THE BOOK OF JOB FROM A GENERAL AND WESTERN POINT OF VIEW.
The Book of Job is even less translatable than the Psalter. And why?
Because there is more nature in it. ‘He would be a poet,’ says Thoreau,
‘who could impress the winds and streams into his service to speak for
him.’ They do speak for the poet of _Job_; the ‘still sad music of
humanity’ is continually relieved by snatches from the grand symphonies
of external nature. And hence the words of _Job_ are ‘so true and
natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach
of spring.’ It is only a feeble light which the Authorised Version sheds
upon this poem; and even the best prose translation must for several
reasons be inadequate. Perhaps, though English has no longer its early
strength, a true poet might yet achieve some worthy result. Rarely has
the attempt been made. George Sandys was said by Richard Baxter to have
‘restored Job to his original glory,’ but he lived before the great era
of Semitic studies. The poetical translator of _Job_ must not disdain to
consult critical interpreters, and yet by his own unassisted skill could
he bring this Eastern masterpiece home to the Western reader? I doubt
it. Even more than most imaginative poems the Book of Job needs the help
of the painter. It is not surprising therefore that a scholar of Giotto
should have detected the pictorial beauties of the story of Job. Though
only two of the six Job-frescoes remain entire, the Campo Santo of Pisa
will be impoverished when time and the sea-air effect the destruction of
these. I know not whether any modern painter besides William Blake has
illustrated Job. He, a ‘seer’ born out of due time, understood this
wonderful book as no modern before him had done. The student will get
more help of a certain kind from the illustrations thus reproduced in
the second volume of Gilchrist’s _Life of William Blake_, compared with
the sympathetic descriptions by Blake’s biographer (vol. i. pp.
330-333), than from any of the commentaries old or new.
In every respect the poem of _Job_ stands in a class by itself. More
than any other book in the Hebrew canon it needs bringing near to the
modern reader, untrained as he is in Oriental and especially in Semitic
modes of thought and imagination. Such a reader’s first question will
probably relate to the poetic form of the book. Is it, for instance, a
drama? Theodore of Mopsuestia (died 428) answered in the affirmative,
though he was censured for this by the Council of Constantinople. The
author of Job, he says, wronged the grand and illustrious story by
imitating the manner of the pagan tragedians. ‘Inde et illas
plasmationes fecit, in quibus certamen ad Deum fecit diabolus, et voces
sicut voluit circumposuit, alias quidem justo, alias vero amicis.’[126]
Bishop Lowth devotes two lectures of his _Sacred Poetry_ to the same
question. He replies in the negative, after comparing Job with the two
Œdipi of Sophocles (dramas with kindred subjects), on the ground that
action is of the essence of a drama and the Book of Job contains not
even the simplest action. Afterwards indeed he admits that Job has at
least one point in common with a regular drama, viz. the vivid
presentation of several distinct characters in a tragic situation. The
view that it is an epic, held in recent times by Dr. Mason Good and M.
Godet, found favour with one no less than John Milton, who speaks, as he
who knows, of ‘that epic form, whereof the two poems of Homer and those
other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and the Book of Job a brief
model.’[127] Something is to be said for this opinion if _Paradise
Regained_ be a true epic. Dialogue with the addition of a certain amount
of narrative is, roughly speaking, the literary form of the Book of Job
as well as of the unequally great English poem, and Coleridge is
probably right in representing Milton as indebted to the former for his
plan. It is however open to us to doubt not only whether _Paradise
Regained_ is a true epic poem, but whether any section of the Book of
Job except the Prologue partakes of the nature of an epic. The Prologue
certainly does; it is more than a mere introduction to the subsequent
speeches; it is an independent poetical narrative,[128] if not a
narrative poem; nor is there wanting a strong infusion of that
supernatural element which tradition regards as essential to the epic.
True, it is a torso, but this does not interfere with its genuinely
poetic character: it is, as Milton says, a ‘brief model’ or miniature of
an epic poem. The Colloquies on the other hand are as undoubtedly a
germinal character-drama, as the Song of Songs is a germinal
stage-drama. The work belongs to the same class as Goethe’s _Iphigenie_
and _Tasso_; only there is much more passion in it than in these great
but distinctively modern poems. Some one has said that ‘there is no
action and reaction between the speakers’ [in the Colloquies]. This is
an over-statement. Not only is each speaker consistent with his type of
character, but the passionate excitement of Job, and his able though
fragmentary confutation of his opponents, do produce an effect upon the
latter, do force them to take up a new position, though not indeed to
recall their original thesis.[129]
But in order to bring the Book of Job nearer to the modern Western mind,
we must not only study it from the point of view of form, but also
compare its scope and range with those of the loftiest modern Western
poems of similar import; only then shall we discover the points in which
it is distinctively ancient, Oriental, Semitic.—The greatest English
work of kindred moral and religious import is _Paradise Lost_. Like
_Job_, it is a theodicy, though of a more complex character, and aims
... (to) assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to man.
And the author of _Paradise Lost_, though not to be equalled with the
founders of Biblical religion, is still distinguished from all modern
poets (except Dante and Bunyan) by his singularly intense faith in the
operations of the Divine Spirit. That prayer of his, beginning ‘And
chiefly Thou, O Spirit,’ and a well-known parallel passage in his
_Reason of Church Government_, prove conclusively that he held no
contracted views as to the limits of Inspiration. This, in addition to
his natural gifts, explains the overpowering impression of reality
produced by the visions of Milton, and perhaps in a still greater degree
by those of our Puritan prose-poet, John Bunyan. A similar faith in the
divine Spirit, but more original and less affected by logical theories,
was one great characteristic of the author of _Job_. He felt, like all
the religious ‘wise men’ (of whom more presently), that true wisdom was
beyond mortal ken, and could only be obtained by an influence from
above. In the strength of this confidence he ventured, like Milton, on
untrodden paths, and presumed to chronicle, in symbolic form,
transactions of the spiritual world. Whether or not he believed in the
Satan of the Prologue, as a Sunday School child might, we need not
decide; that he used popular beliefs in a wide, symbolic sense, has been
pointed out elsewhere. Probably both Milton and he, if questioned on the
subject, would have replied in the spirit of those words of our Lord,
‘If ye will receive it,’ and ‘All men cannot receive this saying.’ It is
not to be forgotten that the author of _Job_ distinctly places the Satan
in a somewhat humorous light, and though Milton is far from doing the
same, yet we know from _Comus_ that the conception of a symbol was as
familiar to him as to Lord Bacon. Notice, in conclusion, that Milton’s
Satan, though unlike the Satan of his predecessor in some points,[130]
resembles him in this striking particular, that he is not yet (in spite
of Milton’s attempt to represent him as such) the absolutely evil being.
_Faust_ has in some respects a better right to be compared with _Job_
than _Paradise Lost_. Not so much indeed in the Prologue, though Goethe
deserves credit for detecting the humorous element in the Hebrew poet’s
Satan, an element which he has transferred, though with much
exaggeration, to his own Mephistopheles. Neither the Satan nor
Mephistopheles (a remote descendant of the Hebrew[131] _mastema_, from
the root _satam=satan_) is the Origin of Evil in a personal form,[132]
but the Hebrew poet would never have accepted the description in _Faust_
of the peculiar work of the ‘denying spirit.’ But in the body of the
poem there is this marked similarity to the Book of Job—that the problem
treated of is a purely moral and spiritual one; the hero first loses and
then recovers his peace of mind; it is the counterpart in pantheistic
humanism of what St. Paul terms working out one’s own salvation. Still
there are great and most instructive divergences between the two
writers. Observe, first, the complete want of sympathy with positive
religion—with the religion from which Faust wanders—on the part of the
modern poet. Next, a striking difference in the characteristics of Job
and Faust respectively. Faust succumbs to his boundless love of
knowledge, alternating with an unbridled sensual lust; Job is on the
verge of spiritual ruin through his demand for such an absolute
correspondence of circumstances to character as can only be realised in
another world. The greatness of Faust lies in his intellect; that of Job
(who in chap. xxviii. directly discourages speculation) in his virtue.
Hence, finally, Faust requires (even from a pantheistic point of view)
to be pardoned, while Job stands so high in the divine favour that
others are pardoned on his account.
A third great poem which deserves to be compared with _Job_ is the
_Divina Commedia_. Dante has the same purpose of edification as the
author of _Job_ and even of _Faust_, though he has not been able to fuse
the didactic and narrative elements with such complete success as
Goethe. Nor is he so intensely autobiographical as either Goethe or the
author of _Job_; his own story is almost inextricably interlaced with
the fictions which he frames as the representative of the human race. He
allows us to see that he has had doubts (_Parad._ iv. 129), and that
they have yielded to the convincing power of Christianity (_Purgat._
iii. 34-39), but it was not a part of his plan to disclose, like the
author of _Job_, the vicissitudes of his mental history. In two points,
however—the width of his religious sympathies (which even permits him to
borrow from the rich legendary material of heathendom[133]) and the
morning freshness of his descriptions of nature—he comes nearer to the
author of _Job_ than either Goethe or Milton, while in the absoluteness
and fervour of his faith Milton is in modern times his only rival.
The preceding comparison will, it is hoped, leave the reader with a
sense of our great literary as well as religious debt to the author of
_Job_. His gifts were varied, but in one department his originality is
nothing less than Homeric; his Colloquies are the fountain-head from
which the great river of philosophic poetry took its origin. He is the
first of those poet-theologians from whom we English have learned so
much, and who are all the more impressive as teachers because the truths
which they teach are steeped in emotion, and have for their background a
comprehensive view of the complex and many-coloured universe.
Footnote 126:
Migne, _Synes. et Theod._, col. 698. Comp. Kihn, _Theodor von
Mopsuestia_, p. 68 &c.
Footnote 127:
_The Reason of Church Government_, Book II.
Footnote 128:
Comp. Bateson Wright, _The Book of Job_, pp. 29-31.
Footnote 129:
Bunsen observes, not badly, ‘Hiob ist ein semitisches Drama aus der
Zeit der Gefangenschaft. Das Dramatische windet sich aber erst aus dem
Epos heraus, ohne eine selbstständige Gestalt zu gewinnen.’ _Gott in
der Geschichte_, i. 291.
Footnote 130:
Compare Satan after his overthrow with Tasso’s Soldan (_Gerus. Lib._,
c. ix., st. 98.)
Footnote 131:
Mr. Sutherland Edwards (_Fortnightly Review_, Nov. 1885, p. 687)
states that Hebrew etymologies have proved failures. But the steps of
the change from _mastema_ to Mephistopheles are all proved, beginning
with the name Mastiphat, for the prince of the demons, in the
chronographers Syncellus and Georg. Cedrenus (comp. Μαστιφαάτ =
Mastema in the Book of Jubilees). Comp. Diez, _Roman. Wörterbuch_, i.
pp. xxv., xxvi.
Footnote 132:
Turner and Morshead, _Faust_ (1882), pp. 307-8.
Footnote 133:
On the parallel phenomena in Job, see Chap. IX.
NOTE ON JOB AND THE MODERN POETS.
Job, like Spenser, should be the poet of poets; but though Goethe has
imitated him in royal fashion, and here and there other poets such as
Dante may offer allusions, yet Milton is the only poet who seems to have
absorbed Job. _Paradise Regained_ is in both form and contents a free
imitation of the Book of Job, the story of which is described in i.
368-370, 424-6, iii. 64-67. The following are the principal allusions in
_Paradise Lost_:—i. 63, comp. Job x. 22; ii. 266, comp. Job iv. 16; ii.
603, comp. Job xxiv. 19 Vulg.; iv. 999, comp. Job xxviii. 25; vii. 253-4
(Hymn on the Nativity, st. 12), comp. Job xxxviii. 4-7; vii. 373-5,
comp. Job xxxviii. 31; vii. 102, comp. Job xxxviii. 5. Shelley, too, is
said to have delighted in Job; I must leave others to trace this in his
works. I conclude with Thomas Carlyle. The words—‘Was Man with his
Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how it all went on?
System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature
remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion’[134]—are
at once a paraphrase of the questions of Eliphaz, ‘Art thou the first
man that was born?... Didst thou hearken in the council of Eloah?’ (xv.
7, 8), and a suggestive statement of the problem of _Job_ as a challenge
to limited human ‘experience’ to prove its capacity for criticising
God’s ways.
Footnote 134:
_Sartor Resartus_ (‘Natural Supernaturalism’).
NOTE ON THE TEXT OF JOB.
That the received text of our Hebrew Bible has a long history behind it,
is generally recognised; and few will deny that its worst corruptions
arose in the pre-Massoretic and pre-Talmudic periods (comp. _The
Prophecies of Isaiah_, vol. ii., Essay vii.) The popularity of the Book
of Job may not have been equal to that of many other books, but we have
seen reason to suppose that within the circles of the ‘wise men’ it was
eagerly studied and imitated. In those early times such popularity was a
source of danger to the text, and hasty copyists left their mark on many
a corrupt passage. Is there any remedy for this?
Dr. Merx’s book, _Das Gedicht von Hiob_ (1871), has the merits and
defects of pioneering works, but his introduction should by all means be
studied. Two points in it have to be examined, (1) the relative position
given by Merx to the chief ancient versions, and (2) the use which he
makes of his own strophic arrangement for detecting interpolations or
gaps in the text. More, I think, is to be gained from his discussion of
the use of the versions than from his strophic arrangement; and yet
before quite so much importance is attached to the text of the
Septuagint, ought we not to be surer than we are of the antiquity and of
the critical value of the Septuagint _Job_? That version may not be of
as recent origin[135] as Grätz would have it, but can hardly be much
earlier than the second century B.C. Before this date the text of _Job_
had time to suffer much from the usual causes of corruption. Besides
this, there are special reasons for distrusting the literal accuracy of
the translator. He seems to have been in his own way an artist, and to
have sought to reproduce poetry in poetical language. In this respect
his vocabulary differs from that of all the other Septuagint
translators; he thinks more of his Greek readers than of his Hebrew
original. Had he been more mechanical in his method, the critical value
of his work would have been greater. I agree therefore with H. Schultz
that even where the Septuagint and the Peshitto are united against the
Massoretic reading, the decisive arguments for the reading of the former
will be, not the external one of testimony, but the internal one (if so
be it exists) of suitableness.
Mr. Bateson Wright goes almost farther than Dr. Merx in his opinion of
the corruptness of the received text. His work on _Job_ (1883), however
unripe, shows remarkable independence, and contains, among many rash, a
few striking emendations. That he does not restrict himself to
corrections suggested by the versions, is not in the least a defect; the
single drawback to his work is that he has not pondered long enough
before writing. Purely conjectural emendation was doubtless often
resorted to by the old translators themselves; it was and still is
perfectly justified, though to succeed in its use requires a singular
combination of caution and boldness which even older critics have not
always attained. Special attention is devoted by Mr. Wright to the
poetical features of the speeches in _Job_. Dr. Merx had already
observed that most of the στίχοι contain eight syllables, to read which,
however, it is often needful to dispense with Metheg and with the
Chateph vowels, and contract the dual terminations. Mr. Wright, building
upon Dr. Merx’s foundation, offers a more elaborate scheme, which cannot
be discussed here. It was a misfortune for him that he had not before
him the ambitious metrical transliteration of _Job_ by G. Bickell, in
his _Carmina Vet. Test. metrice_, of which I would rather say nothing
here than too little.
Subsequent editors of the text of _Job_ will have one advantage, which
will affect their critical use of the Septuagint. It is well known that
the Alexandrine version was largely interpolated from that of
Theodotion. The early Septuagint text itself can however now be
reconstructed, through a manuscript of the Sahidic or Thebaic version
from Upper Egypt. (Comp. Lagarde, _Mittheilungen_, pp. 203-5; Agapios
Bsciai, art. in _Moniteur de Rome_, Oct. 26, 1883.) Dr. Merx was well
aware of the necessity of expurgating the Septuagint, and would have
hailed this much-desired aid in the work (see p. lxxi. of his
introduction).
So much must suffice in my present limits on the subject of metre and
textual emendation. I need not thus qualify the list which follows of
gaps and misplacements of text in our Book of Job. Observe (1) that
Bildad’s third speech (chap. xxv.) is too short. Probably, as Mr. Elzas
has suggested,[136] the continuation of it has been wrongly placed as
xxvi. 5-14; the affinity of this passage to chap. xxv. is obvious.
Probably the close of Bildad’s speech is wanting. If so (2), something
must have dropped out of Job’s reply, since xxvi. 4 has no connection
with xxvii. 2. (3) Zophar’s third speech appears to be wanting, but may
really be contained in chap. xxvii. (ver. 8 to end). The student should
not fail to observe that xxvii. 13 is a repetition of xx. 29. As the
text stands, Job is made to recant his statements in chaps. xxi., xxiv.,
and to assert that there is (not merely ought to be) a just and exact
retribution. The tone, moreover, of xxvii. 9, 10 is not in accordance
with Job’s previous speeches. If this view be correct, an introductory
formula (‘And Zophar answered and said’) must have fallen out at the
beginning of ver. 7, and probably one or more introductory verses.[137]
(4) The verses which originally introduced chap. xxviii. must (on
account of the causal particle ‘for’ in ver. 1) either have dropped out,
or else have been neglected by the person who inserted the chapter in
the Book of Job. (5) The passage xxxi. 38-40 has at any rate been
misplaced (Delitzsch), and probably, as Merx has pointed out, should be
inserted between ver. 32 and ver. 33. Thus verses 35-37 will furnish an
appropriate and impressive close to the chapter. (6) xxxvi. 31 should
probably go after ver. 28 (not ver. 29, as Dillmann misstates the
conjecture); verses 30, 32 have a natural connection (Olshausen). (7)
The passage xli. 9-12 destroys the connection, and should probably be
placed immediately before chap. xxxviii. 1, as an introductory speech of
Jehovah. In that case, we must, with Merx, supply the words, ‘And
Jehovah said,’ before ver. 9.
Footnote 135:
‘A child of the first Christian century,’ Grätz’s _Monatsschrift_, p.
91. Nöldeke dates this version about 150 B.C. (_Gott. gel. Anzeigen_,
1865, p. 575).
Footnote 136:
Elzas, _The Book of Job_ (1872), p. 83; Grätz inclines to a similar
view.
Footnote 137:
A similar view has been propounded by Kennicott, and also more
recently by Grätz (_Monatsschrift_, 1872, p. 247). But Kennicott
regarded chap. xxviii. as Job’s reply to Zophar, while Grätz would
include it in the speech of Zophar.
AIDS TO THE STUDENT.
There are many books and articles of importance besides the
commentaries. Among these are Hupfeld, _Commentatio in quosdam Jobeïdos
locos_ (1855); Bickell, _De indole ac ratione versionis Alexandrinæ in
interpretando libro Iobi_ (1862); G. Baur, ‘Das Buch Hiob und Dante’s
Göttliche Comödie,’ _Theol. Studien und Kritiken_ (1856), p. 583 &c.
(with which may be grouped Quinet’s splendid chapter, in his early work
on religions, entitled Comparaison du scepticisme oriental et du
scepticisme occidental’); Seinecke, _Der Grundgedanke des Buches Hiob_
(1863); Froude, ‘The Book of Job,’ _Short Studies_, Series 1 (1867), p.
266 &c.; Reuss, _Das Buch Hiob_ (1869); Plumptre, ‘The Authorship of the
Book of Job,’ _Biblical Studies_ (1870), p. 173 &c.; C. Taylor, ‘A
Theory of Job xix. 25-27,’ _Journal of Philology_ (1871), pp. 128-152;
Godet, ‘Le livre de Job,’ _Etudes bibliques_, prem. partie (1873), p.
185 &c.; Turner, ‘The History of Job, and its Place in the Scheme of
Redemption,’ _Studies Biblical and Oriental_ (1876), p. 133 &c.; Grätz,
chapter on Job in _Geschichte der Juden_, Bd. iii.; Studer, ‘Ueber die
Integrität des Buches Hiob,’ _Jahrbücher für protestant. Theologie_
(1875), p. 688 &c., comp. 1877, p. 540 &c.; Budde, _Beiträge zur Kritik
des Buches Hiob_ (1876), reviewed by Smend in _Studien u. Kritiken_
(1878), pp. 153-173; Giesebrecht, _Der Wendepunkt des Buches Hiob_
(1879); Derenbourg, ‘Réflexions détachées sur le livre de Job,’ _Revue
des études juives_ (1880), pp. 1-8; Claussen, ‘Das Verhältniss der Lehre
des Elihu zu derjenigen der drei Freunde,’ _Zeitschr. f. kirchl.
Wissenschaft und Leben_ (1884), pp. 393 &c., 449 &c., 505 &c.; W. H.
Green, _The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded_ (1881); Cheyne, ‘Job
and the Second Part of Isaiah,’ _Isaiah_, ii. 259 &c., with which
compare the very full essay of Kuenen, Job en de lijdende knecht van
Jahveh,’ _Theologisch Tijdschrift_ (1873), p. 492 &c.; Delitzsch, art.
‘Hiob,’ Herzog-Plitt’s _Realencyclopadie_, bd. vi. (1880).
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.
CHAPTER I.
HEBREW WISDOM, ITS NATURE, SCOPE, AND IMPORTANCE.
We have studied the masterpiece of Hebrew wisdom before examining the
nature of the intellectual product which the Israelites themselves
graced with this title. The Book of Job is in fact much more than a
didactic treatise like Ecclesiastes or a collection of pointed moral
sayings like the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Its authors were
more than thinkers, they were poets, ‘makers,’ great imaginative
artists. But we must not be unjust to those who were primarily thinkers,
and only in the second degree poets. The phase of Hebrew thought called
‘wisdom’ (_khokma_) can be studied even better in Proverbs and
Ecclesiastes than in the poetry of Job. Let us then enquire at this
point, What is this Hebrew wisdom? First of all, it is the link between
the more exceptional revelations of Old Testament prophecy and the best
moral and intellectual attainments of other nations than the Jews.
‘Wisdom’ claims inspiration (as we have seen already), but never
identifies itself with the contents of oracular communications.[138] Nor
yet does it pretend to be confined to a chosen race. Job himself was a
non-Israelite (the Rabbis were even uncertain as to his part in the
world to come); and the wisdom of the ‘wise king’ is declared to have
been different in degree alone from that of the neighbouring
peoples[139] (1 Kings iv. 30, 31; comp. Jer. xlix. 7, Obad. 8). It is to
be observed next, that the range of enquiry of this ‘wisdom’ is equally
wide, according to the Biblical use of the term.[140] ‘Wisdom,’ as
Sirach tells us, ‘rains forth skill’ of every kind; ‘the first man knew
her not perfectly: no more shall the last trace her out’ (Ecclus. i. 19,
xxiv. 28). Nothing is too high, nothing too low for Wisdom ‘fitly’ to
‘order’ (Wisd. viii. I). Law and government (Prov. viii. 15, 16), and
even the precepts of husbandry (Isa. xxviii. 23-29) are equally her
productions with those moral observations which constitute in the main
the three books of the Hebrew _Khokma_. The fact that the subject of
practical ethics ultimately appropriated the technical name of ‘wisdom’
ought not to blind us to the larger connotation of the same word, which
throws so much light on the deeply religious view of life prevalent
among the Israelites. For religious this view of wisdom is, though it
may seem to be so thoroughly secular. The versatility of the mind of man
is but an image of the versatility of its archetype. ‘The spirit of man
is a lamp of Jehovah,’ says one of the ‘wise men’ (Prov. xx. 27), by an
anticipation of John i. 9. ‘Surely it is the spirit in man,’ says
another (Job xxxii. 8), ‘and the breath of Shaddai which gives them
understanding.’ Isaiah, too, says that the ‘spirit of wisdom’ is one of
the three chief manifestations of the ‘Spirit of Jehovah’ (Isa. xi. 2),
and the introductory treatise, which gives the editor’s view of the
original Book of Proverbs, expressly declares that the ‘wise men’ are
but the messengers of divine Wisdom (ix. 3).
The sages, whose collected wisdom we are about to study, are very
different from those antique sages who like Balaam could be hired to
curse a hostile people. A new kind of wisdom grew up both in Israel and
in the neighbouring countries, as unlike its spurious counterpart as the
spiritual lyric poetry both of Israel and of Babylonia is unlike the
incantations which in Babylonia coexisted with it. Israel, never slow to
adopt, received the higher wisdom, and assimilated it. The earthly
elements can still be traced in it; the ‘wise men’ are not prophets but
philosophers; indeed, the Seven Wise Men of Greece arose at precisely
the same stage of culture as the Hebrew sages. It is true, the latter
never (in pre-Talmudic times) attempted logic and metaphysics; they
contentedly remained within the sphere of practical ethics. If a modern
equivalent must be found, it would be best to call them the humanists,
to indicate their freedom from national prejudice (the word ‘Israel’
does not occur once, the word _ādām_ ‘man’ thirty-three times in the
Book of Proverbs), and their tendency to base a sound morality on its
adaptation to human nature. We might also venture to call them realists
in contradistinction to the idealists of the prophethood; they held out
no prospect of a Messianic age, and ‘meddled not with them that were
given to change.’[141] The sages whose ‘wisdom’ is handed down to us
were not however opposed to the spiritual prophets. It is only ‘the
fool’ (or, to employ a synonym from the proverbs, the ‘scorner’ or
‘mocker’) who ‘saith in his heart, There is no God.’ A mocking poet of a
late period may demand the Creator’s name (Prov. xxx. 4), but the writer
who (if I may anticipate) has perpetuated this strange poem indicates
his own very different mental attitude; and though religious proverbs
are less abundant than secular in the early anthologies, such as we do
find are pure and elevated in tone. For instance,
(1) Who can say, I have made my heart clean,
I am pure from my sin? (xx. 9.)
(2) The eyes of Jehovah are in every place,
observing the evil and the good (xv. 3).
(3) Sheól and Abaddon[142] are before Jehovah,
how much more then the hearts of the sons of men!
(xv. 11.)
(4) The hearing ear and the seeing eye,
Jehovah has made them both (xx. 12).
(5) A man’s steps are from Jehovah,
and man—how can he understand his way? (xx. 24.)
One point in which the wise men agreed with Amos and Isaiah was the
inferiority of a ceremonial system[143] to prayer and faithful obedience
(xv. 8, xxi. 3, 27, xvi. 6), and the importance which one of the
proverb-writers attached to prophecy is strikingly expressed (if only
the text be sound) in the saying,
When there is no prophecy (lit., vision) people become disorderly,
but he that observes precept, happy is he (xxix. 18).
The prophets seem to have returned the friendly feeling of the sages. In
tone and phraseology they are sometimes evidently influenced by their
fellow-teachers (see e.g. Isa. xxviii. 23-29, xxix. 24, xxxiii. 11), and
if they do not often refer to the wise men,[144] yet they do not
denounce them, as they denounce the priests and the lower prophets. It
may perhaps be inferred from this that there was in the early times no
opposition-party of sceptical wise men, such as Ewald supposes,[145] and
such as not improbably did exist in later times (see below on xxx. 1-4);
and I notice that Ewald himself does not attempt to strengthen his view
by appealing to the phrase ‘men of scorn’ in Isa. xxviii. 14, which
some, following Rashi and Aben Ezra, explain of wise men who misused
their talent by making mischievous proverbs.[146] The inference
mentioned just now commends itself to me as sound; but I admit that the
saying on prophecy in Prov. xxix. 18 (already quoted) is isolated, and
that the tone of the religious proverbs falls far short of enthusiasm.
