CHAPTER VIII.

THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.

It is only in modern times that the Book of Proverbs has been disparaged; the early Christian Fathers considered it to be of much ethico-religious value. Hence the sounding title, first used by Clement of Rome (_Cor._, c. 57), ἡ πανάρετος σοφία. From our point of view, indeed, the value of the book is different in its several parts, but no part is without its use. Can any Christian help seeing the poetic foregleams of Christ in the great monologue of Wisdom in chap. viii.? Dorner may be right in maintaining that the idea of the Incarnation cannot have been evolved from Hebraism or Judaism, and yet the description of Wisdom, ‘sporting with Jehovah’s world’ and ‘having her delights with the sons of men’ (viii. 31), cannot but remind us of the sympathetic, divine-human Teacher, who ‘took the form of a servant.’ How deeply this great section has affected the theology of the past, I need not here relate. Will it ever lose its value as a symbolic picture of the combined transcendence and immanence of the Divine Being?

Turning to the other parts of the book, do they not furnish abundant justification of that type of Christianity which accepts but does not dwell on forms, so bent is it upon moral applications of the religious principle? Do they not show that the ‘fear of the Lord’ is quite compatible with a deep interest in average human life and human nature? The Book of Proverbs, taken as a whole, seems to supply the necessary counterweight to the psalms and the prophecies. The psalmists love God more than aught else; but must every one say, ‘Possessing this, I have pleasure in nothing upon earth’ (Ps. lxxiii. 26)? Would it be good to be always in this mood? Is there not something more satisfactory in the Pauline saying, ‘All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s’? And as for the prophets—do they not (we may conjecture and perhaps partly prove this) depreciate too much the morality and religion of their neighbours? The Book of Proverbs gives us only average morality and religion; yet, if we judge it fairly, how pleasing on the whole is the picture! Taking it as equally authoritative with the psalms and prophecies, shall we not rise to a more comprehensive religion than a mere pupil of psalmists or prophets knew—to one that charges us, not to love God less, but our neighbour more? It would no doubt be easy to criticise the Book from a New Testament point of view. But the New Testament itself has absorbed much that is best in it, and quotations from it occur not unfrequently, especially in the Epistles. Nor can any teacher of the people afford to neglect its stores of happily expressed practical wisdom. We must not even despise its ‘utilitarianism.’ The awful declarations of ‘Wisdom’ in Prov. i. 24-32 are simply the voice of the personified laws of God[253] warning men that the consequences of their acts, even if they may be overruled for good, yet cannot by any cunning be escaped. Does the New Testament quite supersede this form of teaching? And does not the Hebrew sage once at least give a suggestion of that very overruling love of God which is among the characteristic ideas of Christian lore (see Prov. iii. 11)?

Footnote 253:

So we may venture to paraphrase ‘Wisdom’ in this connection.

AIDS TO THE STUDENT.

The ‘aids’ here mentioned are such as might otherwise escape notice.

W. Nowack, _Die Sprüche Salomo’s u.s.w._ (a recast of Bertheau’s commentary in the _Kurzgefasstes Exeg. Handbuch_), 1883; H. Deutsch, _Die Sprüche Salomo’s nach der Auffassung im Talmud und Midrasch dargestellt und kritisch untersucht_ (erster Theil, 1885); Bickell, ‘Exegetisch-kritische Nachlese: Proverbien und Job,’ in _Zeitschr. fur kathol. Theologie_, 1886, pp. 205-208; Aben Ezra’s commentary on Proverbs, edited by Chaim M. Horowitz, 1884; Loewenstein, _Die Proverbien Salomo’s, mit Benutzung älterer und neuerer Manuskripte_, 1837 (text and commentary in Hebrew, with German metrical version; contains valuable contributions to a more critical Massoretic text from the papers of W. Heidenheim); M. Heidenheim, ‘Zur Textkritik der Proverbien,’ in his _Vierteljahresschrift_ for 1865 and 1866; Lagarde, _Anmerkungen sur griechischen Uebersetzung der Proverbien_, 1863; Grätz, ‘Exegetische Studien zu den Salomonischen Sprüchen,’ in his _Monatsschrift_, 1884; Dijserinck, ‘Kritische Scholien,’ in _Theologisch Tijdschrift_, 1883, p. 577 &c.; Oort, ‘Spreuken I.-IX.,’ in same periodical, 1885, p. 379 &c.; Böttcher, _Aehrenlese_, part iii., 1865 (contains 39 pages on Proverbs); Mühlau, _De proverbiorum Agur et Lemuel origine_, 1869; Bruch, _Weisheitslehre der Hebräer_, 1851; Hooykaas, _Gesch. van de beoefening der Weisheid onder de Hebreen_, 1862; Dukes, _Rabbinische Blumenlese_, 1844 (includes Talmudic proverbs; comp. the older works of Drusius, 1590-1, and Brüll’s supplement in his _Jahrbücher_, 1885); Delitzsch, art. ‘Sprüche Salomo’s,’ in Herzog-Plitt’s _Real-Encyklopädie_, ed. 2, vol. xiv.; and the works of Oehler and Schultz on Old Testament Theology (the former in Clark’s Library).

THE WISDOM OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH.