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.)