This is probably all that M. Renan means in a too French sentence of his
work on Ecclesiastes. Religion, according to the wise men, was a
necessary element in a worthy character, was even (I should say) the
principal element, but the religion of these practical moralists has
nothing of that delighted _abandon_ which we find in the more distinctly
religious Scriptures. ‘Happy the man who dreadeth continually,’ says one
characteristic proverb (xxviii. 14; contrast the ‘not caring’ of the
‘fool’ in xiv. 16). Later on, a more devout moralist writes that ‘the
fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom’ (i. 7), and though ‘fear’
need not exclude ‘love’ yet there is nothing here to suggest their
combination. The proverb of the Egyptian prince Ptahhotep,[147] ‘To obey
is to love God; not to obey is to hate God,’ has no parallel, at any
rate in the early anthologies; much less does the great saying in Ps.
lxxiii. 25 strike a note congenial to any of the Hebrew sages. And yet
it remains true that the wise men happily supplemented the more
spiritual teaching of psalmists and prophets.
There is still another important point on which both prophets and ‘wise
men’ were agreed. Whatever their inward religion may have been, they
(like the Egyptian moralists) were outwardly utilitarians; i.e., they
invite men to practise righteousness, not because righteousness is the
secret of blessedness, but because of its outward rewards both for the
man himself and for his posterity (Prov. xi. 21, xx. 7; comp. Jer.
xxxii. 18). The form in which the doctrine of proportionate retribution
is expressed in xi. 4 would have been completely acceptable to the
prophets, whose conception of the ‘day of Jehovah’ (i.e., not the last
great _dies ira_ but any providential crisis in the world’s history) is
adopted in it,—
Wealth is of no profit in the day of wrath,
but righteousness delivers from death.
Proverbs expressing this idea in various forms abound in the first
anthology. Not a hint is given that retribution loiters on the road; at
most a warning not to envy the (temporary) prosperity of the wicked
(xxiii. 17, xxiv. 1, 19; with regard to xxiii. 18 see above).
This was the ‘certitude of the golden age,’ to use Mr. Matthew Arnold’s
expression; it is just what we might expect in a simple and stationary
condition of society. The strange thing is that it should have lasted on
when oppression within or hostile attacks from without had brought
manifold causes of sorrow upon both good and bad.[148] That the teachers
of the people should have held up the doctrine of earthly retribution—
Behold, the righteous hath a reward upon earth;
much more the ungodly and the sinner (xi. 31)—
as long as it could reasonably be defended, was natural. But that
shortly before the Maccabean rising a ‘wise man’[149] should still be
found to write—
The gift of the Lord remains with the godly,
and his favour brings prosperity for ever (Ecclus. xi. 17),
seems to contradict the usual correspondence between the received moral
theory and the outward circumstances of society. All that we can say is
that such inconsistencies are found to exist; old forms of doctrine do
not, as a rule, ‘melt like frosty rime.’ There must have been circles of
Jewish moralists averse to speculation, who would continue to repeat the
older view of the providential government even at a time when the social
state had completely exposed its shallowness.
Dean Plumptre, indeed, following Ewald, credits the ‘wise men’ of
pre-Exile times with deeper views. According to him, certain proverbs,
e.g. x. 25, xi. 4, xiv. 32, xxiii. 18 (Ewald adds xii. 28) imply the
hope of immortality. None of these passages however can be held
conclusive. x. 25, xi. 4 simply say that the righteous shall be unhurt
in a day of judgment; in xiv. 32 the antithesis is between the ruin
which follows upon wickedness and the safe refuge of integrity (read
_b’thummō_ with the Sept.); in xxiii. 18, ‘there is a future,’ the
reference is perfectly vague—it is natural to explain by comparing Job
xlii. 12, xii. 28, no doubt, on Ewald’s view of the passage, seems
conclusive,
In the way of righteousness is life,
and the way of its path is immortality.
But this great word ‘immortality’ is unparalleled before the Book of
Wisdom, and cannot fairly be extracted from the Hebrew.[150] The
Septuagint has a different view of the pronunciation of the text, and
renders ὁδοὶ δὲ μνησικάκων εἰς θάνατον. The easiest plan is to correct
_n’thībhāh_ into _nith’ābh_, with Levy, and render,
but an abominable way (comp. xv. 9) leads unto death.
I do not deny that the idea of eternal life may have been conceived at
the time of these proverbs. This may plausibly be inferred from the
occurrence of the phrase ‘a tree of life’ in iii. 18, xi. 30, xiii. 12,
xv. 4, and ‘a fountain of life’ in x. 11, xiii. 14, xiv. 27, xvi.
22,—phrases certainly borrowed from some traditional story of Paradise
analogous to that in Gen. ii.[151] It is a singular fact however that in
all these passages (even, I think, in iii. 18) these expressions are
simply figurative synonyms for ‘refreshment,’ which suggests that the
proverb-writers shrank from using them in their literal sense of the
individual righteous man.
The importance of the ‘wise men’ as a class is too seldom recognised. To
the hasty reader they are overshadowed by the prophets, between whom and
the rude masses they seem to have occupied a middle position. Their
popular style and genial manners attracted probably a large number of
disciples; at any rate, in the time of Jeremiah the ‘counsel’ of the
‘wise men’ was valued as highly as the ‘direction’ (_tōra_) of the
priests and the ‘word’ of the prophets (Jer. xviii. 18). By constantly
working on suitable individuals, they produced a moral sympathy with the
prophets, without which those heroic men would have laboured in vain.
Thus that friendly relation must have sprung up between the prophets and
the ‘wise men,’ of which I have spoken already, and which reminds us of
the sanction said to have been given to the Seven Sages of Greece by the
oracle of Delphi.[152]
It is a misfortune that our sources for the history of Israelitish
‘philosophy’ are so scanty. Were there ‘wise men’ in N. Israel? and if
so, have any of their proverbs come down to us, besides the _mashal_ or
fable of Jotham? Did they confine their activity to the capital city or
cities, or did they also, like the ‘scribes,’ settle or itinerate in the
provinces? (Matt. ix. 3, Targ. of Judg. v. 9.) Did their public
instructions assume anything like the form of the proverbs of our
anthologies? Did they teach without fee or reward?[153] At any rate, a
post-Exile proverb-writer tells us with retrospective glance where the
‘wise men’ awaited their disciples—not in the quietude of the chamber,
but either within the massive city-gates, or in the adjacent squares or
‘broad places’ on which the streets converged (i. 20, 21; comp. Job
xxix. 7). No doubt they had a large stock of sayings in their memory,
such as had been tested by the experience of past generations. Sometimes
they would modify old proverbs, sometimes they would frame new ones, so
that when their disciples gathered round them, they would ‘bring out of
their treasure things new and old.’ From time to time they would commit
their ‘wisdom’ to writing in a more perfect form, and such records must
have formed the basis of the proverbial collections in the Old
Testament.
Footnote 138:
The heading ‘the oracle’ &c. in xxx. I is exceptional; so also is the
oracle of Eliphaz (Job iv. 12-21).
Footnote 139:
The author of _Baruch_ (iii. 22, 23), however, expressly denies that
the ordinary Semitic ‘wisdom’ was akin to that of Israel. This
represents the Judaism of the Maccabean period.
Footnote 140:
Observe that ‘wisdom’ is called _khokmōth_ (plural form) in Prov. i.
20, ix. 11, all the forms of wisdom being viewed as one in their
origin. So too Wisdom adorns her house with seven pillars (Prov. ix.
1).
Footnote 141:
xxiv. 21 A.V.
Footnote 142:
I.e. Perdition; a synonym for Sheól.
Footnote 143:
The author of the Introduction however writes, ‘Honour Jehovah with
thy substance,’ i.e. by dedicating a part of it to the sanctuary (iii.
9), which the Septuagint translator carefully limits to substance
lawfully gained (Deut. xxiii. 19).
Footnote 144:
As perhaps they do in Am. v. 10, Isa. xxix. 21 (‘him that rebuketh in
the gate’). Observe again in this connection that the endowments of
the Messiah include the spirit of wisdom as well as that of might
(Isa. xi. 2), and that the wisdom of Jehovah is emphasised in Isa.
xxxi. 2, comp. xxviii. 29.
Footnote 145:
_Die dichter des alten bundes_, ii. 12. Ewald refers to xiii. 1, xiv.
6, and other passages in which ‘scorners’ are referred to. But it is
not clear that ‘a powerful school’ of wise men is here intended; the
title may be given to those who opposed or despised the counsels of
the wise men, and broke through the restraints of law and religion;
comp. Prov. xv. 12, xxi. 24.’ (_The Prophecies of Isaiah_, ed. 3, i.
165). Among such persons were the politicians of Isaiah’s day, so far
as they opposed the warnings of the prophet; they were popularly
considered ‘wise men’ (xxix. 14; comp. Jer. viii. 9), but not in the
technical sense with which our present enquiries are concerned.
Footnote 146:
Luzzatto renders, ‘o voi uomini insipienti, _poeti_ di questo popolo,’
taking _mōshēlīm_ in the same sense as in Num. xxi. 27 (similarly
Barth, in his tract on Isaiah, p. 23, following Rashi and Aben Ezra),
a view which receives some support from the parable offered by Isaiah
in xxviii. 23-29 as if in opposition to the false parables of unsound
teachers. But in Isa. xxix. 20 ‘scorner’ is clearly used, not as a
class-name for certain wise men, but in a moral sense.
Footnote 147:
Brugsch, _Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter_, p. 91.
Footnote 148:
Yet in Prov. iii. 11, 12 there is distinct evidence of deepened
experience and progress of moral thought.
Footnote 149:
On the orthodoxy of Ecclesiasticus, see later on.
Footnote 150:
The Vulg. has, _iter autem devium ducit ad mortem_ (but this pregnant
sense of _iter devium_, is too bold).
Footnote 151:
Analogous only, because apparently it had both a tree and a fountain
of life, like a New Zealand myth mentioned by Schirren.
Footnote 152:
Curtius, _History of Greece_, ii. 52.
Footnote 153:
Ewald infers from xvii. 16 that even in early times it was customary
to fee the ‘wise men’ for their advice (comp. Saul and Samuel). At a
later time Sirach says, ‘Buy (instruction) for yourselves without
money’ (Ecclus. li. 25, but comp. 28). The Rabbis were not allowed to
receive fees from their pupils. R. Zadok said, ‘Make not (the Tora) a
crown to glory in, nor an axe to live by’ (_Pirke Aboth_, iv. 9). So
the Moslem teachers at the great Cairo ‘university’ (el Azhar).
CHAPTER II.
THE FORM AND ORIGIN OF THE PROVERBS.
In one of the opening verses of the Book of Proverbs (i. 6) three
technical names for varieties of proverbs are put together:—(1)
_māshāl_, a short, pointed saying with reference to some striking
feature in the life of an individual, or in human life generally, often
clothed in figurative language (whence, according to many, the name
_māshāl_, as if ‘similitude;’ comp. παραβολή), (2) _m’lîça_, perhaps a
‘bent’, ‘oblique’ or (as Sept.) ‘dark’ saying, (3) _khîda_, a ‘knotty’
or intricate saying, especially a riddle. Each of these words has a
variety of applications; for instance (1) is used in Num. xxiii., xxiv.,
for a parallelistic poem, (1) and (2) sometimes mean a ‘taunting speech’
(see below, and comp. Hab. ii. 6, Isa. xiv. 4, Mic. ii. 4), and (3) can
be used, not merely of true riddles with a moral meaning, such as we
find here and there in Prov. xxx., but also of didactic statements upon
subjects as difficult as riddles (see Ps. xlix. 5, A.V. 4, lxxviii. 2).
We have no collection of popular proverbs, such as exists in Arabic; the
proverbs in the canonical collection show great technical elaboration,
though some may be based on the naive ‘wisdom’ of the people. A very few
specimens of the popular proverb have indeed been preserved in the
canonical literature.[154] ‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’ (1 Sam. x.
12, xix. 24) preserves the memory of a humorous fact in the story of
that king. ‘Wickedness proceeds from the wicked’ (1 Sam. xxiv. 13) is,
unlike the former, a generalisation, and means that a man’s character is
shown by his actions (comp. Isa. xxxii. 6). ‘As is the mother, so is the
daughter’ (Ezek. xvi. 44) is also an induction from common experience.
‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on
edge’ (Jer. xxii. 29, Ezek. xviii. 2), words applied no doubt, as Lowth
says, profanely, but not originally meant so, is a figurative way of
saying that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. We
have one specimen of the riddle (strictly so called)—that well-known one
of Samson’s,
From the eater came forth food,
and from the strong one came forth sweetness (Judges xiv. 14).
The parable, too, was doubtless called _mashal_, and of this we have
three Old Testament examples, which will at once occur to the reader (2
Sam, xii. 1-6, xiv. 4-9, 1 Kings xx. 39, 40); but it is more important
to draw the reader’s attention to the rare specimens of the fable. Some
may think it bold to refer in this connection to a portion of a
narrative which seems at first sight to be historical (Num. xxi. 22-35).
