bears the superscription, “These things also are לחכמים.” If Keil thinks here also to set aside the idea that the following proverbs, in the sense of this superscription, have as their authors “the wise,” he does unnecessary violence to himself. The ל is here that of authorship and if the following proverbs are composed by the חכמים, “the wise,” then they are not the production of the one חכם, “wise man,” Solomon, but they are “the words of the wise” in contradistinction to “the Proverbs of Solomon.”
The Proverbs of Solomon begin again at Pro 25:1; and this second large section (corresponding to the first, 10:1-22:16) extends to chap. 29. This fifth portion of the book has a superscription, which, like that of the preceding appendix, commences thus: “Also (גּם) these are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah collected.” The meaning of the word העתּיקוּ is not doubtful. It signifies, like the Arameo-Arabic נסח, to remove from their place, and denote that the men of Hezekiah removed from the place where they found them the following proverbs, and placed them together in a separate collection. The words have thus been understood by the Greek translator. From the supplementary words αἱ ἀδιάκριτοι (such as exclude all διάκρισις) it is seen that the translator had a feeling of the important literary historical significance of that superscription, which reminds us of the labours of the poetical grammarians appointed by Pisitratus to edit older works, such as those of Hesiod. The Jewish interpreters, simply following the Talmud, suppose that the “also” (גּם) belongs to the whole superscription, inclusive of the relative sentence, and that it thus bears witness to the editing of the foregoing proverbs also by Hezekiah and his companions;[1] which is altogether improbable, for then, if such were the meaning of the words, “which the men of Hezekiah,” etc., they ought to have stood after Pro 1:1. The superscription Pro 25:1 thus much rather distinguishes the following collection from that going before, as having been made under Hezekiah. As two appendices followed the “Proverbs of Solomon,” 10:1-22:16, so also two appendices the Hezekiah-gleanings of Solomonic proverbs. The former two appendices, however, originate in general from the “wise,” the latter more definitely name the authors: the first, chap. 30, is by “Agur the son of Jakeh;” the second, Pro 31:1-9,
- ↑ Vid., B. Bathra, 15a. From the fact that Isaiah outlived Hezekiah it is there concluded that the Hezekiah-collegium also continued after Hezekiah's death. Cf. Fürst on the Canon of the O.T. 1868, p. 78f.
