[1] The Spectator, Sept. 11, 1915.

[1a] See the discussion in Abelson, The Immanence of God in Rabbinical Literature, pp. 199ff.

[2] Le Fabre, Life of the Spider, Ch. ix. (Eng. trans. by Teixeira de Mattos, 1912).

[2a] Cp. G. A. Smith, Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, p. 288.

[3] R. J. Moulton, Modern Reader’s Bible, p. 1456.

[4] Cf. such sayings as “Coals to Newcastle”—a proverb that has a parallel in many countries, for example, the Greek phrase, “Owls to Athens.”

[5] Trench, Proverbs and their Lessons, first published in 1857: a learned and brilliant little volume to which the present chapter is indebted for several suggestions.

[6] ?a?ep? t? ?a??.

[7] ????? t? t?? f????.

[8] A version, doubtless, of Proverbs 1022.

[9] John Morley, Aphorisms: An Address to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution (1887) p. 7.

[10] As a text-book it was at least memorable. A distinguished man of letters tells me that one of its injunctions, taught him in his first school, he might claim never to have forgotten: Let thy foot be seldom in thy neighbour’s house, lest he be weary of thee and hate thee (Pr. 2517). His friends bear regretful and emphatic witness that the facts completely justify his claim.

[11] Mark Rutherford, The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane, p. 238.

[12] In the final form of the Book thus gradually evolved it is sometimes very easy, sometimes difficult or impossible, to distinguish with exactitude the earlier from the later ‘sources’ out of which it has been composed; but the main stages of the compilation can generally be determined with a high degree of accuracy, just as in an old cathedral through the varying modes of architecture employed the general history of the building is clearly visible to the trained perception.

[13] Evidence for the statements here given is omitted, partly because they are matters of general agreement among modern students of the Bible, but still more because the full evidence has been repeatedly set forth in works accessible to any who may have inclination to consider the subject in detail. Reference may conveniently be made to C. H. Toy, Proverbs, or to the same writer’s article Book of Proverbs, in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica (11th edition); or to G. F. Moore, Literature of the Old Testament, ch. xxii. (Home University Library).

[14] Cp. also 101 The proverbs of Solomon; 2217 Words of the Wise; 2423, These are also words of the Wise; 251 These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out; 301, Sayings of Agur, son of Jakeh; 311, Sayings of Lemuel, king of Massa. The last two of these titles rest on an uncertain Hebrew text. For the allusion to Solomon see pp. 71, 72.

[15] Perhaps almost all, in their present polished form. Thus Toy (Proverbs, p. xi.) declares that “none of the aphorisms are popular proverbs or folk-sayings. They are all reflective and academic in tone, and must be regarded as the productions of schools of moralists in a period of high moral culture.” This observation is generally true, and of great importance; but it is not to be understood as meaning that the Book, or even the several sections, sprang out of nothing. In and behind the finished product there may well be a great deal of earlier material.

[16] i.e., any subsequent changes were of a minor character, introduced occasionally by some scribe or copyist. The year 200 B.C. may reasonably be taken as the lower limit of date, partly because Proverbs has features (notably its attitude to the Mosaic Law) which suggest that it was finished earlier than Ecclesiasticus, a work composed about 190 B.C. This argument, though strong, is not conclusive; but in any case the peaceful, comfortable, tone which pervades Proverbs indicates that it is not later than the years of persecution preceding the Maccabean revolt in 167 B.C.

[17] See for Ecclesiastes the volume Pessimism and Love by D. Russell Scott; and for Job, The Problem of Pain, by J. E. McFadyen.

[18] N.B. Hereafter the abbreviation “E,” will constantly be used for Ecclesiasticus, and “Pr.” for Proverbs.

[19] The dots indicate words missing from the Hebrew text or of unknown meaning.

[20] Cp. also E. 251, 2; 265.

[21] lit. “the character of Sodom.”

[22] i.e., He thinks the world requires nothing more than the interchange of commodities. As to the way of putting it, be it remembered that in the Orient business transactions are, politely, “gifts”; cp. Gen. 2310-16.

[23] A. R. Wallace, Natural Selection.

[24] G. A. Smith, Early Poetry of Israel, p. 33; and cp. Kinglake, Eothen, ch. 17.

[25] Cohen, Ancient Jewish Proverbs, 88.

[26] op. cit. 13.

[27] Fulleylove and Kelman, The Holy Land, pp. 103, 104. Note the “Scriptural” language. Such talk, when we find it in the Bible, is neither pedantic nor is it a “religious” dialect. To a Western it seems affected, but let us remember that to an Eastern our manner of speech, with its tortuous sentences, might savour of an unholy cunning.

[28] Appius Planius, 188 (McKail’s translation).

[29] e.g., Hosea 510, Isaiah 58, Deut. 2717, Job 242.

[30] Cp. Joshua 724, 25. The earliest form of the narrative clearly implies that all, and not Achan alone, were destroyed by burning or stoning.

[31] Not but what the belief is at least as old as the Hebrew Law, I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, and shewing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments.

[32] A study, not a half-hearted perusal of the text in the English Bible.

[33] Cp. Numbers 2127, Wherefore they that speak in proverbs say “Come ye to Heshbon,”...

[34] For these titles see Chapter II., p. 37. That such a phrase as The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel (Pr. I1) at the head of a section does not necessarily imply or even claim authorship, may seem astonishing to those unacquainted with ancient literature, but it is easily understood by those who have made so much as a moderate study of the subject. The ancient title in modern parlance would be represented by some such heading as the following, “A collection of sayings representative of Hebrew wisdom dedicated to the memory and example of that royal lover of Wisdom, King Solomon.” To suppose that the propriety of the ancient procedure ought to be judged by modern canons of literary right and wrong would be both unjust and foolish. Similarly from the heading prefixed to Pr. 25-29, These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out; it does not follow that the proverbs in those chapters were old in Hezekiah’s time. Probably Hezekiah, like Solomon, showed special interest in literary work, and it may be that a collection of proverbs formed in his reign is the nucleus of the present chapters 25-29 (So Volz, Weisheit, p. 95). On the other hand it is possible that nothing more should be inferred than that, there being a tradition of literary activity in Hezekiah’s reign, the compilers of the Book of Proverbs made use of the tradition in order to indicate (by this title) that in their opinion the proverbs of chaps. 25-29 were later than or secondary to the “Solomonic” proverbs which precede in chs. 1-24 (So Toy, Proverbs, § vi., and p. 457); and see also Driver, Literature of the Old Testament, p. 405.

[35] Detailed proof is impossible, and the question must be argued on general evidence, which any modern commentary on the Book of Proverbs will supply. Toy, Proverbs, § vi. is emphatic in his view that no authority whatever attaches to titles ascribing proverbs to Solomon. Volz (p. 95) is non-committal: “Whether small fragments of Solomon’s work have been transmitted to us cannot be determined.” Driver, Literature of the Old Testament, p. 406f, is of much the same opinion; but, remarking that the “proverbs in 101ff exhibit great uniformity of type,” he remarks that “perhaps this type was set by Solomon.”

[36] Compare the way in which the Greeks tended to associate all fables with the name of Æsop.

[37] Ephesians 612 (Weymouth’s translation).

[38] Cp. the similar but more poetic description in Psalm 1.

[39] What follows is without reference to the ancient civilisation of the far East, India or China. The “world” we are here considering means the civilisation of the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea. A few pages later, the terms “Eastern” and “Western” will be used with similar latitude: “Eastern” or (“Oriental”) denoting the peoples of Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia; and “Western” the peoples of Greece, Macedonia, and the old Greek colonies of the Ægean islands and the coast of Asia Minor.

[40] Amos 521f.

[41] Simonides (MacKail’s translation, Greek Anthology, pp. 149, 151.)

[42] Bevan, Jerusalem under the High Priests, p. 35.

[43] Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, pp. 25, 26.

[44] Stoicism, whilst it offered the thinker immunity from the fears of life, was also adapted to the needs of the generality of men whom it sought to provide with principles for the stable and successful conduct of ordinary life. Bevan (op. cit.) points out that the system shows signs of hasty construction, reflecting the urgency of the problems it sought to meet. Its strongly practical character is seen in the tendency to find expression in brief, pointed, formulÆ, catch-words, and maxims, evidently designed to make its doctrines easy for the average man to comprehend. The resemblance to Hebrew Wisdom-teaching is interesting and obvious.

