[180]. The word for ‘mast’ is a ἅπ. λεγ. The Septuagint and Peshitto have ‘as a steersman (or seaman) in great breakers.’
[181]. xxiv. 23b is no exception; it is merely the first line of a hexastich.
[182]. For ‘and afterwards’ the Hebrew has ‘afterwards and thou shalt build.’ ‘And’ may mean ‘then,’ marking out the perfect as consecutive, but it may also have been intended to join two parts of a sentence.
[183]. ‘These also’ suggests that what follows is a last gleaning of Solomonic proverbs. And in fact xxv. 24, xxvi. 13, 15, 22, xxvii. 12, 13, 21a, seem to be taken from the ‘Solomonic’ collection. Hitzig however rejects this view. Why did not the collectors combine all the Solomonic proverbs they could find in one work? So he supposes this new collection to have been made ‘aus dem Volksmunde,’ and remarks that a commission would be specially appropriate for this task. To me this seems an anachronism. The proverbs of the Hezekian collection are moreover as artistic as those of the first ‘Solomonic.’
[184]. So virtually the Septuagint (ἑξεγράψαντο), followed by the Peshitto and the Targum: Aquila, μετῆραν. The Greek, curiously enough, inserts an epithet for the proverbs, viz. αἱ ἀδιάκριτοι, i.e. either impossible to distinguish, miscellaneous (so Sophocles, Lexicon), or better, difficult to interpret. Symmachus has ἀδιάκριτος for bōhū, Gen. i. 2. The Peshitto and Targum render the Greek of our passage by ‘deep proverbs,’ i.e. enigmatical ones (so too Aquila and Theodotion in the Syro-hexapla).
[185]. Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, i. 228-9 (on Isa. xxxviii. 9).
[186]. Sayce’s ed. of Smith’s Chaldean Genesis, pp. 15, 26, 27.
[187]. Sept., Symm., Pesh., Vulg., however, attach the lost line of ver. 7 to ver. 8 (‘Quæ viderunt oculi tui, ne proferas in jurgio cito’), which makes ver. 7 a distich and ver. 8 a tetrastich.
[188]. Reading b’khōm for b’yōm with Sept.
[189]. Literally, ‘a word spoken (or, perhaps, driven, or sent home) on its wheels,’ i.e. smoothly and elegantly (‘ore rotundo’). So Schultens, who sees a reference to the tropes and figures of elegant Oriental style. Comp. Neil, Palestine Explored, p. 197. The interpretation is an attractive one, though uncertain. Ewald has a slightly different view (see History, ii. p. 14, n. 6).