Several interesting maxims of the Wise concerning Wealth and Poverty are kept for consideration in a subsequent chapter, and some have already been recorded, but the topic is one so intimately affecting the common weal that here also it must receive mention. These Wisdom proverbs are sometimes charged with exhibiting too mundane an attitude towards riches, so frankly and unreservedly do certain of them recognise the material advantages wealth confers. For the moment, however, we are not concerned with a general judgment but with noting ideals. Isolating therefore the nobler sayings, we find emphasis rightly laid on the broad distinction between just and unjust gains. For the former riches, which were the reward of diligence and shrewd but upright conduct, there is cordial approbation. Our deeper modern perplexities as to the proper distribution of wealth was of course beyond the Wise-men’s ken; it is enough that we find them clear on the issue presented to their day and generation: The treasures of wickedness, said they, profit nothing (Pr. 102)—Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity than he that is perverse in his ways, though he be rich (Pr. 286)—Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice (Pr. 168), and lastly the noble passage (Pr. 307-9, see p. 121) in praise of the Golden Mean will perhaps be remembered.
Further the Sages were stern in denunciation of greed and of indifference to the needs of the poor and defenceless: for instance, He that augmenteth his substance by usury and interest gathereth for him that hath pity on the poor (Pr. 288)—The Lord will root up the house of the proud, but he will establish the property of the widow (Pr. 1525); and correspondingly, they exalted the virtues of generosity and kindly help He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack, but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse (Pr. 2827)—Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in thy power to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, “Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give,” when thou hast it by thee (Pr. 327, 28).
The ideals of the Sages, so far as they are immediately visible in the proverbs, have now been given, at least in broad outline. It remains to sum up and to consider the result. Of the vices condemned, deeds of violence and sins of the flesh are prominent enough, but (and the fact is remarkable) almost equal stress is laid on the iniquity of many of the sins of the spirit. Thus, pride, jealousy, malice, revenge, contentiousness, and all forms of dishonesty, guile, and treachery are the way of the wicked; whereas humility, charity, peaceableness, purity of heart, and honest purpose mark the upright man. To be indolent, obstinate, and passionate in speech or action is characteristic of the fool intellectual and the fool ethical; whereas the sensible man is diligent, faithful to his friends, helpful to his neighbours, tactful and teachable. On the last point the Wise were urgent, and they deserve praise for their insight: that men have need to be apt to learn, not merely when they are young and ignorant, but after they have attained maturity and learnt much, is doctrine as important as it is unpopular. The frigid discipline advised by the Sages for the upbringing of children must be admitted to be harsh, but perhaps the conditions of the age almost dictated it, and at least it reflects the value that the Wise most rightly placed on learning young. Moreover, stern as their rule may seem, they did not deem it incompatible with the growth of affection and trust between fathers and sons. Of womanly virtue they held a high ideal, and the esteem felt for the good wife and wise mother was, for the ancient world, extraordinarily great. Ideal relations between master and servant were conceived in terms of fidelity, care for the interests of both parties, and possibly of friendship. In the perfect State there would be an upright government, riches acquired by just means only, and generous care to preserve the poor from suffering. There would be commercial honesty, thrift and industry; no slander, no impurity, no impiety, but only honourable and prudent conduct: in short, a peaceful, prosperous, kindly and contented society, devoted primarily to the pursuit neither of comfort nor of pleasure nor of riches, but of high Wisdom. Finally, as the climax, we must remember those exalted proverbs demanding the exercise of mercy, forgiveness, mutual help and love.
The standard of character the Wise thus set before men is open to adverse comment. It savours of salvation by merit. That therefore it falls below the Christian ideal, and below the majestic and penetrating conception of human possibilities that the great Hebrew Prophets urged, is undeniable. But such radical criticism may for the moment be put aside; later on we shall discuss what may be the relative values of the Wise-men’s words and works. For the present all that is desirable is to consider certain surprising features which the reader may have noted in this outline of Good and Evil.
