworthy that Mic. vi., which Ewald plausibly assigns to the period of Manasseh’s persecution, also presents some points of contact with Deuteronomy.[^[246]] And yet it seems to me safer to date the book in the reign of Josiah, when, as we know from history and prophecy, the discourses of Deuteronomy first became generally known.

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Next, as to the body of the work. That the collection in x. 1-xxii. 16 is the earliest part of the book is admitted by most critics. The fact that chaps. i.-ix. present linguistic points of contact with it, does not prove the two parts to be of the same date, for the opening chapters also display peculiarities quite unlike those of the ‘Solomonic’ anthology.[^[247]] I have already set forth my own view on this and on other critical points, and will now only register the results of Ewald and of Delitzsch. Both are agreed that the older Book of Proverbs extends from i. 1 to xxiv. 22, i. 1-6 (or 7) being the descriptive heading of the work, and i. 7 (or 8)-ix. 18 a hortatory treatise, by the author, more or less introductory to the sayings which follow. The date of the collection of the latter Ewald places at the beginning of the eighth century; that of the heading and introduction in the middle of the seventh. Towards the end of the seventh century the three appendices (xxii. 17-xxiv. 22, xxiv. 23-35, xxv. 1-xxix. 27) were added; the contents of the two former were derived from two popular proverbial collections, while the latter was a great and officially sanctioned anthology dating from the end of the eighth century. The remaining parts of the book (xxx. 1-xxxi. 9, and xxxi. 10-31) Ewald assigns to the seventh century. Delitzsch (whose view is perhaps the most conservative one still tenable) dates the publication of the first Book of Proverbs as early as the reign of Jehoshaphat (referring to 2 Chr. xvii. 7-9). To its editor he ascribes not only the authorship of i. 1-ix. 18 but the conclusion of the ‘older book’ by the words of the wise, xxii. 17-xxiv. 22, while a later editor is responsible both for the supplementary sayings of the wise, xxiv. 22-34, and for the great Hezekian collection, of which he thus ensured the preservation. The same person probably appended the obscure sayings of Agur (xxx.) and of Lemuel (xxxi. 1-9), possibly too the closing alphabetic poem (xxxi. 10-31), which is assigned by Delitzsch to the pre-Hezekian period. Both Ewald and Delitzsch are substantially agreed as to the existence of a genuine Solomonic element in both the great anthologies (especially in the first), but upon very conjectural grounds.

One point only remains to be considered, however briefly. The Book of Job has already furnished an example of the poetical fiction of the non-Israelitish authorship of a Hebrew poem. It is possible enough that this and the similar instance of the Balaam-oracles were not alone in Hebrew literature. Nor are they so, if a view of the first words of the headings in Prov. xxx. 1, xxxi. 1, which has found many friends, be correct, and we may render in the one case, ‘The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, of (the country of) Massa,’ reading either mimmassā (or, as Delitzsch proposes, mimmēshā or hammassā’ī[^[248]]); and in the other, ‘The words of Lemuel the king of Massa.’ Mühlau in his monograph on ‘Agur’ and ‘Lemuel’ thinks that both the contents and the language of the sayings of Agur ‘almost necessarily point to a region bordering on the Syro-Arabian wastes,’ but his theory of an Israelitish colony in a certain Massa in the Hauran (comp. 1 Chr. v. 10), like a somewhat similar theory of Hitzig’s (he places ‘Massa’ in N. Arabia, comparing 1 Chr. iv. 42, 43, where the Simeonites are said to have settled in Mount Seir, and Isa. xxi. 11, 12[^[249]]), is too conjectural to be readily accepted. There is however much force in a part of the arguments of Mühlau, especially in his first and second (referring to xxxi. 1), ‘The word melek in apposition to Lemuel cannot go without the article,’[^[250]] and ’Massā “utterance” is never used elsewhere except of (prophetic) oracles.’ If any one therefore likes to adopt the above renderings, taking Massa as the name of a country (comp. Gen. xxv. 14, 1 Chr. i. 30), I have no strong objection. Ziegler’s view cited by Mühlau,[^[251]] that Lemuel was an Emeer of an Arabian tribe in the east of Jordan, and that an Israelitish wise man translated the Emeer’s sayings into Hebrew, is perhaps not as untenable as Mühlau thinks, provided that ‘translation’ be taken to include recasting in accordance with the spirit of the Old Testament religion. For my own part, however, I prefer the simpler explanation given already in considering chaps. xxx., xxii. 1-9. I account for the Aramaisms, Arabisms, and other peculiarities of these sections by their post-Exile origin, with which the character of the contents of the most striking portion, xxx. 1-6, appears to me to harmonise (notice e.g. the strong faith in the words of revelation in xxx. 5). But I am not writing a commentary, and can only draw the reader’s attention to some of the most important exegetical phenomena. Let me refer in conclusion to a critical note on p. 175, which has a bearing on the question raised by some whether Job and this part of Proverbs may fitly be called Hebræo-Arabic works. It is strange that Hitzig should have renounced the support for his theory (see p. 171) to be obtained from Prov. xxx. 31.

