Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/2047

to have found something mentioned which the generation addressed were to take heed to; but it is not so. But if “O generation!” should be equivalent to “O regarding the generation!” then הוי ought to have introduced the sentence. And if we translate, with Luther: There is a generation, etc., then ישׁ is supplied, which might drop out, but could not be omitted. The lxx inserts after ἔκγονον the word κακόν, and then renders what follows as pred. - a simple expedient, but worthless. The Venet. does not need this expedient, for it renders γενεὰ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ βλασφημέσει; but then the order of the words in 11a would have been דור יקלל אביו; and in 12a, after the manner of a subst. clause, דור טהור בעיניו הוא, one sees distinctly, from Pro 30:13 and Pro 30:14, that what follows דור is to be understood, not as a pred., but as an attributive clause. As little can we interpret Pro 30:14, with Löwenstein, as pred. of the three subj., “it is a generation whose teeth are swords;” that would at least have required the words דור הוא; but Pro 30:14 is not at all a judgment valid for all the three subjects. The Targ. and Jerome translate correctly, as we above;^[1] but by this rendering there are four subjects in the preamble, and the whole appears, since the common pred. is wanting, as a mutilated Priamel. Perhaps the author meant to say: it is such a generation that encompasses us; or: such is an abomination to Jahve; for דור is a Gesamtheit = totality, generation of men who are bound together by contemporary existence, or homogeneity, or by both, but always a totality; so that these Pro 30:11-14, might describe quatuor detestabilia genera hominum (C. B. Michaelis), and yet one generatio, which divide among themselves these four vices, of blackest ingratitude, loathsome self-righteousness, arrogant presumption, and unmerciful covetousness. Similar is the description given in the Mishna Sota ix. 14, of the character of the age in which the Messiah appeared. “The appearance of this age,” thus it concludes, “is like the appearance of a dog; a son is not ashamed before his father; to whom will we then look for help? To our Father in heaven!”^[2]
The undutifulness of a child is here placed

1. The Syr. begins 11a as if הוי were to be supplied.
2. Cf. also Ali b. Abi Tâleb's dark description, beginning with hadha alzman (this age), Zur allg. Char. der arab. Poesie (1870), p. 54f.