First, then, there are curious deficiencies in the list of the Virtues. Several qualities we admire are ignored or touched rarely and with hesitation, as for example Courage. But, with one exception, these gaps in the Ideal are not so serious as might appear. The proverbs do not show all that was in their authors’ minds and hearts. Altogether fallacious, as we shall see later, would be the notion that the prudence of the Wise was really pusillanimous, that they had in reality no place for courage in their conception of life, as they have little or no room for its mention in their proverbs. The valid inference from these absences is only that, as Toy says, “the Wise attached more importance to other qualities as effective forces in the struggle of life.” But what can possibly be said concerning the apparent absence of Religion, the exception alluded to above? That which one looked to find in the foreground of the picture—where is it? Yet even in this point the plea just made might be repeated. The immediate object of the Wise was to commend certain ethical conduct as being, despite appearances, the right line to follow in order to command true success in the contingencies of daily life; and in pursuance of that task they could say a great many things without requiring to express their views on ritual worship or theological belief. Still, when the point at issue is a man’s love for religion, to plead simply that he more or less ignored it in his teaching because other qualities seemed more effective in the struggle of life, would verily be a thin apology. The real reply to this serious charge is vastly stronger. It is the admission that our exposition of the Wise-men’s thoughts has not been fair to them. One emphatic and reiterated proverb of theirs, which is evidently a key-proverb and interpretative of the general tenor of all their teaching, has not yet been given, and it is essentially religious:
THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE FOUNDATION OF WISDOM:
AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOLY ONE IS UNDERSTANDING (Pr. 910; 17).
Consider the implication. The word “foundation” (usually rendered “beginning”) in Hebrew unites the notions both of “beginning” and “best”; and “fear,” of course, is to be interpreted religiously as “reverence” not as “terror.” Such awe of God (say the Wise) is to be reckoned the commencement of Wisdom and also Wisdom’s quintessence: it is both the root and the fruit of perfect living. Now Wisdom was the sublime source to which the Sages traced back even the simplest of their counsels, and the most practical of their observations on men and affairs; it was the creative sun, the derivative proverbs being, as it were, the rays by which its light is distributed over the whole of life. But now it appears that this sun and centre of all things itself was conceived as rising out of religious faith, for when the Sages considered this high Wisdom and asked what was its sum and substance, they answered, “The fear of the Lord,” and, when they wondered what might be its origin, again they answered, “God.” The fundamental importance of this one saying would therefore be obvious even if it stood alone as a solitary expression of faith. But other religious proverbs occur as we shall note in due course; for example, Ben Sirach’s opening words, All wisdom cometh from the Lord, and is ever with him (E. 11), or this—Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall make plain thy path (Pr. 35, 6). Such sayings may not be numerous in comparison with the secular sayings, but there are enough of them to show that the great proverb quoted above is not an isolated sentiment of formal piety thrust into a mass of worldly-wisdom for appearance’s sake. The soul of the Wise-men cannot accurately be gauged by deducting the few religious from the many non-religious proverbs, and drawing the inference that these men must have cared very little for God and overwhelmingly much for worldly prosperity. Human nature guards its secrets from such cynical or mechanical treatment. Rather will it be true that when, as here, even one earnest plea is made for the love of God as the ultimate inspiration of conduct, that will give us the heart of the whole matter to which all else is subsidiary and only to be interpreted in and through the underlying religious faith. Matter-of-fact, prudential, moralisms might be far more numerous than they are in these Jewish proverbs, and still it would not follow that the Wise-men were devoid of religious feeling or fervour. Some doubtless were, but others assuredly were not, and all (save an occasional sceptic) would have stoutly maintained the view that their counsel was derived from the ultimate, fundamental doctrine of “the fear of the Lord.”