The strange episode of the speaking ass is, however, most difficult to
understand, except as a sportive quasi-historical version of a popular
_mashal_ or fable (compare the four Babylonian animal-fables discovered
among the fragments of King Assurbanipal’s library).[155] The passage
being evidently distinct from the rest of the story of Balaam, in
passing this judgment upon it, we are not committed as a matter of
course to a denial of all historical character to the rest of the
narrative. The fables of Jotham (Judg. ix. 8-15) and Joash (2 Kings xiv.
9), in which the trees are introduced speaking, have also their
parallels in Babylonian literature. One of them indeed has a claim to be
called a _mashal_ on a second account; the tree-fable of Joash is a
taunt of the keenest edge, and one of the secondary meanings of _mashal_
is ‘taunting speech’ (see Isa. xiv. 4, A.V.). It is true the ‘taunting
speeches’ expressly called _mashals_—not only those in the prophetic
writings (see above), but the verses ascribed to ‘those that speak in
_mashals_’ in Num. xxi. 27-30—are poetical in form, but this is because
the Hebrew writers never conceived the idea of a narrative poem; even
the prologue of the Book of Job is in prose.
These are the principal specimens of the _mashal_ apart from those in
the three Books of Old Testament Wisdom. They are but the ‘two or three
berries’ left after the beating of the tree (Isa. xvii. 6), and excite a
longing for more which cannot be gratified. We may be sure that in
Israel’s prime the telling of proverbs was almost as popular as the
recital of stories, and became a test of ability. For—
The legs of a lame man hang loose,
so is a proverb in the mouth of fools (xxvi. 7);
and though Sirach says of the labouring class, ‘They shall not be found
where parables are spoken’ (Ecclus. xxxviii. 33), it is reasonable to
account for this by the aristocratic pride of the students of Scripture
in the later Jewish community. At any rate, as I have said already, some
at least of the early literary proverbs are very possibly based on
popular sayings; these would naturally embody a plain, bourgeois
experience such as marks not a few of the proverbs in our book. Dr. Oort
conjectures[156] that _some of our proverbs were originally current
among the people as riddles_, such for instance as, ‘What is sweet as
honey?—Pleasant discourse, for it is sweet to the soul and a medicine to
the bones’ (xvi. 24); ‘What is worse than meeting a bear?—Meeting a fool
in a fit of folly’ (xvii. 12); ‘What is sweet at first, and then like
sand in the mouth?—Stolen food’ (xx. 17). Certainly the introduction to
the ‘proverbs of Solomon’ may seem to imply (i. 6) that the collection
which follows contains specimens of the riddle, but probably all the
writer means is that the ‘words of the wise’ are often ‘knotty’ because
epigrammatic. We may indeed reasonably hold that, like their prototype
Solomon,[157] the ‘wise men’ were accustomed to sharpen their intellects
upon enigmas (such as lie at the root of the so-called ‘numerical
proverbs’ in xxx. 15, 18, 21, 24, 29; comp. vi. 16); but a still more
important discipline than the battle of wits was the habit of keen
observation. We cannot reduce all the proverbs involving comparison to
the form of riddles, any more than we can do this with the following
Buddhist sayings, equal to the more refined specimens of the Hebrew
proverb:?—[158]
As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, so passion will break
through an unreflecting mind.
Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are the
fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly.
A tamed elephant they lead to battle; the king mounts a tamed
elephant; the tamed is the best among men, he who silently endures
abuse.
Well-makers lead the water; fletchers bend the arrow; carpenters
bend a log of wood; wise people fashion themselves.
Another plausible hypothesis similar to that of Dr. Oort is that some of
our proverbs are based on popular fables, as is the case according to
Dr. Back with many of the proverbs in the Talmud and Midrash.[159] The
Jewish scholar referred to applies this key to Prov. vi. 6-11 (comp. the
Aramaic fable of the ant and the grasshopper—see Delitzsch’s note), to
the numerical proverbs in chap. xxx. (‘skeletons of fables’ he calls
them), and to Eccles. ix. 4 and x. 11. Both proverbs and fables indeed
are common in later Jewish literature. Fables, especially animal fables,
were not perhaps appropriate vehicles of moral instruction according to
the O.T. writers. But the later Jewish teachers do not seem to have felt
this objection. Rabbi Meir (2nd cent. A.D.) was the writer of animal
fables _par excellence_; Rabbi Hillel (B.C. 30), however, so noted for
his versatility, was also a copious fabulist.[160]
This popular origin of some at least of the proverbs sufficiently
accounts for their comparatively trite and commonplace character. They
were not trite and commonplace to those who first used them, and
successive generations loved them because of their antiquity (Job viii.
8-10). Even to us they are not so commonplace as the far less popular
and piquant Egyptian proverbs,[161] though I confess that they will
hardly compare with the relics of Indian gnomology,[162] still less with
the singularly rich and pointed proverbs of the Chinese.[163] The
practice of writing antithetic sentences on paper or silk to suspend in
houses (contrast Deut. vi. 9) gave an edge to the shrewd earthly wisdom
of the countrymen of Confucius. The Jewish intellect developed but
slowly into the acuteness of the later periods which produced fables,
proverbs, and riddles which can safely challenge comparison.[164]
Footnote 154:
In the Midrash-literature, proverbs are often quoted with an express
statement that they are from the lips of the people.
Footnote 155:
See Smith and Sayce’s _Chaldæan Genesis_, pp. 140-154. For the
Egyptian animal-fables, which may be the originals of those of Æsop,
see Mahaffy, _Prolegomena to Anc. Hist._, p. 390; for the Indian, see
the apologues of the Panchatantra by Benfey or Lancereau, and the
Buddhist Birth-Stories—‘the oldest, most complete, and most important
collection of folk-lore extant’—translated by Rhys Davids, vol. i.
Footnote 156:
_The Bible for Young People_, E. T., iii. 105-6.
Footnote 157:
1 Kings x. 1; comp. Menander’s account in Josephus, _Antiq._ viii. 5,
3.
Footnote 158:
From Max Müller’s translation of the Dhammapada, or ‘Path of Virtue’
(1870).
Footnote 159:
Dr. Back gives a list of these in Grätz’s _Monatsschrift_, 1854, pp.
265-7.
Footnote 160:
In the Talmudic treatise _Soferim_ xvi. 9, a list of Hillel’s
acquirements is given, including the conversations of the mountains,
the trees, the animals, the demons, &c. On the Jewish fable
literature, the wealth of which seems unparalleled, see Back, _Die
Fabel in Talmud und Midrash_, in Gratz’s _Monatsschrift_, 1875-1884.
Curiously enough the two oldest Jewish fables are similar in character
to those of the Old Test.
Footnote 161:
Comp. Renouf, _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 75, 76, 100-103; Mahaffy,
_Prolegomena to Ancient History_, pp. 273-291; Brugsch, _Religion und
Mythologie der alten Aegypter_, p. 91; _Records of the Past_, viii.
157-160.
Footnote 162:
Comp. Weber, _Indische Literaturgeschichte_, p. 227.
Footnote 163:
See Scarborough, _Collection of Chinese Proverbs_ (1875). The Chinese
proverbs have no known authors.
Footnote 164:
On the riddles referred to, see Wünsche, _Die Räthselweisheit bei den
Hebräern_ (1883). Comp. them with the later Arabic proverbs (see
Hariri, and comp. Freytag, _Proverbia arabica_).
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST COLLECTION AND ITS APPENDICES.
Upon entering what Dante in the _De Monarchiâ_ so well calls ‘the
forest’ of the canonical proverbs, we are soon struck by differences of
age and growth. The central portion of the book, and in some respects
the most interesting, is comprised in x. 1-xxii. 16. To this, which is
indeed the original Book of Proverbs, the first nine chapters were
intended to serve as the introduction. It is the oldest Hebrew
proverbial anthology extant. Probably from its compiler it received the
name ‘Proverbs of Solomon,’ and from this title has sprung the tradition
accepted by so many subsequent ages and indeed by the editor of the
whole book (Prov. i. 1) of Solomon’s authorship of the Proverbs. The
title however cannot be historically correct. Those maxims in this
anthology which refer to the true God under the name Jehovah (_Yahvè_)
are too monotheistic and inculcate too pure a morality to be the work of
the Solomon of the Book of Kings. That great despot’s ‘wisdom,’ so far
as we can judge both from his character and from the traditional
notices, cannot have had a distinctively religious character. Listen to
these proverbs,—
Better a little with the fear of Jehovah
than great treasure and turmoil therewith (xv. 16).
The horse is prepared against the day of battle,
but victory is Jehovah’s (xxi. 31).
The mouth of strange women is a deep pit;
he with whom Jehovah is wroth falleth therein (xxii. 14).
A wise son (loveth) his father’s correction,
but a scorner heareth not rebuke (xiii. 1),—
and for a commentary read 1 Kings iv. 26, xi. 1, 4, 14-40, xii. 14, 15.
Nor is the moral tone of the ‘Solomonic’ proverbs in its plain bourgeois
simplicity any more suitable to the name they bear than the religious.
Unless Solomon was like Haroun al-Rashid, and made himself privately
acquainted with the ways and thoughts of the citizens, it is difficult
to see how he can have written so completely as one of them would have
done.
The truth is that both David and Solomon were idealised by later
generations. The heroes of a grander if not better age, they towered far
above the petty figures of their successors. Favoured by the
contemporary depression of Egypt and Assyria, they had been enabled to
rear and to retain a powerful empire, comparable to those which
afflicted and oppressed the divided people of the later Israelites.
Solomon in particular is represented in tradition as not only the most
fortunate but the wisest of kings, not in the sense in which it is said
that religion is the best part of wisdom (Prov. i. 7), but in that in
which the ‘children of the east’ were accustomed to use the word. This
is clear from the language of the Hebrew narrator:—
‘And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and
largeness of heart even as the sand on the sea-shore. And Solomon’s
wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country,
and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; than
Ethan the Ezrahite [read, perhaps, ‘the native,’ i.e. the
Israelite], and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol
[probably a foreigner]: and his fame was in all the nations round
about. And he spoke three thousand proverbs [or, similitudes], and
his songs were a thousand and five. And he spoke of trees, from the
cedar in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he
spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of creeping things, and of
fishes. And there came of all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
from all kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.’ (1 Kings
iv. 29-34.)
I see no reason for not accepting the substance of this tradition. The
principal point in it is the ascription to Solomon of a power of
apophthegmatic composition which the author, as a devout theist, could
not but trace to a divine gift, just as the author of Ex. xxxvi.
ascribes the skill of the artisans of the tabernacle to the direct
operation of Jehovah. But we are also informed that the talents of
Solomon were neither peculiar to him, nor exercised on different
subjects from those of foreign sages. The precise meaning of the Hebrew
_m’shālīm_ in 1 Kings iv. 32 is suggested by ver. 33. The word seems to
mean moralising similitudes[165] derived partly from the animal, partly
from the vegetable kingdom (for Lord Bacon’s view,[166] hinted in the
_New Atlantis_, is more plausible than sound). Was I not right in saying
that the traditional notices of Solomon’s wisdom do not agree with the
title of our anthology? I wish that it were otherwise. How gladly one
would see a few of Solomon’s genuine utterances (whether proverbs, or
similitudes, or fables) incorporated into one or another of the Hebrew
Scriptures!
I think however that it is unfair both to the compiler and to the editor
who repeats his statement (i. 1) to take the ascription of these
proverbs to Solomon literally. Accuracy in the details of literary
history was not a qualification which would seem important to an
Israelite. The name of Solomon was attached (for dogmatism here seems
permissible) to these choice specimens of Hebrew proverbiology simply
from a very characteristic hero-worship. Solomon had in fact become the
symbol of plain ethical ‘wisdom’ just as David had become the
representative of religious lyric poetry. We may see this from the
alternative title of the Book of Proverbs in both Jewish and Christian
writings—‘Book of Wisdom;’[167] still more from the fiction of Solomon’s
authorship of Ecclesiastes, and from the Targumic paraphrase of Jer. ix.
23, ‘Let not _Solomon the son of David_, the wise man, glory in his
wisdom.’ Of course, the real names of the authors of the proverbs had
been as irrecoverably lost as those of our early ballad-writers.
But though we must deny the Solomonic authorship a far-off influence of
the Solomonic age may perhaps be admitted; at least, there are grounds
for the opinion that some of the proverbs are as old as the ninth
century. (1) The second collection of so-called Solomonic proverbs was
compiled according to a credible tradition (xxv. 1) in the reign of
Hezekiah; this of itself throws the earlier collection a considerable
way back into the eighth century. (2) Upon examining the first anthology
we find that some of the proverbs already have a history. For instance,
(_a_) the solemn generalisation in xiv. 12 occurs in exactly the same
form in xvi. 25, (_b_) eight other proverbs are repeated with slight
changes in expression (x. 1 = xv. 20, x. 2 = xi. 4, xiii. 14 = xiv. 27,
xiv. 20 = xix. 4, xvi. 2 = xxi. 2, xix, 5 = xix. 9, xx. 10 = xx. 23,
xxi. 9 = xxi. 19), but except in the case of xi. 4, xiv. 27 no change in
thought, (_c_) ten are repeated, at least so far as one line goes,
either exactly or with but slight differences (x. 15 = xviii. 11, x.
6[168] = x. 11, x. 8 = x. 10,[169] xv. 33 = xviii. 12, xi. 13 = xx. 19,
xi, 21 = xvi. 5, xii. 14 = xiii. 2, xiv. 31 = xvii. 5, xvi. 18 = xviii.
12, xix. 12 = xx. 2). It is probable that some time would elapse before
a proverb attained such notoriety as to be circulated in varying forms.