[45] We have to use the term “worldly-wisdom” and not “wisdom,” because the Greeks also had their seekers after true wisdom at this period, as may be seen in the gnomic verses of Solon, Phocylides and Theognis, many of whose maxims, as well as the sayings of Stoic philosophers, might be quoted to show that Hellenism was not without the protest from within itself of noble souls. The contrast suggested above is therefore not one between Greek and Hebrew Wisdom-teaching, but between the Hebrew Wisdom and the general “unwisdom” of ordinary Hellenic life.

[46] See G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, vol. i., ch. i., where a beautiful description of night and dawn in Jerusalem may be found.

[47] Mishna, Yoma, 3.1

[48] See p. 174 and 198. Of the Book of Proverbs Toy remarks that “if for the name Jehovah we substitute ‘God,’ there is not a paragraph or a sentence which would not be as suitable for any other people as for Israel” (Proverbs, p. xxi.)

[49] The Jews seem to have had an unusual aptitude for confining themselves to particular points of view. Mark to what an extent the Prophets ignore the Priests, and the Priests the Prophets. This makes it less surprising to find that the Proverbialists should ignore both.

[50] Further reference may be made to Delitzsch, Jewish Artisan Life in the time of Christ, and also BÜchler, Der galilaische ‘Am-ha-’ Arets des zweiten Jahrhunderts. Some of the trades then reckoned ignoble seem by no means so to us; for example, tanners, weavers, and hairdressers were particularly despised. One Rabbi quaintly remarks: “Ass-drivers are mostly wicked, camel-drivers mostly honest, sailors mostly pious, the best of physicians is destined for Gehenna, and the most honourable of butchers is a partner of Amalek.”

[51] It is good to feel that, whatever the Christian centuries have not yet achieved for the regeneration of society, the “poor man’s neighbour” has redeemed his reputation from this terrible charge.

[52] Cp. Matt. 611, Give us this day our daily bread.

[53] Lyman Abbott, Life and Literature of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 278.

[54] i.e., his slanders, which scorch his victims.

[55] Compare the unintentionally funny passage in E. 3112ff}. If thou sittest at a great man’s table, be not greedy at it, nor say, “What a lot of things are on it!”... Stretch not your hand wheresoe’er your glance wanders, nor thrust yourself forward into the dish. Eat like a man [i.e., do not gnaw or gobble as an animal would do] what is set before thee, and do not bolt your food, lest you be loathed. Be first to leave off for the sake of good manners, and be not insatiate lest you offend. Cp. E. 8 which also treats of “How to behave.”

[56] The Hebrew text of the first two lines is uncertain.

[57] Theophrastus, Characters (Jebb’s translation), pp. 82, 83.

[58] In Hebrew, Pethaim.

[59] Hebrew, Letsim.

[60] Sometimes the whole point of a saying lies in the use of different terms. Thus Pr. 1721 seems merely redundant in the R.V., “He that begetteth a fool doeth it to his sorrow; and the father of a fool hath no joy.” But the “fool” of the first clause is in the Hebrew Kesil, a coarse fool, and the “fool” of the second is Nabal; i.e., to have the first as a son will involve some regrets, but the second robs his father of all joy.

[61] Horton, Proverbs (Expositor’s Bible), p. 347.

[62] See below, ch. X., p. 184f.

[63] Toy justly remarks, “The motive here assigned—fear of Jehovah’s displeasure—belongs to the ethical system of Proverbs. But this motive does not impair the dignity of the moral standard presented. Jehovah’s displeasure is the expression of the moral ideal: it is one’s duty, says the proverb, not to rejoice at the misfortunes of enemies. This duty is enforced by a reference to compensation, but it remains a duty.”

[64] “The antithesis is ethical, not merely intellectual. The meaning is not that the righteous speaks cautiously, the wicked inconsiderately; but that the good man takes care to speak what is true and kind, whilst the bad man, feeling no concern on this point, follows the bent of his mind and so speaks evil.” (Toy ad. loc.).

