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]]