The second obvious point of criticism is the indefiniteness apparent in this so-called Ideal of the Wise. Their ethic may justly be called redundant, or defective, or both; and in truth their Utopia, even in its broad outline, does seem too confused and too fragmentary to provide any coherent scheme. Contrast the relatively clear-cut work of the Hellenic thinkers who, starting also from similar vague popular notions of ethics, correlated, combined, and sifted the material until, as in the Stoic and other philosophies, precisely formulated systems were elaborated. Was not the Jewish lack of method fatal to effective teaching? No. The Wise did not, indeed could not, construct a strict unity out of their free-and-easy, uncorrelated aims. But they were not candidates for a degree in Moral Sciences, nor are their doctrines here exhibited as a satisfactory substitute for modern social philosophy. Their thinking, as a matter of fact, was definite enough to serve their day and generation. The position was not quite so serious as it may appear from a theoretical point of view. In reality, the Sages knew very well what they were aiming at, and had a reasonably clear idea of the type of character they wished to see developed in themselves and other men. Now it is fortunate that in the pages of Ecclesiasticus we possess not a little information about the thoughts, habits, and fortunes of its author, Jesus ben Sirach; for this man, though doubtless not a perfect embodiment of Wisdom, provides just what we most require at this point of our study—a historical figure, and an admirable and typical representative of his class. To envisage him will humanise our notion of the Wise-men and may give to their ideals a coherence which in the abstract they may seem to lack.
Jesus ben Sirach was a Jew of Jerusalem who lived about 250 to 180 B.C.; that is, well on in the period of Hellenic influence. By profession a scribe, he seems all his days to have been a man of earnest mind, naturally inclined to intellectual and literary pursuits. He was of good family, and presumably possessed of considerable means, to judge by his life-long leisure for study, the tone of his remarks on wealth, his easy and regular participation in social entertainment, and his foreign travels, which provided the one stirring episode in a placid career. From some remarks in his book we gather that his travels were undertaken whilst he was still a young man. Just when and where he journeyed is uncertain, but since he says that he came into touch with a foreign Court, in all probability he visited the great cities of Egypt and the Court of Alexandria. The important point is that his tour was not without excitement and real peril (E. 3412, 513ff). Through some lying and malicious gossip he had the misfortune to incur royal displeasure, suffered imprisonment, and, in his own firm opinion, was for a time in gravest danger of losing his life. Such an experience is inevitably a severe test of any man’s mettle, and is doubly sure to produce a deep impression on the mind of one so naturally unadventurous as Ben Sirach. His comments on the matter are therefore a valuable clue to his character. He took the view that his travels, notwithstanding the danger, had been a great and lasting benefit, an experience in which anyone who aspired to be counted wise would do well to imitate him. It had proved worth all the hardship and anxiety—a fine broadening influence: He that hath no experience knoweth few things, but he that hath travelled shall increase his skill. Many things, he reflects, have I seen in my wanderings (E. 3410). The other impression left by his adventures was the paramount value of Israel’s Wisdom. In the hour of his danger he would have perished but for the principles of discreet and honest conduct in which Wisdom had instructed him. (E. 3412).
He returned from abroad to settle for the rest of his days in beloved Jerusalem, where he became an honoured citizen, a man of considerable weight socially as well as intellectually, and a notable exponent of Wisdom, whose advice in the manifold affairs of daily life was sought and respected. There are grounds for thinking that for some years he may have conducted a regular school for instruction in the science of Wisdom. He was a thorough townsman, loving the busy life of his city, keenly observant of its varied occupations and appreciative of all opportunities of human intercourse. So far from thinking of him as a scholarly recluse, careless of all save his duties as a scribe or teacher, we have to picture a man who enjoyed dining out with his friends; no glutton, yet a frank connoisseur of food and wine. Feasting he considered a subject not to be trifled with, as is shown by the rules for polite behaviour, which he is careful in all seriousness to detail in his book. As for his faults, one suspects that in public he was inclined to be dictatorial and perhaps pompous, but he possessed a saving grace of humour. In his home, if we are to trust his own assertions, he must have been a strict disciplinarian. Many of his sayings are too worldly-wise to be commendable. Now and then he is cynical, and for the out-and-out fool he allows no hope: to essay teaching such an one is as futile as glueing a broken potsherd together (E. 227); and again, Seven days are the days of mourning for the dead, but for a fool all the days of his life (E. 2212)! Still, Ben Sirach was no pessimist about humanity, and his judgments of men for the most part are kindly and hopeful.