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.
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.