[65] cp. Romans 1210, and also p. 268.

[66] Wise Men of Israel, p. 158.

[67] (Pr. 3110-29). The poem is in the Hebrew an alphabetical acrostic, which accounts for certain repetitions and roughnesses in the movement of the thought.

[68] Cp. Luke 163 (see Oesterley in The Expositor for April, 1903).

[69] Oesterley, Ecclesiasticus, p. xviii.

[70] E. 42, 43.

[71] See Skinner in the Jewish Quarterly Review, Jan., 1905, p. 258.

[72] A proverb which does not come from the Bible, though many people have supposed it does.

[73] See further pp. 191f.

[74] i.e., such proverbs as “A burnt child dreads the fire,” or “He that is down need fear no fall.”

[75] Gordon, Poets of the Old Testament, p. 296.

[76] Gordon’s translation, op. cit., p. 296.

[77] Gordon, op. cit., p. 298. Observe the touch of national sentiment which is characteristic of Ben Sirach. His view is that God intended good to every nation (not an easy doctrine to reach in face of the enormities of which some of the heathen nations surrounding Israel were capable), but, although God had offered wisdom to all, only Israel had responded to the offer and so received the divine gift.

[78] Gordon’s translation, op. cit., p. 304.

[79] At Olympia in the year 212 B.C. Aristonicus was the protegÉ of King Ptolemy, and champion of the Egyptian gymnasia.

[80] The Hebrew text seems to have read, “Headache, shame and disgrace are the effect of wine drunk in provocation and wrath.”

[81] Judaism (second series), p. 57.

[82] Cp. Pr. 216-19; E. 93-9, 192, 4120; and refs. on p. 153.

[83] See especially chaps. vii., viii., and xviii.

[84] This maxim was familiar among the Greeks, and is quoted by Æeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and other writers. Tradition ascribed its origin to Solon, the statesman of early Athens, who was reckoned one of the seven Sages of Greece. Its occurrence in Ecclesiasticus is an interesting illustration of the cosmopolitan aspect of the Wisdom movement.

[85] Pr. 1432, The righteous hath hope in his death ... comes nearest to the idea of immortality; but the accuracy of the Hebrew text is doubtful. Pr. 1524 and 2317, 18 are to be understood as referring to the character of the good man’s life on earth (see Toy’s notes on these passages).

[86] “The influence of the synagogue as a religious factor, even in the times of Ben Sirach, was felt more deeply than the scarcity of references to it in the contemporary literature would lead us to believe”, Schechter, Judaism [Second Series], p. 65; cp. J. Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, pp. 1ff.

[87] The reader familiar with the Gospels should guard against the notion that the Scribes were always guilty of the worst qualities that legalism is apt to foster. A class ought not to be equated with its less worthy representatives, unless we are willing, for example, to condemn the first Christians for the sins of certain orders in the MediÆval Church, or to saddle the eager pioneers of the Reformation with the shortcomings of their followers in the eighteenth century.

[88] See the article Hasideans and Hellenism (Jewish EncyclopÆdia, Vol. VI.).

[89] Commonly referred to by the abbreviation LXX.

[90] See Dr. Taylor’s edition (Cambridge, 1877).

[91] Aboth, iv. 2.

[92] Aboth, i. 3.

[93] Aboth ii. 13.

[94] Aboth v. 30.

[95] Aboth iv. 26.

[96] N.B.—C.55=Cohen, Ancient Jewish Proverbs, No. 55. Quotations of these later Rabbinical Jewish proverbs will be given in this manner, as a reference to Mr. Cohen’s handbook is likely to be of more use to readers than a citation of original Rabbinic sources.