(3) The originality of the diction (_a_) and the careful observance of
technical rules of composition (_b_) favour an early date. (_a_) For
instance, ‘steersmanship’[170] (xi. 14, xii. 5, xx. 18), as a term for
practical wisdom or counsels, evidently springs from a fresh enthusiasm
for commerce; a long list of striking expressions might be added from
any chapter of the collection. (_b_) Nor is technical precision at all
less conspicuous in this early anthology. Each proverb is a distich,
i.e. consists of two lines, as a rule three-toned, and in most cases
antithetically parallel. It is true, xix. 7 in its present form is a
tristich, i.e. consists of three members, but this proverb undoubtedly
arose out of two, the second of which is mutilated in the Hebrew text,
but is found in a complete though not entirely correct form in the
Septuagint. The incomprehensible third line of xix. 7 given in versions
based upon the Hebrew now becomes the distich,
He that does much evil perfects mischief;
he that provokes[171] with words shall not escape.
According to Ewald, the collection is divided into five parts by the
recurrence at intervals of a proverb exhorting the young to receive
instruction; see x. 1, xiii. 1, xv. 20, xvii. 25, xix. 20. If this
division is intentional it may be compared with the equally mechanical
triple division found by some in Isa. xl. lxvi. Of arrangement by
subject there is but little trace; here and there two or more verses
come in succession dealing with the same theme. Observe too the
recurrence of ‘Jehovah,’ xv. 33, xvi. 1-9, 11, and of the word ‘king’ in
xvi. 10, 12-15, which shows that one principle of arrangement was simply
the recurrence of certain catchwords. Bickell thinks that another
principle was the occurrence of the same initial letter (see xi. 9-12,
xx. 7-9, xx. 24-26, xxii. 2-4).
Altogether, it is abundantly clear that we have before us works of art,
and not the simple maxims handed down in Israel from father to son.
There may sometimes be a traditional basis, but no more. The anthology
contrasts, therefore, as Ewald remarks, with the collections of Arabic
proverbs due to Abu-Obaida, Maidani[172] and others. But whether we may
go on to assert with the same great critic that we have here the wise
men’s applications of the truths of religion to the infinite cases and
contingencies of the secular life, seems doubtful. It is not clear to me
that these wise men were preoccupied by religion. There are indeed not a
few fine religious proverbs, but it cannot be shown that those who wrote
the secular proverbs also wrote the religious. It is possible and even
probable that some of the religious proverbs are the work of the author
of the introductory chapters; without dogmatising, I may refer to xiv.
34 (comp. viii. 15, 16), xv. 33, xvi. 1-7, and perhaps to xix. 27, which
is quite in the parental tone of chaps. i.-ix. The tone of the secular
proverbs is not, from a Christian point of view (of which more later
on), an elevated one. The ethical principle is prudential. Virtue or
‘wisdom’ is rewarded, and vice or ‘folly’ punished in this life. It is
indeed nowhere expressly said that every trouble is a punishment; but
there is nothing like xxiv. 16 in this anthology to prevent the reader
from inferring it. At any rate, the writers are clearly not in the van
of religious thought: no ‘obstinate questionings’ have yet disturbed
their tranquillity.
We need not pause here to demonstrate what no one probably will dispute,
that the origin of this first anthology is impersonal. The fact that it
is so may well give us the more confidence in the accuracy of the social
picture which it contains. This is certainly a pleasing one, and points
to a comparatively early period in the history of Judah. Commerce and
its attendant luxury have not made such progress as at the time when the
introduction was written; poverty is only too well known, but there
seems to be a middle class with a sound moral sense, to which the
writers of proverbs can appeal. It is true, says one of these, that in
daily life ‘rich and poor meet together,’ but for all that ‘Jehovah is
the maker of them all’ (xxii. 2), and ‘he that oppresses the poor
reproaches his maker’ (xiv. 31). And if it is true on the one hand that
‘the poor is hated even of his neighbour’ (xiv. 20), and that ‘the
destruction of the wretched is their poverty’ (x. 15), it is equally so
on the other that ‘he that trusts in his riches shall fall’ (xi. 28),
and that
Better is the poor man who walks in his blamelessness,
than he who is perverse in his ways and is rich[173] (xix. 1).
The strength of the land still consists in the number of small
proprietors tilling their own ground. Two proverbs express an interest
in these, e.g.
The poor man’s newly ploughed field gives food in abundance,
but there is that is cut off by injustice (xiii. 23).
Better is a mean man that tills for himself[174]
than he that glorifies himself and has no bread (xii. 9).
All the farmers however were not so diligent as those indicated in these
passages. One of the numerous proverbs against laziness (then as now a
prevalent vice in this part of the East[175]) brings before us a
land-owner who is too lazy to give the order for ploughing at the right
time, and so when he looks for the harvest, there is none.
When autumn comes the sluggard ploughs not;
so if he asks at harvest-time, there is nothing (xx. 4).
The right use of the gift of speech is another very favourite subject in
this anthology. The charm of suitable words is best described in a
Hezekian proverb (xxv. 11), but it is well said in xv. 4 that ‘a gentle
tongue is a tree of life,’ and elsewhere that
There is that babbles like the thrusts of a sword,
but the tongue of the wise is gentleness (xii. 18).
The wonderful power of language could hardly at that age have been
better expressed than by the saying,
The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters,
a gushing torrent, a wellspring of wisdom (xviii. 4).
The standard of family morals is high; a good wife is described as God’s
best gift (xii. 4, xviii. 22, xix. 14), and the restraints of home are
commended to the young (xix. 18, xxii. 6, 15), as in the Egyptian
proverbs. Monogamy is throughout presupposed, and a want of respect for
_either_ parent is condemned (xiii. 1, xv. 5, xix. 26). The king too is
repeatedly held up to reverence (xiv. 35, xvi. 10, 12-15, xix. 12, xx.
2, 8, 26, 28, xxii. 11); it is not so in the Hezekian collection. The
king however is not identified with the Deity, as in Egypt; we are told
that the will of the monarch is pliable in the hand of Jehovah (xxi. 1),
and the true glory of a nation is, not in the prowess of its king, but
in righteousness (xiv. 34). And even if we must confess that the spirit
of the more secular proverbs is utilitarian, the utilitarianism is
sometimes a very refined one, as for instance where the refreshing
character of a quiet, contented mind is contrasted with the dull
reaction which follows on an outburst of passion (xiv. 30). In
conclusion, I will quote a few proverbs interesting chiefly as
characteristic of their age, and then a few more of the gems of the
collection.
(_a_) The poor is hated even by his neighbour,
but the rich has many friends (xiv. 20).
Whoso withholds corn, him the people curse,
but blessing is on the head of him who sells it (xi. 26).
The beginning of strife is as when one lets out water,
so leave off quarrelling before the teeth be shown (xvii. 14).
The gift of a man makes a free space for him,
and brings him before the great (xviii. 16).
‘Bad, bad,’ says the purchaser,
but when he goes away, he boasts (xx. 14).
(_b_) The righteous regards the life of his cattle,[176]
but the heart of the wicked is cruel (xii. 10).
The heart knows its own bitterness,
and a stranger cannot intermeddle with its joy (xiv. 10).
He that covers transgression helps forward love,
but he that repeats a matter separates best friends (xvii. 9).
There are friends (good enough) acting their part,[177]
and there is a loving friend who sticks closer than a brother
(xviii. 24; comp, xvii. 17).
Who can say, I have made my heart clean,
I am pure from my sin? (xx. 9.)
Say not, I will recompense evil;
wait for Jehovah, and he will deliver thee (xx. 22).
The first appendix to the original Book (appended possibly _before_ the
composition of the Introduction) is a small collection of proverbial
sayings called ‘words of the wise’ (xxii. 17-xxiv. 22). Virtually the
same phrase occurs again in xxiv. 23 at the head of a still shorter
work, compiled or composed evidently about the same time by another
‘wise man’ (perhaps the whole work has not come down to us). In the
introductory verses the compiler’s object in writing down these proverbs
is said to have been that his disciple might learn virtue and religion,
and might become qualified to teach others. There is one very difficult
passage in it, but this has been corrected in a masterly way by
Bickell:—[178]
That thy confidence may be in Jehovah,
to make known unto thee thy ways.
Now, yea before now, have I written unto thee,
long before, with counsels and knowledge,
That thou mayest know the rightness of true words,
that thou mayest answer in true words to those that ask thee
(xxii. 19-21).
The construction of ver. 20_b_ and ver. 21 in the Hebrew thus becomes
more idiomatic (comp. χθές τε καὶ πρώην), though not free from
ambiguity. The words may mean either that the compiler took long over
his work, or that this was not the first occasion of his writing. On the
latter explanation the passage may imply that the compiler of this
anthology also wrote chaps. i.-ix. (comp. i. 6_b_). His hortatory style
and predilection for grouping verses may seem to plead for this view.
There are however no important points of contact in phraseology between
the work before us and Prov. i.-ix.,[179] and certainly the appendix
falls far below the standard of the Introduction. At any rate, it is
undoubted that these ‘words of the wise’ appeared long after the
‘Solomonic’ proverbs. The peculiarities of style referred to show this,
and also the imitation of some of the ‘Solomonic’ proverbs in the ‘words
of the wise;’ (comp. xi. 14 with xxiv. 5, 6; xiii. 9 with xxiv. 19, 20;
xxii. 14_a_ with xxiii. 27).
There is no occasion to suppose that all these proverbs come from one
period; but the hand of a compiler is more conspicuous here than in the
first anthology. He has not indeed removed repetitions (see xxii. 28_a_,
xxiii. 10_a_; xxiii. 17_a_, xxiv. 1_a_; xxiii. 18, xxiv. 14), but the
personal element preponderates so much that he might fairly have
prefixed his own name as the author. Artistically, he may perhaps be
found wanting. He has left one tristich (i.e. a proverb of three lines),
viz. xxii. 29; two pentastichs (i.e. proverbs of five lines), viz.
xxiii. 4, 5. xxiv. 13, 14; and one heptastich (i.e. a proverb of seven
lines), viz. xxiii. 6-8. Unsymmetrical as these may be, it seems
hazardous, unless there be any specially doubtful passage, to restore
symmetry (i.e. to convert tristichs into tetrastichs, and so on) by
inserting words conjecturally. There are a few distichs (xxii. 28,
xxiii. 9, xxiv. 7, 8, 9, 10), thus affording a slight point of contact
with the first anthology; more tetrastichs (xxii. 22, 23; 24, 25; 26,
27; xxiii. 10, 11; 15, 16; 17, 18; xxiv. 1, 2; 3, 4; 5, 6; 15, 16; 17,
18; 19, 20; 21, 22), and hexastichs (xxiii. 1-3; 12-14; 19-21; 26-28;
xxiv. 11, 12). One octastich occurs (xxiii. 22-25), and one long poem,
in the main a group of distichs, referred to again below (xxiii. 29-35).
Beautiful in form, the proverbs of this collection certainly are not;
one cannot apply to the author the saying in xxiv. 26, ‘He kisses the
lips who answers in suitable words.’ The contents however are not
without points of interest. In xxiii. 1-3 we have a picture of a man of
the middle class admitted to the table of a governor. Being unused to
‘dainties,’ he is tempted to excess; as a restraint, the ‘wise man’ bids
him consider the capriciousness of princely favour (comp. Ecclus. ix.
13). The abuse of luxuries such as wine and meat was in fact a sore evil
in the eyes of this writer (see the caution in xxiii. 20, 21 in the
Septuagint version, which reminds one of vii. 14). He has even left us a
poem on the evils of drunkenness (xxiii. 29-35) which contains several
striking details from its satirical opening, ‘Who hath _oi_, who hath
_aboi_?’ (interjections expressing pain), to the picturesque comparison
of the drunkard to a man ‘that lieth upon the top of a mast,’[180] which
shows incidentally that sea-life was by this time a familiar experience.
Another interesting passage, though marred by its obscurity, is that in
xxiv. 11, 12. The innocent victims of a miscarriage of justice are about
to be dragged away to execution; the pupil of the wise is exhorted to
‘deliver’ them, by intervening with resistless energy, like the St. Ives
of a favourite Breton legend, and testifying to the innocence of the
sufferers (see xxxi. 8). He may of course refuse, thinking to pretend
afterwards that he had not heard of the case; but God knows all, and
will requite falsehood, not perhaps at once, but at a future time, when
‘the lamp of the wicked shall be put out’ (xxiv. 20). The wise men, as
we have seen, clung firmly to the doctrine of retribution in some one of
its various forms. We are not therefore surprised that a book of
proverbs should conclude with a dissuasion from consorting with lawless
persons, and an earnest advice to ‘fear Jehovah and the king’ (xxiv.
21).
Much need not be said of the second appendix (xxiv. 23-34). ‘These also
are by wise men,’ writes the collector, implying that he is to be
distinguished from the editor of the preceding collection. The proverbs
are all[181] either in two, four, or six lines, except ver. 27, where
however it is possible that some words have dropped out.[182] At the end
comes a parable or apologue professedly drawn from the writer’s
experience (reminding us in this of vii. 6-23, but still more of Job v.
3-5). The scene is laid in a vineyard which has run to waste and become
a wilderness from the carelessness of its owner (comp. xx. 4). The
_mashal_ (xxiv. 30-32) has been lengthened by the addition of two verses
from vi. 9, 10, originally no doubt a marginal note. It was needless;
the story (if story it can be called) is more vivid in its brevity, and
forms a fitting close to this section of proverbial wisdom.
Footnote 165:
Dr. Grätz is of opinion that Solomon was a fabulist like Jotham; in
the text I have followed Josephus (_Ant._ vii. 2, 5). Legend related
how the wise king, like the early men in African folk-lore (Max
Müller, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 116), talked _with_ (not merely _of_)
beasts, birds, and fishes, but delighted most in the birds.
