The sense of proverbs is naturally most difficult to catch when there has been no attempt to group them by subjects. Hence the textual difficulties of so large a part of the earliest anthology. Grätz has made some valuable among many too arbitrary corrections; but a systematic use of the ancient versions is still a desideratum. Lagarde, Oort, Bickell, and others have led the way; but much yet remains to be done. My space only allows me to give some preliminary hints, which may at least stimulate further inquiry, on the relation of the Hebrew text to the versions, especially the Septuagint version (if I should not rather speak of ‘versions’). How comes it, we may ask first of all, that the Septuagint contains so many passages not found in the Hebrew? One answer is that in a foreign land, with a new language and a new circle of ideas, explanation was as necessary to the Hellenistic Jews as translation. Hence the tendency of the Septuagint translators to introduce glosses. But the form of the Book of Proverbs specially favoured interpolations. Sometimes only a few words were inserted to make the text more distinct (e.g. i. 22, xii. 25, xxiv. 23); at other times explanatory or suggested remarks were added, at first perhaps in the margin. Of course, it is perfectly conceivable that the received Hebrew text itself may contain similar additions; the analogy of other books, in which such interpolations occur, even favours this idea. One such insertion is patent; there can be no doubt that i. 16 was added in the Hebrew, to the detriment of the connection, from Isa. lix. 7. As this passage is wanting in the best MSS. of the Septuagint, we might be tempted to use this version as a means of detecting other interpolations in the Hebrew. This however would lead us into researches of too much complexity.
Some of the Septuagint additions are also found in the Vulgate, some again also in the Peshitto; and where a Septuagint addition is not found in the Vulgate we may, at least in some cases, assume that the Septuagint text did not in St. Jerome’s time contain the additional matter. Among the most interesting passages from a text-critical point of view peculiar to the Septuagint are those found at iii. 15, iv. 27, vi. 8, 11, vii. 2, ix. 12,[[252]], 18, xi. 16, xii. 13, xv. 18, xvi. 5, xix. 7, xxvi. 11, xxvii. 20, 21, xxviii. 10. Most of these can be rendered back into Hebrew, though this is difficult with vi. 11b as it stands, and impossible with vi. 8 (‘the bee’). In any case the Hebrew origin of a proverb does not prove that it was inserted by the original collector or collectors. With regard to the Targum and its deviations from the Hebrew text, it is to be observed that this version has the same relation to the Peshitto as the Vulgate to the old Latin version on which it is based. The Peshitto translates from a Hebrew text substantially the same as our own; though the translator has consulted the Septuagint (according to Hitzig) in the portion of the book beginning at vii. 23.
There are also some remarkable transpositions in the Septuagint Proverbs, reminding us of those in the Septuagint Jeremiah. The three appendices to the Hezekian collection are given in a very different order from that of the Hebrew. The first fourteen verses of chap. xxx. are inserted between ver. 22 and ver. 23 of chap. xxiv., and all the remainder, together with xxxi. 1-9, is placed before chap. xxv. The treatment of the headings in the Septuagint is also remarkable, and seems arbitrary; e.g. it looks as if the translator had expunged all those peculiarities in the superscriptions which suggested a variety of authorship. The proper names in chaps. xxx., xxxi. have been explained away, and the heading in x. 1, which limits the Solomonic authorship too much for the translator, has been actually omitted.
On the Septuagint additions to Proverbs, comp. Deane in Expositor, 1884, pp. 297-301; on the larger subject of the Greek and the Hebrew text, see introduction to Hitzig’s commentary, Lagarde’s Anmerkungen &c., and a series of papers, thorough but less masterly than Hitzig’s or Lagarde’s work, by Heidenheim (title in ‘Aids to the Student,’ below).
NOTE ON PROVERBS XXX. 31.
Some assume here a corruption of the text, but the margin of the Revised Version gives an appropriate sense. It implies indeed the admission of a downright Arabism, but there are parallels for this in vv. 15, 16, 17, and alqūm for the Arabic al-qaum is (see Gesenius) like elgābhīsh (Ezek. xiii. 11, 13, xxxviii. 22) and almōdād (Gen. x. 26). ‘The king when his army is with him’ may very fitly be adduced as a specimen of the ‘comely in going.’ M. Halévy indeed has suggested that qūm in alqūm may be the Qāvam or Qājam often mentioned in the Sinaitic inscriptions (Bulletin No. 28 of the Société de Linguistique; see Academy, March 27, 1886). But the former view is still the more plausible one. Why should a king with whom is ‘God Qavam’ be described as specially ‘comely in going’? Wetzstein too has stated that alqaum is still pronounced al-qōm by the Bedawins. Comp. Blau, Zeitschr. d. deutschen morg. Ges., xxv. 539.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.
It is only in modern times that the Book of Proverbs has been disparaged; the early Christian Fathers considered it to be of much ethico-religious value. Hence the sounding title, first used by Clement of Rome (Cor., c. 57), ἡ πανάρετος σοφία. From our point of view, indeed, the value of the book is different in its several parts, but no part is without its use. Can any Christian help seeing the poetic foregleams of Christ in the great monologue of Wisdom in chap. viii.? Dorner may be right in maintaining that the idea of the Incarnation cannot have been evolved from Hebraism or Judaism, and yet the description of Wisdom, ‘sporting with Jehovah’s world’ and ‘having her delights with the sons of men’ (viii. 31), cannot but remind us of the sympathetic, divine-human Teacher, who ‘took the form of a servant.’ How deeply this great section has affected the theology of the past, I need not here relate. Will it ever lose its value as a symbolic picture of the combined transcendence and immanence of the Divine Being?
Turning to the other parts of the book, do they not furnish abundant justification of that type of Christianity which accepts but does not dwell on forms, so bent is it upon moral applications of the religious principle? Do they not show that the ‘fear of the Lord’ is quite compatible with a deep interest in average human life and human nature? The Book of Proverbs, taken as a whole, seems to supply the necessary counterweight to the psalms and the prophecies. The psalmists love God more than aught else; but must every one say, ‘Possessing this, I have pleasure in nothing upon earth’ (Ps. lxxiii. 26)? Would it be good to be always in this mood? Is there not something more satisfactory in the Pauline saying, ‘All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s’? And as for the prophets—do they not (we may conjecture and perhaps partly prove this) depreciate too much the morality and religion of their neighbours? The Book of Proverbs gives us only average morality and religion; yet, if we judge it fairly, how pleasing on the whole is the picture! Taking it as equally authoritative with the psalms and prophecies, shall we not rise to a more comprehensive religion than a mere pupil of psalmists or prophets knew—to one that charges us, not to love God less, but our neighbour more? It would no doubt be easy to criticise the Book from a New Testament point of view. But the New Testament itself has absorbed much that is best in it, and quotations from it occur not unfrequently, especially in the Epistles. Nor can any teacher of the people afford to neglect its stores of happily expressed practical wisdom. We must not even despise its ‘utilitarianism.’ The awful declarations of ‘Wisdom’ in Prov. i. 24-32 are simply the voice of the personified laws of God[[253]] warning men that the consequences of their acts, even if they may be overruled for good, yet cannot by any cunning be escaped. Does the New Testament quite supersede this form of teaching? And does not the Hebrew sage once at least give a suggestion of that very overruling love of God which is among the characteristic ideas of Christian lore (see Prov. iii. 11)?