Such, then, is the significance of these features which we have been considering—the numerical proverbs, parallels with sayings of other nations, the love of the Jews for proverbs with their consequent skill in making them, and their remarkable penchant for concrete expression. Otherwise, antiquity has left few traces in the Jewish proverbs. That, however, is but natural, since proverb-making was a living art among the people. New maxims kept coming into use, and they crowded out of memory the favourites of byegone generations. Doubtless a few of the sayings in the Book of Proverbs are ancient, though just how old we cannot tell. For example, P. 2720, Sheol and Abaddon are never filled, and the eyes of man are never sated may be co-æval with the fear of death and the passion of greed. Cheyne discovers a relic of “that old nomadic love of craft and subtlety” in the saying (Pr. 223), A shrewd man sees misfortune coming and conceals himself, whereas simpletons pass on and suffer for it; but his interpretation of the verse seems somewhat forced. The following, however, in matter and perhaps in form also may be nearly as ancient as the settled occupation of the land:
Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers set up. (Pr. 2228).
Nothing could well be easier than the removal of those landmarks—insignificant heaps of stone, set at the end of a wide furrow. But from earliest times the East has counted them adequate guardians of the fields, and from generation to generation, by consent of all decent-minded men, they have stood inviolate. Other nations, as well as Israel, called them sacred. Greece, and Rome too, gave them a god for their protection, Hermes of the Boundary, beside whose shrine of heaped-up stones travellers would stay to rest, and, rested, lay an offering of flowers or fruit before the kindly deity:
“I, who inherit the tossing mountain-forests of steep Cyllene stand here guarding the pleasant playing-fields, Hermes, to whom boys often offer marjoram and hyacinths and fresh garlands of violet.”[28]
Even the thief and murderer, we are told, would hesitate before the wickedness of moving these simple, immemorial heaps of stone: such was their sanctity. What unutterable contempt for the laws of God and man is therefore revealed in the multiple witness of the Old Testament[29] against the rich and powerful in Israel, that they scrupled not to remove the landmarks of their poorer brethren? Thieves and murderers would have kept their hands clean from such pollution:
Remove not the landmark of the widow,
Into the field of the orphan enter not;
For mighty is their Avenger,
He will plead their cause against thee (Pr. 2310, 11).
CHAPTER IV
The Day of Small Things
Popular as the custom of making and of hearing “wise words” may have been in ancient Israel, it is not surprising that only five or six proverbial sayings are recorded in the early writings of the Old Testament. For proverbs are not likely to receive mention in literature. They are too plain for the poet, too vague for the historian, too complaisant for the law-maker. And even these five or six, it appears, have been preserved not for any merit they possess as proverbs: one is of local interest only, two are picturesque, but obscure, two are the merest truisms. The right question, therefore, is not “Why are there so few?”, but “Why have these sayings been rescued from oblivion?”; and, being preserved, “Why should they receive our attention?”
Suppose that in Britain fifty or a hundred years hence men should quote “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,” when they seek an expression for the pathos and heroism that mark the acceptance of a difficult and perilous task—if those words live, why will they live? Obviously for no intrinsic merit, but for the undying memory of men who counted not their lives dear unto themselves. So with these early proverbs in the Bible. Each of them came into quickening contact with a great personality, or played a part in one of those fateful moments when the fortunes of a people or the trend of human thinking has been determined this way or that. They have lived because each has been touched by the passion of humanity. Therefore we have to study them not in isolation from the context, but in close connection with the scene or circumstance that gave them unexpected immortality.