Footnote 166:
This was also the opinion of Ewald (_History_, iii. 281). It might now
be urged in its favour that Assurbanipal’s library contained bilingual
lists of animals, vegetables, and minerals. But remember that the
Assyrians were incomparably more civilised than the Israelites, and
had both a lexicographical and a scientific interest in making these
lists, and above all that Solomon is not stated to have written, but
only to have _spoken_.
Footnote 167:
See the _Tosefoth_ to the Talmudic treatise _Baba bathra_, 14_b_,
where the name is given both to Proverbs and to Ecclesiastes. It is
however more commonly found in Christian than in Jewish literature,
often under the fuller form ἡ πανάρετος σοφία (see especially
Eusebius, _H. E._, iv. 22).
Footnote 168:
The second line however seems to have intruded from ver. 11, and thus
to have supplanted the original.
Footnote 169:
Here again the second line is evidently an intruder (from ver. 8). We
should doubtless read with Sept., ‘but he that reproves produces
welfare.’
Footnote 170:
This word (_takhbūlōth_) also occurs in xxiv. 6, i. 5, Job xxxvii. 12.
Footnote 171:
For _m’raddēf_ read _m’gaddēf_.
Footnote 172:
Landberg denies that Maidani’s proverbs were ever really popular, but
A. Müller judges that this view is extravagant (_Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie_, xii. 441).
Footnote 173:
The text has ‘than he who is perverse in his lips and is a fool.’ With
Grätz, I follow the Peshitto and (partly) the Vulgate.
Footnote 174:
Pointing _ōbhēd_, with Hitzig, Ewald, and Bickell; comp. ver, 11.
Dijserinck ingeniously emends _çōbhēr_ ‘heaps up’ (i.e. saves).
Footnote 175:
Comp. Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, pp. 336-8.
Footnote 176:
The word is _behēma_ (Seneca’s ‘muta animalia’). Schopenhauer,
thinking perhaps of the Levitical sacrifices, accuses the Old
Testament of cruelty to animals. But see, besides this passage, Gen.
i. 27-29, Num. xxii. 28, Jon. iv. 11.
Footnote 177:
With Hitzig and others, taking _’îsh_ as a softened form _yēsh_ (comp.
2 Sam. xiv. 19, Mic. vi. 10); the _yōd_ is kept as in Aramaic. So
Targ., Pesh.
Footnote 178:
At the end of ver. 19 Bickell nearly follows Sept. Cod. Vat., τὴν ὁδόν
σου (A.C.S. αὐτοῦ). But as this takes the place of _hayyōm_, it would
seem that Bickell ought to begin ver. 20 with _af ethmōl_. This
however would not suit his metrical theory.
Footnote 179:
The phraseological resemblance of xxiii. 19_b_ to iv. 14_b_ is
incomplete. As for _khokmōth_ in xxiv. 7, it means simply ‘wisdom’ (as
in xiv. 1, where _khakmōth_ is wrong); the parallelism with i. 20, ix.
1 is not of critical importance. Any real points of contact (such as
xxiii. 23_a_; comp. iv. 5, 7) can be accounted for by imitation, and
one could easily bring together points of difference.
Footnote 180:
The word for ‘mast’ is a ἅπ. λεγ. The Septuagint and Peshitto have ‘as
a steersman (or seaman) in great breakers.’
Footnote 181:
xxiv. 23_b_ is no exception; it is merely the first line of a
hexastich.
Footnote 182:
For ‘and afterwards’ the Hebrew has ‘afterwards and thou shalt build.’
‘And’ may mean ‘then,’ marking out the perfect as consecutive, but it
may also have been intended to join two parts of a sentence.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SECOND COLLECTION AND ITS APPENDICES.
The next proverbial anthology (xxv.-xxix.) like its chief predecessor is
described in the heading as ‘Proverbs of Solomon.’[183] The social state
however presupposed in many of them is so different from that of the
Solomonic age that we may at once reject the theory of the wise king’s
authorship. Another name with which in xxv. 1 the work is connected is
that of Hezekiah, who has been suggestively called ‘the Pisistratus of
Judah.’ The comparison halts, no doubt; for Pisistratus and his
‘companions’ meant to collect the whole of the Homeric poems, whereas
completeness can hardly have been the object of those ‘friends (or
counsellors) of Hezekiah’ who ‘collected’[184] the ‘Proverbs of Solomon’
in xxv. 2-xxix. 27; at least, we know that there was much proverbial
wisdom in circulation which had as good or as bad a claim to be called
‘Solomonic’ as the sayings which they have admitted into their
anthology. It may indeed well be doubted whether the compilers had any
thought of collecting the relics (now already more than 200 years old)
of the wise king. The style of these proverbs makes such a hypothesis
even more improbable than in the case of x. 1-xxii. 16. The words with
which the heading begins are of course not decisive, especially as the
whole verse appears to be due, not to the royal officials who are spoken
of, but to the author of the heading in xxiv. 23a (both headings begin
with ‘these also’). That Hezekiah was the instigator of the compilation,
need not however be disputed. Even if not himself an author,[185] he may
well have shared his friend Isaiah’s interest in literature; and
besides, it was at that time one of the glories of a great king to be
the founder of a library.[186] The word used in describing the activity
of his commissioners means literally ‘transferred’ (from one place to
another), and will equally well apply to the noting down of oral
traditions and to the making extracts from existing collections. Among
the latter, the ‘Proverbs of Solomon’ in x. 1-xxii. 16 are of course to
be included, though it is not quite certain whether the compilers of the
later anthology had the book before them. It is true that nine proverbs
are the same in the two books either absolutely (xxv. 24 = xxi. 9, xxvi.
22 = xviii. 8, xxvii. 12 = xxii. 3, xxvii. 13 = xx. 16) or virtually
(xxvi. 13 = xxii. 13, xxvi. 15 = xix. 24, xxviii. 6 = xix. 1, xxviii. 19
= xii. 11, xxix. 13 = xxii. 2), besides two which agree in one line
(xxvii. 21 = xvii. 3, xxix. 22 = xv. 18; comp. also xxvii. 15, xix. 13).
But there still remains the question, Why the collectors took so little
and left so much of manifest antiquity, and to this question we cannot
expect to find an answer. All that we can say is that their compilation
has striking characteristics of its own. In technicalities they admit a
greater variety than those of the first anthology. They allow not only
distichs but tristichs (xxv. 8, 13, 20, xxvii. 10, 22, xxviii. 10),
tetrastichs (xxv. 4, 5, xxv. 9, 10, xxv. 21, 22, xxvi. 18, 19, xxvi. 24,
25, xxvii. 15, 16), and in one case a pentastich[187] (xxv. 6, 7),
agreeing in this respect with the two appendices of the first anthology.
There is also a long _mashal_, analogous to some we have had already,
which can only with some laxity be called a proverb, and which extends
over ten distichs (xxvii. 23-27). With regard to parallelism, the
antithetic kind, which predominates in the first ‘Solomonic’ anthology,
is rare in this collection, except in chaps. xxviii., xxix.; sometimes
indeed there is no parallelism at all (see xxv. 8, 9, 10, 21, 22, xxvi.
18, 19, xxvii. 1, xxix. 12). As a compensation, similitudes abound in
the three first chapters of the collection. Sometimes the comparison is
expressed, e.g.
As the cold of snow in the heat[188] of harvest
is a faithful messenger to those that send him:
he refreshes the soul of his master (xxv. 13);
at other times it is implied by the juxtaposition of the two objects,
e.g.
Apples of gold in chased work of silver,
a word smoothly spoken[189] (xxv. 11).
Let us pause on this favourite proverb of Goethe’s. The Hebrew ‘wise
men’ would not have agreed to a later sage’s depreciation of
speech.[190] ‘A word in due season, how good is it’ (xv. 23); but when
not only seasonable but set off by charms of style, how much better is
it! The ‘apples of gold’ in xxv. 11 are probably oranges; the ‘chased
work of silver’ means either baskets of silver filagree, or, as I should
like to think with Mr. Neil, the brilliant white blossoms among which
the golden fruit is seen peeping out. If the ‘gold’ is figurative, why
not also the ‘silver’? We are reminded of Andrew Marvell’s lines in the
‘Emigrants’ Song,’
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
though Marvell forgot what Addison (_Spectator_, No. 455) well knew,
that flowers as well as fruit and leaves continue on the orange-tree for
the best part of the year.
But to return to our anthology. It would almost seem as if two editors
with different tastes had been concerned in it, the one responsible for
chaps. xxv.-xxvii., and the other for chaps. xxviii, xxix. According to
Ewald, the proverbs in the latter section are mostly somewhat older than
those in the former. This is perhaps an impression rather than a
judgment; and few will deny that some at least of the parabolic proverbs
in the first section may be as old as those of the same class in x.
1-xxii. 16.
It is difficult to suppose that many of the proverbs in either part of
the book go back to a remote date. The cheerfulness of Israel’s ‘golden
prime’ is gone; society seems to have changed, not altogether for the
better, even since the first great anthology was made. The king is still
looked up to with awe; the book begins with a group of four sentences on
the true glory of a monarch, followed by two on the right behaviour for
a subject (xxv. 2-7). The king is described (surely with a touch of
idealism) as inquisitive in the best sense; his ‘heart,’ or
understanding, is unsearchable. But this happy view of monarchy passes
away. There are several proverbs complaining of the wickedness of kings,
which are almost without a parallel in the earlier collection. Ungodly
rulers have made the people ‘sigh’ (xxix. 2); they have been like
‘roaring lions and ravenous bears’ to the ‘poor folk’ (xxviii. 15, 16),
and have completely destroyed the freedom of social intercourse (xxviii.
12, 28). Sometimes, as in the northern kingdom after the death of
Jeroboam II.,[191] the crown has become the object of competition to a
crowd of pretenders (xxviii. 2). The misery of the people has been
heightened by the greed of petty tyrants, according to the forcible
saying,—
A man who is rich[192] and oppresses the poor
(is) a rain which sweeps away and gives no bread (xxviii. 3).
What kind of oppression is meant we may learn from Micah (ii. 3),—
And they covet lands and take them by violence;
houses, and take them away;
and they oppress the owner and his house,
a man and his inheritance.
It is in short the same unscrupulous accumulation of landed property to
which Isaiah devotes one of his solemn ‘woes’ in his earliest prophecy,
and which is one of the causes of the threatened captivity (Isa. v. 8-10
13). Exile has indeed become a familiar idea to those who admitted
xxvii. 8 into the anthology, if, as most think, in the pathetic words of
xxvii. 8 we may hear an echo of the march of Assyrian armies, ‘to
wander’ being an euphemism for going into banishment.
As a bird that wanders from her nest,
so is a man that wanders[193] from his home (xxvii. 8).
As a rule, however, the proverbs relate to ordinary bourgeois life.
Religious proverbs occur but rarely.[194] ‘Folly’ too is not so often
mentioned as in the first collection, and the censure which it has to
bear is mostly indirect and more or less satirical; see e.g. the
proverb—
Though thou shouldest beat a fool in a mortar
in the midst of bruised corn with a pestle,
his folly would not depart from him (xxvii. 22),
and especially the paradoxical exhibition of the two sides of a truth—
Answer not the stupid man according to his folly,
lest thou thyself also become like unto him:
Answer the stupid man according to his folly,
lest he regard himself as wise (xxvi. 4, 5),
where the first distich dissuades from retaliating on a fool by a word
or an action on his own low moral plane, while the second recommends
giving his folly the exposure or the sharp answer which it so richly
deserves.[195] The wide meaning of ‘folly’ in this pair of proverbs may
be illustrated by xvii. 12, where it evidently means a paroxysm of
passion. Next to this noisy passionate ‘folly,’ if we may judge from the
arrangement of chap. xxvi., comes the vice of idleness (xxvi. 13-16).
How dangerous this was felt to be we have seen already, and the
exhortation to agricultural industry in xxvii. 23-27 forms a counterpart
to the meditation on the ‘field of the slothful’ in xxiv. 30-32. If the
motives urged for this and other duties are not lofty, the standard is
at least an easily attainable one.
Sometimes, indeed, the eye sharpened by a regard to prudence discerns
moral points of some refinement.[196] This proverb, for instance,
strikes one as delicate, in spite of the prudential motive attached to
it in the next verse,—
Conduct thy quarrel with thy neighbour,
but expose not the secret of another (xxv. 9);
and the well-known precept on showing kindness to one’s enemies, though
partly supported by the prospect of a reward (comp. xxiv. 17, 18), is so
nobly expressed that an apostle can adopt it without change (Rom. xii.
20),—
If one that hates thee hunger, give him bread to eat,
and if he thirst, give him water to drink,
for thou heapest coals of fire thereby
upon his head, and Jehovah shall recompense thee (xxv. 21, 22).
Let us pause a moment on this proverb, which contrasts so strongly with
the advice on the treatment of enemies given by Sirach. ‘Coals of fire
on the head’ is probably here a metaphorical expression for what St.
Augustine calls ‘urentes conscientiæ gemitus’ (_De doctr. Christ._, l.
iii., c. 16). The appositeness of the phrase will be heightened if we
suppose the enemy spoken of to be one who has never heard of the wise
man’s rule—a man of rude, uncultured nature, and perhaps of alien race.