[97] Jew and Christian, too often ignorant of the virtues each possesses, are painfully conscious of one another’s defects. Better knowledge of history would do much to relieve or lessen mutual prejudices. How seldom do Christians realise that some of the less amiable qualities found in certain classes of modern Jews (Are there no objectionable Gentiles?) are the logical result of regulations decreed by our mediÆval Christian forefathers. For example, the Jews were once as catholic as any other nation in the arts and industries they followed for a livelihood, until legal restrictions were multiplied against them. “Even in Spain,” writes Mr. Abrahams, “Jews were forbidden to act as physicians, as bakers or millers; they were prohibited from selling brass, wine, flour, oil or butter in the markets; no Jew might be a smith, carpenter, tailor, shoemaker, currier or clothier for Christians ... he might neither employ nor be employed by Christians in any profession or trade whatsoever.... In other parts of England these restrictions were far more rigidly enforced than in Spain. In England money-lending was absolutely the only profession open to the Jews. On the Continent Jews were taxed when they entered a market and taxed when they left it; they were only permitted to enter the market place at inconvenient hours, and the Church ended by leaving the Jews nothing to trade in but money and second-hand goods, allowing them as a choice of commodities in which to deal new gold or old iron.” (Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, p. 241).

[98] Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, p. 68.

[99] The argument is worked out at greater length by C. F. Kent, (Wise Men of Israel, pp. 176ff), in an essay to which this brief review of the theme is much indebted. See also p. 268.

[100] Cp. Marvin, The Living Past, pp. 2, 3.

[101] Deut. 3011-14.

[102] The Ultimate Belief, p. 2.

[103] Professor D. K. Picken, in the Australasian Intercollegian Magazine, Dec., 1916.

[104] “I know no teachers who lay more stress upon the cultivation of the mental power of attention.” G. A. Smith, in Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament, ch. VIII.

[105] Pindar, Olympian VI., 54ff}.

[106] St. John, 1326ff}.

[107] The moon once (Pr. 720) but merely in indication of time.

[108] He was gratefully remembered for his work in strengthening the defences of Jerusalem and executing repairs to the Temple about 190 B.C.

[109] For allusions to the heat and thirst of the reapers, cp. Ruth 27-9, 14, and 2 Kings 418, 19.

[110] The Greek text is no less effective—And when the frost is congealed it is as points of thorns, but it is only a misreading of the Hebrew.

[111] “The Holy Land,” pp. 209ff.

[112] Pr. 2717

[113] Pr. 276.

[114] Pr. 151; cp. 1632.

[115] Pr. 2528.

[116] Pr. 2612.

[117] Pr. 1618

[118] Pr. 281, cp. Shakespeare’s “Conscience does make cowards of us all.”

[119] Pr. 2416.

[120] E. 191.

[121] Pr. 37.

[122] Pr. 1312.

[123] E. 212-14.

[124] Pr. 2130, 31.

[125] C. 78.

[126] L. P. Jacks, From the Human End, p. 16.

[127] Bacon, Essay on Riches.

[128] Bacon is referring to Pr. 1811.

[129] E. 112.

[130] E. 635, 36.

[131] Pr. 2517.

[132] Pr. 264.

[133] Pr. 1813.

[134] E. 1819; cp. First learn, then form opinions (C. 217).

[135] Pr. 2427.

[136] C. 181.

[137] Pr. 271.

[138] E. 718.

[139] E. 711.

[140] E. 85-7.

[141] E. 71-3.

[142] Pr. 241.

[143] Pr. 2317.

[144] E. 1511, 12.

[145] E. 79.

[146] Pr. 423.

[147] E. 710.

[148] Pr. 163.

[149] Cp. James 46; 1 Peter 55.

[150] A verse which, as Oesterley observes, affords an interesting combination of the doctrines of Grace and Free-will; cp. John 717.

[151] The quotation in Hebrews is taken from the Greek (LXX) text of Proverbs: the Hebrew text of Proverbs now reads “Even as a father the son in whom he delighteth,” but the original text probably had “and paineth” instead of the words “Even as a father”—the difference in Hebrew is very slight (cp. p. 192).

[152] Arnot, Laws from Heaven, p. 130f.

[153] From a letter quoted in Holmes, Walter Greenway, Spy; and Others, Sometime Criminal.

[154] Horton, Proverbs (Expositor’s Bible), p. 318.

[155] See the articles by Dr. Rendel Harris on The Origin of the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel in the Expositor, Aug. 1916-Jan. 1917. Note also the acknowledgment of Christ as Wisdom, implied in the story of the homage of the Wise Men at His birth, Matt. 212.