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),—