To such a one, the being fed by the very man whom he ‘hated’ would give
first of all a shock of surprise, and then a pang of intolerable remorse
for his own unworthiness.[197] I wish one could be sure that this pang
was referred to as purifying as well as painful to the sufferer. A
parallel passage would be a great boon. Of course we can _apply_ the
passage in the same sense as St. Paul when he followed his quotation
with the words, ‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’
But we should wrong our ‘wise men’ by treating them as pure
utilitarians; they are often sympathetic observers of character and
circumstance. For instance,—
Vinegar falling upon a wound,[198]
and he who sings songs to a heavy heart (xxv. 20).
Silver dross spread over an earthen vessel—
fervent lips[199] and a bad heart (xxvi. 23).
Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth:
a stranger, and not thine own lips (xxvii. 2).
Faithful are the wounds of one who loves,
but the kisses of a hater are profuse[200] (xxvii. 6).
Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not;
and go not to thy brother’s house in the day of thy calamity:
better is a near neighbour than a far off brother[201] (xxvii. 10).
He who blesses his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the
morning,
it is reckoned to him for a curse[202] (xxvii. 14).
Iron is sharpened by iron,
and a man sharpens the face (or edge) of his friend (xxvii. 17).
The three appendices to the Hezekian collection (xxx., xxxi. 1-9, xxxi.
10-31) are, to take the most conservative position possible, obviously
not earlier than the closing century of the Jewish state. The art of
proverb-writing has declined ever since the compilation of the previous
anthology. The marks of simplicity and naturalness are wanting; the
enigmatical and artificial seem to be sought for. Each part of these two
chapters has moreover something of its own pointing in the direction of
a late origin. The two first appendices are very possibly even later
than the return of the Jews from Babylon.
The first appendix begins—‘The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, the
prophecy’ (or, divine utterance)[203] (comp. xxxi, 1). The heading is
enigmatical; in what sense are the ‘words’ ‘a prophecy,’ and who are the
persons spoken of? The latter question we have no means of answering.
The names are not found elsewhere, and have been thought to be
pseudonyms (Agur might mean ‘collector’ and Jakeh ‘obedient,’ i.e.
‘religious’).[204] As to the title ‘the prophecy,’ it must be admitted
that it is not by any means an appropriate one. It is too bold to accuse
the proverb-writer of claiming prophetic inspiration. (And why should
the article be prefixed?) The only alternative to this is to read, with
Prof. Grätz, (for _hammassā_ ‘the prophecy’) _hammōshēl_ ‘the
proverb-writer.’ After the heading comes a group of four verses complete
in itself.
The oracle of the man ‘I have wearied[205] myself about God’ (?),
I have wearied myself about God and have not prevailed.[206]
For I am too stupid for a man,
and am without human reason;
I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the All-holy.[207]
Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
who has gathered the wind in his fists?
who has bound up the waters in a garment?
who has established all the ends of the earth?
what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou knowest?
It is not easy to interpret this little passage. Evidently the speaker
is a ‘wise man,’ who, according to some critics, inculcates a reverent
humility by reporting the fruitlessness of his own theological
speculations. After long brooding over the problems of the divine nature
(so they explain), the Hebrew sage was compelled to desist with the
feeling of his utter incapacity. Like Israel the patriarch he strove
with God, but unlike Israel he did not prevail. He knows indeed what God
has done and is continually doing; He is the Omnipresent One, the Lord
of wind and flood, the Author of the boundaries of the earth. But what
is this great Being’s name, and (to know Him intimately) what is His
son’s name? On this view of its meaning, the passage reminds one of the
words of Goethe’s Faust, ‘Who can name Him, or who confess, I believe
Him? Who can feel, and can be bold to say, I believe Him not?’ Or
perhaps we may still better compare Max Letteris’ masterly Hebrew
translation or adaptation, in which the medieval doctor has been
transformed into Ben Abuyah (or Acher אַחֵר), the famous apostate from
Judaism in the second century of our era. The passage with which we are
concerned as illustrative of the passage before us is on page 164, and
begins מִי יַזָכַּירֵהוּ וּמִי יְבַנֵּהוּ. Notice the delicate tact in
the choice of the second verb, ‘Who can give Him an honourable surname?’
(comp. Isa, xliv. 5, xiv. 4.) Later on, after other names suggested by
the German original, the modern Hebrew poet continues, אוֹׂ בְּיָהּ
שְׁמוׂ כִי נִשְׂגָּב הַזְכּירוּ, and in a note refers to a parallel
passage in a Hebrew poem by Ibn Gabirol.
I must make bold to doubt the correctness of this explanation. (1)
Because it does not sufficiently account for the language of ver. 2. (2)
Because upon this view of the questions of ver. 4, an Israelite’s answer
would simply be, Jehovah (comp. Job xxxviii. 5, Isa. xl. 12). (3)
Because it is so difficult to see why the poet should have asked
further, What is His son’s name? Is not the passage rather a philosophic
fragment from a school of ‘wise men,’ not so much unbelieving as
critical? The speaker declares, soberly enough, that he has tried in
vain by thinking to find out God. Then comes in a piece of irony. No
doubt it is his own stupidity; grand theologians, such as the writer of
Isa. xl. 12 &c., Job xxxviii., Prov. viii. 22 &c., may well look down
upon the dullard, who has not passed through their school! ‘But who is
it that is ever and anon coming down[208] to earth, and that performed
all these creative works of which you delight to speak? I have never
seen him; tell me his name and his son’s name since you are so learned.’
The latter phrase may be an allusion, either (anticipating Philo, who
calls Wisdom God’s Son) to the ‘I was brought forth’ in viii. 24, or
more probably[209] the primeval man (who might be called a ‘son of God’
in the sense of Luke iii. 38) spoken of in Job xv. 7, who was the
embodiment of all wisdom and sat in the council of Elohim.[210] The
satirical turn of this secularistic ‘wise man’ is even perhaps traceable
in the heading of his poem. He calls his work an ‘oracle,’ taking up a
favourite word of the disciples of the prophets, and flinging it back to
them with a laugh. Obviously too the name of the writer, if genuine, is
best explained as an assumed name. [But the emphatic _haggebher_ is very
difficult. I cannot believe, with Ewald, that _haggebher_ is said
ironically, as if ‘the mighty one in his own conceit;’ comp. Isa. xxii.
17 (?), Ps. lii. 3. The analogy of Num. xxiv. 3, 15, 2 Sam. xxiii. 1,
suggests that there is a corruption in the text, and that _haggebher_,
‘the man,’ was originally followed by words descriptive of the person
referred to. Grätz boldly corrects (_haggebher_) _lō-khayil_ ‘the man
without strength.]
Are we surprised at this? But a strikingly parallel confession of honest
scepticism is found in the Rig Veda (x. 129), though I would not of
course identify the opinions of the Sanskrit and the Hebrew poet,
Who knows, who here can declare, whence has sprung—whence, this
creation?... From what this creation arose; and whether [any one]
made it, or not,—he who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he
verily knows, or [even] he does not know.[211]
The poet who ‘takes up his parable’ after Laithi-el calmly and
uncontroversially indicates his own very different religious position.
He earnestly prays that he may not ‘become a liar and ask, Who is
Jehovah?’ (xxx. 9); for him the divine revelations (the outward form of
which is already sacred) are amply sufficient. ‘Every utterance of God
[_Eloah_, the sing. form, as in Job] is free from alloy’ (xxx. 5; see
the commentators on Ps. xviii. 31); the divine ‘name’ declared in Ex.
xxxiv. 6, should satisfy the wisest of men. Thus, like the editors of
Ecclesiastes, this later writer neutralises the doubtful expressions of
the poem which he has saved from perishing.
Can we avoid the impression that both these poets lived in an age of
advanced religious reflection and of Scripture-study? The one is more of
a philosopher, the other of a Biblical theologian; both would be at home
only in the Exile or in the post-Exile period, when doubt and even
scepticism lifted their heads side by side with Biblical study. Our
second more believing poet seems to be thinking of Ps. xviii. 30; but
the portion of that verse which he adopts assumes another colour through
the warning which follows, derived from Deut. iv. 1, xiii. 1. It is no
longer the ‘promise of God’ which is ‘tried’ or ‘pure,’ but the
revelation of which the Jewish Church is gradually finding itself the
possessor.
The poet’s prayer for himself (vv. 7-9) is followed by eight groups of
proverbs, each of which describes some quality or character which is
either commended or warned against, and (with the exception of the
first) contains a similitude. In most of these the number four is
conspicuous generally as the climax after ‘three’ (vv. 15, 18, 21, 29).
The fact that similar ‘numerical proverbs’ were popular in the early
Rabbinical period,[212] gives a certain support to the view that this
collection is of late origin. The groups referred to are—
The four marks of an evil generation vv. 11-14
The four insatiable things — 15, 16
The fate of the disobedient son — 17
The four incomprehensible things — 18-20
— — intolerable things — 21-23
— — wise animals — 24-28
— — comely in going (see p. 175) — 29-31
A warning against strife — 32, 33.
One of these (vv. 15, 16) has probably suffered a slight mutilation,
which has been thus remedied by Bickell,—
The leech has two [three [213]] daughters,
they say continually, ‘Give, give:’
there are three things which are never satisfied,
four which never say, ‘Abundance.’
Sheól is never satisfied with dead,
and the closing of the womb is never satisfied with men,
the earth is never satisfied with water,
and fire never says, ‘Abundance.’[214]
‘Daughters of the leech’ is a quasi-mythical expression, which no one
could misunderstand (comp. ‘upon a hill the son of oil,’ Isa. v. 1). We
find a similar group of four insatiables in the Sanskrit
Hitopadesa.[215]
Fire is never satisfied with fuel; nor the ocean with rivers; nor
death with all creatures; nor bright-eyed women with men.
The verses are of course older than the trumpery story of the cowherd’s
wife which they serve to illustrate. The coincidence with the Hebrew,
being obviously accidental, is worth remembering in other connections.
The two parallels, present in the Hebrew but not in this Sanskrit
quaternion, are given in a quatrain of a Vedic hymn to Varuna—
The path of ships across the sea,
The soaring eagle’s flight he knows.[216]
The second appendix (xxxi. 1-9) consists of a single group of sayings,
described as ‘the words of Lemuel, a king, the prophecy [better the
proverb, reading _māshāl_] with which his mother instructed him.’
Possibly, as Ewald suggests, Lemuel (or rather, Lemoel, as the word is
pointed in ver. 4) is an imaginary name, descriptive of the character of
an ideal monarch (‘God’s own;’ comp. Lael, Num. iii. 24). It is not
necessary to suppose that the poet himself lived under a native king; he
may, like the author of Koheleth, have thrown himself back in
imagination to Israel’s golden prime. His own period was late, judging
from the unclassical Hebrew (notice the Aramaisms in vv. 2, 3, and the
strange expressions in vv. 5, 8). The form of the heading suggests that
these ‘words of Lemuel’ formed part of the same collection as the ‘words
of Agur;’ and there is at least nothing in the contents to forbid this
view. The warnings of this queen-mother[217] (whose relation to Lemuel
reminds us of that of Bathsheba to Solomon) are very homely and
practical; one is against sensuality, another against drunkenness; upon
which follows an admonition to defend the cause of the poor. Even if
there were no native king at the time, the advice would be appropriate
for all members of the upper class of society.
The third appendix (xxxi. 10-31) contains the praise of the virtuous
woman. In style it is quite unlike the two preceding sections; it must
come therefore from another source. It is an alphabetic poem; each
distich begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This, combined with
the position of the work at the close of the various collections of
proverbs, of itself suggests a date not far removed on the one side or
the other from the Exile period, when Hebrew literature became
undoubtedly more artificial and technical. From xxxi. 23 (‘the elders of
the land’) we may perhaps infer that it was written in Palestine. It is
very interesting to see the ideal of womanhood formed by a late Hebrew
poet. Activity appears to him the one great feminine virtue—not however
the activity which is entirely devoted to trifling details, for the
ideal woman ‘is like the ships of the merchant; from far she brings her
food’ (ver. 14). Nor is she a stranger to sympathetic impulses; ‘she
holds out her hand (with something in it) to the afflicted, and
stretches forth her hands to the needy [to bring them in],’ ver. 20. Nor
must we forget ‘one of the most beautiful features in the portrait’
(Delitzsch): ‘she opens her mouth with wisdom, and a law of kindness is
on her tongue’ (ver. 26). But for this verse, indeed, it would read
almost like satire that ‘far above pearls is her value’ (ver. 10), since
no higher estimate than this has been offered for God’s choicest
blessing, ‘Wisdom.’[218]
The poet does not say that he has found such a woman (comp. Eccles. vii.
28). The picture is perhaps too brightly coloured to be drawn from
reality, unless with Hitzig we bring down the composition of the poem as
late as the Greek period. Most probably, it is idealistic.
Footnote 183:
‘These _also_’ suggests that what follows is a last gleaning of
Solomonic proverbs. And in fact xxv. 24, xxvi. 13, 15, 22, xxvii. 12,
13, 21a, seem to be taken from _the_ ‘Solomonic’ collection. Hitzig
however rejects this view. Why did not the collectors combine all the
Solomonic proverbs they could find in one work? So he supposes this
new collection to have been made ‘aus dem Volksmunde,’ and remarks
that a commission would be specially appropriate for this task. To me
this seems an anachronism. The proverbs of the Hezekian collection are
moreover as artistic as those of the first ‘Solomonic.’
Footnote 184:
So virtually the Septuagint (ἑξεγράψαντο), followed by the Peshitto
and the Targum: Aquila, μετῆραν. The Greek, curiously enough, inserts
an epithet for the proverbs, viz. αἱ ἀδιάκριτοι, i.e. either
impossible to distinguish, miscellaneous (so Sophocles, _Lexicon_), or
better, difficult to interpret. Symmachus has ἀδιάκριτος for _bōhū_,
Gen. i. 2. The Peshitto and Targum render the Greek of our passage by
‘deep proverbs,’ i.e. enigmatical ones (so too Aquila and Theodotion
in the Syro-hexapla).
