[170]. This word (takhbūlōth) also occurs in xxiv. 6, i. 5, Job xxxvii. 12.
[171]. For m’raddēf read m’gaddēf.
[172]. Landberg denies that Maidani’s proverbs were ever really popular, but A. Müller judges that this view is extravagant (Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, xii. 441).
[173]. The text has ‘than he who is perverse in his lips and is a fool.’ With Grätz, I follow the Peshitto and (partly) the Vulgate.
[174]. Pointing ōbhēd, with Hitzig, Ewald, and Bickell; comp. ver, 11. Dijserinck ingeniously emends çōbhēr ‘heaps up’ (i.e. saves).
[175]. Comp. Thomson, The Land and the Book, pp. 336-8.
[176]. The word is behēma (Seneca’s ‘muta animalia’). Schopenhauer, thinking perhaps of the Levitical sacrifices, accuses the Old Testament of cruelty to animals. But see, besides this passage, Gen. i. 27-29, Num. xxii. 28, Jon. iv. 11.
[177]. With Hitzig and others, taking ’îsh as a softened form yēsh (comp. 2 Sam. xiv. 19, Mic. vi. 10); the yōd is kept as in Aramaic. So Targ., Pesh.
[178]. At the end of ver. 19 Bickell nearly follows Sept. Cod. Vat., τὴν ὁδόν σου (A.C.S. αὐτοῦ). But as this takes the place of hayyōm, it would seem that Bickell ought to begin ver. 20 with af ethmōl. This however would not suit his metrical theory.
[179]. The phraseological resemblance of xxiii. 19b to iv. 14b is incomplete. As for khokmōth in xxiv. 7, it means simply ‘wisdom’ (as in xiv. 1, where khakmōth is wrong); the parallelism with i. 20, ix. 1 is not of critical importance. Any real points of contact (such as xxiii. 23a; comp. iv. 5, 7) can be accounted for by imitation, and one could easily bring together points of difference.