CHAPTER VII.
THE TEXT OF PROVERBS.

The sense of proverbs is naturally most difficult to catch when there has been no attempt to group them by subjects. Hence the textual difficulties of so large a part of the earliest anthology. Grätz has made some valuable among many too arbitrary corrections; but a systematic use of the ancient versions is still a desideratum. Lagarde, Oort, Bickell, and others have led the way; but much yet remains to be done. My space only allows me to give some preliminary hints, which may at least stimulate further inquiry, on the relation of the Hebrew text to the versions, especially the Septuagint version (if I should not rather speak of ‘versions’). How comes it, we may ask first of all, that the Septuagint contains so many passages not found in the Hebrew? One answer is that in a foreign land, with a new language and a new circle of ideas, explanation was as necessary to the Hellenistic Jews as translation. Hence the tendency of the Septuagint translators to introduce glosses. But the form of the Book of Proverbs specially favoured interpolations. Sometimes only a few words were inserted to make the text more distinct (e.g. i. 22, xii. 25, xxiv. 23); at other times explanatory or suggested remarks were added, at first perhaps in the margin. Of course, it is perfectly conceivable that the received Hebrew text itself may contain similar additions; the analogy of other books, in which such interpolations occur, even favours this idea. One such insertion is patent; there can be no doubt that i. 16 was added in the Hebrew, to the detriment of the connection, from Isa. lix. 7. As this passage is wanting in the best MSS. of the Septuagint, we might be tempted to use this version as a means of detecting other interpolations in the Hebrew. This however would lead us into researches of too much complexity.

Some of the Septuagint additions are also found in the Vulgate, some again also in the Peshitto; and where a Septuagint addition is not found in the Vulgate we may, at least in some cases, assume that the Septuagint text did not in St. Jerome’s time contain the additional matter. Among the most interesting passages from a text-critical point of view peculiar to the Septuagint are those found at iii. 15, iv. 27, vi. 8, 11, vii. 2, ix. 12,[^[252]], 18, xi. 16, xii. 13, xv. 18, xvi. 5, xix. 7, xxvi. 11, xxvii. 20, 21, xxviii. 10. Most of these can be rendered back into Hebrew, though this is difficult with vi. 11b as it stands, and impossible with vi. 8 (‘the bee’). In any case the Hebrew origin of a proverb does not prove that it was inserted by the original collector or collectors. With regard to the Targum and its deviations from the Hebrew text, it is to be observed that this version has the same relation to the Peshitto as the Vulgate to the old Latin version on which it is based. The Peshitto translates from a Hebrew text substantially the same as our own; though the translator has consulted the Septuagint (according to Hitzig) in the portion of the book beginning at vii. 23.

There are also some remarkable transpositions in the Septuagint Proverbs, reminding us of those in the Septuagint Jeremiah. The three appendices to the Hezekian collection are given in a very different order from that of the Hebrew. The first fourteen verses of chap. xxx. are inserted between ver. 22 and ver. 23 of chap. xxiv., and all the remainder, together with xxxi. 1-9, is placed before chap. xxv. The treatment of the headings in the Septuagint is also remarkable, and seems arbitrary; e.g. it looks as if the translator had expunged all those peculiarities in the superscriptions which suggested a variety of authorship. The proper names in chaps. xxx., xxxi. have been explained away, and the heading in x. 1, which limits the Solomonic authorship too much for the translator, has been actually omitted.

On the Septuagint additions to Proverbs, comp. Deane in Expositor, 1884, pp. 297-301; on the larger subject of the Greek and the Hebrew text, see introduction to Hitzig’s commentary, Lagarde’s Anmerkungen &c., and a series of papers, thorough but less masterly than Hitzig’s or Lagarde’s work, by Heidenheim (title in ‘Aids to the Student,’ below).