Footnote 185:
Cheyne, _The Prophecies of Isaiah_, i. 228-9 (on Isa. xxxviii. 9).
Footnote 186:
Sayce’s ed. of Smith’s _Chaldean Genesis_, pp. 15, 26, 27.
Footnote 187:
Sept., Symm., Pesh., Vulg., however, attach the lost line of ver. 7 to
ver. 8 (‘Quæ viderunt oculi tui, ne proferas in jurgio cito’), which
makes ver. 7 a distich and ver. 8 a tetrastich.
Footnote 188:
Reading _b’khōm_ for _b’yōm_ with Sept.
Footnote 189:
Literally, ‘a word spoken (or, perhaps, driven, or sent home) on its
wheels,’ i.e. smoothly and elegantly (‘ore rotundo’). So Schultens,
who sees a reference to the tropes and figures of elegant Oriental
style. Comp. Neil, _Palestine Explored_, p. 197. The interpretation is
an attractive one, though uncertain. Ewald has a slightly different
view (see History, ii. p. 14, n. 6).
Footnote 190:
Carlyle however borrows an Arabic proverb (Freytag, _Prov. Ar._, iii.
92).
Footnote 191:
It is of course possible that xxviii. 2 may be of northern origin, but
why should not a wise man in Judah have watched with sympathy the
course of events in Israel?
Footnote 192:
Reading, with Grätz, _’āshīr_ for _rāsh_ ‘poor,’ which makes no sense.
Footnote 193:
Sept. well ἀποξενωθεῇ.
Footnote 194:
Notice however the remarkable saying, already quoted, in xxix.
Footnote 195:
The proverbs xxvi. 1, 3-12, form a string of satirical attacks on the
‘fool’ or stupid man.
Footnote 196:
One of these points however is noticed in the earliest part of the
Law. The love of one’s enemy is taught in Ex. xxiii. 4, 5.
Footnote 197:
See however Mr. Yonge in _The Expositor_, Aug. 1885, pp. 158-9.
Footnote 198:
The received text has ‘vinegar upon nitre;’ but this would be rather
an emblem for anger. The correction is Bickell’s, and is partly
founded on Sept. (ὥσπερ ὄξος ἕλκει ἀσύμφορον). The opening words of
the verse in rec. text arise from the repetition in a corrupt form of
the four last words of the preceding verse (Lagarde and Bickell).
Footnote 199:
The Septuagint has ‘smooth lips.’
Footnote 200:
To have added ‘but perfidious,’ would have made the line too long.
Footnote 201:
This seems a combination of two distinct proverbs. The one says that a
friend can give more sympathy than a relative; the other, that a
neighbour, being on the spot, can give more help than a relative at a
distance.
Footnote 202:
A humorous picture! Such ostentatious and inopportune salutations are
execrable flattery.
Footnote 203:
On the conjectural reading, ‘the man of Massa’ (‘Massa,’ instead of
‘the prophecy’), see Chap. VI.
Footnote 204:
This was the view of St. Jerome, derived of course from his Jewish
teacher.
Footnote 205:
Pointing _lāīthī_.
Footnote 206:
Reading with Bickell _v’lō ūkāl_. Another correction of the text is,
_v’ēkel_ ‘and have pined away.’
Footnote 207:
_Q’dōshīm_, a word formed on the analogy of _elōhīm_; comp. ix. 10,
Hos. xii. 1.
Footnote 208:
It may be objected that ‘hath gone up and come down’ does not suit
this explanation, and that, to refer to God, it should run ‘hath come
down and gone up.’ But we have ‘angels of Elohim ascending and
descending’ in Gen. xxviii. 12; usage, in Hebrew as in English,
forbids the phrase ‘to go down and up.’
Footnote 209:
‘More probably;’ because the name of the speaker in viii. 24 has been
told.
Footnote 210:
Comp. Ewald, _Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott_, iii. 2, pp. 81, 82.
Footnote 211:
Muir, _Original Sanskrit Texts_, v. 356; comp. Max Müller, _Hibbert
Lectures_, p. 316.
Footnote 212:
See above, p. 128, and comp. Wünsche, _Midrasch Kohelet_, p. xiii.
Footnote 213:
Sept., followed by Pesh., reads ‘three’ for ‘two.’ Accepting this
reading, the second half of the verse becomes an explanation of the
first.
Footnote 214:
Bickell’s reconstruction of the text makes the proverbs symmetrical
with the rest. In lines 5, 6 he makes an ingenious parallelism with
_mēthīm_ ‘dead’ and _m’thīm_ ‘men’ (i.e. children).
Footnote 215:
F. Johnson’s translation (1848), chap. ii., fable 7; comp. Fritze’s
metrical version (Leipz. 1884).
Footnote 216:
Muir, _Metrical Translations_ (1879), p. 160.
Footnote 217:
On the early importance of the queen-mother, see Cheyne’s _Isaiah_, i.
47, note 1 (on Isa. vii. 13).
Footnote 218:
This hardly recommends the view of Costelli, that this poem is
properly the conclusion of the introductory treatise (i.-ix.)
CHAPTER V.
THE PRAISE OF WISDOM.
‘Thou hast kept the good wine until now,’ for ‘good wine’ well describes
the glorious little treatise at the head of our Book of Proverbs (i.
7-ix. 18). I do not think it is right to infer from the heading in i. 1
that its unknown author assumed the mask of Solomon. In itself such a
hypothesis would not be incredible. We have the analogy of the Egyptian
scribe who represents Amenemhat I. ‘rising up like a god’ and addressing
to his son some instructions on the royal art of governing.[219] But it
is more natural to explain the heading as a repetition of the formula in
x. 1, for the ‘Praise of Wisdom’ (to coin another title) is in fact the
introduction to the following anthology,[220] together with which and
its appendices it forms the ‘older book of Proverbs.’ If we ask why an
introduction was prefixed, the answer must be that the writer wished to
recommend his own inspiring view of practical ethics as a branch of
divine wisdom; in other words, to counteract the sometimes commonplace
morality of the earlier proverbs by enveloping the reader in a purer and
more ethereal atmosphere. The key-note of the anthology is nothing but
Experience; that of the introductory treatise is Divine Teaching. It is
a sign of moral progress that the editor of an anthology of Experience
should have thought his work only half-done till he had prefixed the
‘Praise of Wisdom.’ As a wise teacher of our own time[221] has observed,
‘It would not be untrue to say that in all essential points Experience
is the teacher only of fools, of those who have gone astray through
turning a deaf ear to the voice of a prior and more legitimate teacher.’
The nature of the wisdom so earnestly commended by this self-forgetting
writer, we will consider presently; and our study will probably convince
us that such a writer can only have arisen at an advanced period of
Israel’s history. The class or circle to which he belonged, and its
characteristics, can easily be determined; but the precise period only
with some degree of hesitation. Without anticipating the discussion
which will be given at another point, I think it may safely be laid down
that each of those kindred poems—the ‘Praise of Wisdom’ and ‘Job’—must
have arisen at one of three periods, marked respectively by the
composition of Deuteronomy, by the Captivity, and by the Restoration.
The progress of the higher Israelitish wisdom was so gradual that it
does not perhaps, to the exegete as distinguished from the historian,
greatly matter which of these periods we select. For my own part,
however, I incline to connect at any rate the former of these works with
the age of Deuteronomy. Apart from the details to be mentioned
elsewhere, it is clear (I speak now of Prov. i.-ix.) that the tone of
the exhortations, and the view of religion as ‘having the promise of the
life that now is,’ correspond to similar characteristics of the Book of
Deuteronomy. And if we turn from the contents to the form of this choice
little book, the same hypothesis seems equally suitable. The prophets
had long since seen the necessity of increasing their influence by
committing the main points of their discourses to writing; some
rhetorical passages indeed were evidently composed to be read and not to
be heard. It was natural that the moralists should follow this example,
not only (as in the anthologies) by remodelling their wise sayings for
publication, but also by venturing on long and animated quasi-oratorical
recommendations of great moral truths.
Such a recommendation, addressed especially to the young and
impressionable (i. 4), lies before us in chaps. i.-ix. In grave but
harmonious accents the opening verses (which refer chiefly to i. 7-ix.
18, but not without a secondary reference to the anthology which
follows) describe its object and character. Then follows a motto, the
first line of which occurs again near the close of the book in ix. 10
(Job xxviii. 28, Ps. cxi. 10), and which stamps the author as belonging
to a new and more religious class of ‘wise men’ (see p. 121),—
The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom,
i.e. the foundation of true wisdom (its ‘root,’ Ecclus. i. 20) is
reverence. The disciple is to begin by taking this upon trust, but when
further advanced he will see that it is the shortest way to his goal,
true wisdom having an objective existence in the unseen world. At
present he is simply to follow the ‘direction’ of those wiser than
himself:—our moralist is as zealous for a _tōra_ as the author of
Deuteronomy. But though serious and authoritative, he is never stern;
indeed, to enforce his appeal he breaks through a Hebrew writer’s usual
veil of reticence and describes his own home-life (iv. 3, 4). He can
enter into the feelings of the young, for he too has ‘borne the yoke in
his youth’ (Lam. iii. 27), and learned to prefer it to ‘unchartered
freedom.’ The whole of chap. iv. is devoted to a summary of the wise
doctrine which he received from his father; indeed, throughout the book
he shows a wonderful appreciation of the parental and the filial
relations, and, according to Ewald’s arrangement (see below), begins
each section with an exhortation to listen to parental instruction. He
himself feels like a father to his young disciples (iv. 1).
The errors to which his hearers are specially tempted are highway
robbery (i. 11-18, iv. 16, 17) and unchastity (ii. 16, v. 3-20, vi.
24-35, vii. 5-27, ix. 13-18). From the time that the simplicity of the
ancient life began to give way to the inroads of luxury, we meet in the
Biblical writings with complaints of acts of violence leading to murder
(see, for instance, in the prophecies, Isa. i. 15, v. 7, xxxiii. 15,
Mic. iii. 10, Jer. ii. 34, xxii. 17, Isa. lix. 3, 7, and in a collection
of proverbs contemporary with our book, Prov. xxiv. 15, 16). ‘At no
time,’ as Dean Plumptre well remarks, ‘has Palestine ever risen to the
security of a well-ordered police-system;’ even down to the fall of
Jerusalem, bands of robbers defied the authority of the central
government. The remarkable thing is that young men in the higher circles
of society (for such our moralist appears to address) should be thought
capable of joining the banditti, at a time when ‘bandit’ could not be
synonymous with ‘patriot.’ Our moralist contents himself with dissuading
his disciple from doing so, on the ground of the retribution which will
follow (i. 18, 19). The exhortation to industry, with its slow but sure
profits, comes later, and in a less appropriate place (vi. 6-8). But the
other besetting sin of youth is still more earnestly denounced as the
most glaring specimen of ‘folly.’ Once indeed the ‘strange, or alien,
woman,’ i.e. the adulteress, is introduced dramatically as ‘Madam Folly’
(ix. 13). The picture is remarkable, and forms a designed contrast to
that at the beginning of the chapter. She sits at the door of her house,
counterfeiting her great rival Wisdom (comp. ver. 14 with ver. 3, and
ver. 16 with ver. 4), like Dante’s Siren; but the disciple of the ‘wise
man’ knows
... that phantoms are there,
and that her guests are in the depths of Sheól
(ix. 18; comp. ii. 18, xxi. 16).
‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?’ is the problem for our
moralist to solve. He does so by insisting on an education conducted in
reliance on divine Wisdom. The reward of diligent attention to the
earlier lessons (for each chapter is a lesson, and its repetitions have
a pedagogic justification) is the famous portrait of Wisdom in viii.
22-31. She (for Wisdom, _khokma_, is a feminine word) has indeed been
mentioned before (i. 20, iii. 13-20, iv. 5-9), but from viii. 1 to ix. 6
the poet is absorbed in his grand personification. Wisdom is now
presented to us, in the familiar dialect of poetry, as the firstborn
Child of the Creator. There is but one Wisdom; though her forms are
many, in her origin she is one. The Wisdom who presided over the ‘birth’
of nature is the same who by her messengers (the ‘wise men’) calls
mankind to turn aside from evil (ix. 3). There can therefore be no real
disharmony between nature and morality; the picture leaves no room for
an Ahriman, in this and other respects resembling the Cosmogony in Gen.
i. and portions of the striking descriptions in Job xxvi., xxviii.,
xxxviii. There is also no time when we can say that ‘Wisdom was not.’
Faith declares that even in that primitive Chaos of which our reason has
a horror divine Wisdom reigned supreme. The heavenly ocean, the ancient
hills, the combination of countless delicate atoms to form the ground,
the fixing of the vault of heaven on the world-encircling ocean, the
separation of sea and dry land[222]—all these were later works of God
than the Architect through whom He made them. And how did the Architect
work? By a ‘divine improvisation’ which allowed no sense of effort or
fatigue, and which still continues with unabated freshness. But though
her sportive path[223] can still be traced in the processes of nature,
her highest delight is in the regeneration of the moral life of
humanity. The passage runs thus—
Jehovah produced[224] me as the beginning of his way,
as the first of his works, long since.
From of old I received my place,
from the beginning, from the first times of the earth.
When there were no floods, I was brought forth,
when there were no fountains rich in water.
Before the mountains were settled,
before the hills was I brought forth;
While as yet he had not made the earth with (its) fields,
and the atoms of dust which form the ground.
When he established the heaven, I was there,
when he marked a circle upon the face of the flood,[225]