The epigrammatic sayings of the Bible are not confined, as we have already
seen, to the Book of Proverbs. We find them elsewhere. Hosea says of
idolaters, "They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind."
Micah declared of the mercenary prophets, "He that putteth not into their
mouth, they even declare war against him." At the same time princes and
judges are so corrupt, that "the best of them is as a briar; the most
upright is sharper than a thorn hedge."
Jeremiah charges against the people, "As a cage is full of birds, so are
their houses of deceit." "Can the Ethiopian," he asks, "change his skin,
or the leopard his spots?" and adds, "Then can ye also do right who are
accustomed to do evil." This is equivalent to the proverb of another
people: "Though you feed milk to a young snake, will it leave off its
habit of creeping under the hedge?"
"Can a maid forget her ornaments or a bride her attire?" asks Jeremiah;
"yet my people have forgotten me days without number." "Yea, the stork in
the heavens knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and
the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the
judgment of the Lord." "As the partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them
not; so he that getteth riches and not by right, shall leave them in the
middle of his days, and at the end shall be a fool."
Isaiah admonishes the people, "Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this
broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and
pierce it; so is Pharoah, king of Egypt, to all who trust in him,"--a
saying which calls to mind the message Jesus sent to Herod, "Go, tell that
fox." To those who trusted in the prowess of the Egyptians, Isaiah
declares, "Now, the Egyptians are men and not God; and their horses are
flesh and not spirit." He assures the people that the time will come when
names shall be used with greater discrimination--"The vile person shall no
more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful."
Job says: "For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild
ass's colt." And it is Job who has given us the common expression, "I am
escaped with the skin of my teeth."
David says of the hypocrite:--"The words of his mouth were smoother than
butter, but war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, but they
were drawn swords." "Man that is in honor and understandeth not, is like
the beasts which perish." "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God." Of the wicked the psalmist exclaims: "Their poison is like the
poison of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;
which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so
wisely." Recalling an incident of Israel's journey through the wilderness,
he gives his opinion of the transaction Aaron tried to disclaim: "They
made a calf in Horeb and worshipped the molten image. Thus they changed
their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass!" "Fools,
because of their transgressions and because of their iniquities are
afflicted." He says of those who gave him pain,--the "ploughers who
ploughed upon his back and made long their furrows,"--"They shall be as
the grass upon the house-tops which withereth before it groweth up;
wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his
bosom."
Paul speaks of those "whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their
shame;" and also of certain ones who "speak lies in hypocrisy, having
their conscience seared with a red-hot iron." "Rulers," he says, "are not
a terror to good works, but to evil." "If a man thinketh himself to be
something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself."
The Book of James has already been quoted in this chapter; but there is
another passage of the proverbial or epigrammatic character that must not
be omitted: "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your
own selves. For if any man be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is
like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass; for he beholdeth
himself and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man
he was." The Veman proverb is very like this: "Whatever he devoid of
understanding may be reading, his virtue continues only so long as he is
reading; even as a frog is dignified only so long as it is seated on a
lotus leaf."
One of the best examples of the kind of wit we are now discussing is found
in the account of King Asa's sickness and death. The writer of the Book of
Chronicles says: "Yet in his disease he sought not unto the Lord, but to
the Physicians;" and then adds with imperturbable gravity, "And Asa slept
with his fathers." Referring to this passage, Professor Matthews
says:--"It looks like a sarcasm on the medical practitioners of
Palestine." There is something similar to this in Ecclesiastes: "Wisdom is
good--with an inheritance," an ancient instance of "the old flag--and an
appropriation."