882 PROVERBS do not occur. Again, it is doubtful if any period in the history of Israel was marked by an absence of those national aspirations and hopes so prominent in the pro phets ; and if the wise do not allude to them it is not because the hopes were dead but because another direction of thought absorbed them. They are equally indifferent to the claims of the law. But, at whatever time the Leviti- cal legislation arose or was codified, it is certain that at no period was it observed as it was after the restoration. And yet there is no allusion to it in the Proverbs ; the " law " referred to is not the ritual but the ethical law as in the prophets ; it is the law of one s mother, of the wise, of divine revelation in general, but never specifically that of the priest. In Sirach on the contrary the wisdom her self is identified with " the law which Moses commanded us for a heritage unto the assemblies of Jacob " (Ecclus. xxiv. 23). The truth is that the wisdom is a direction of thought differing from the main line of thought in Israel at any time, and yet a direction which we should expect and which we desiderate at all times. It is a force which was disrupting the particularism of the Jehovah religion from within just as the events of history shattered it from without, and bringing to view its inherent universalism. The prophets direct their attention mainly to the state, and they appear at irregular intervals. It is when the lion roars that they give the alarm (Amos iii. 8). Their voice is heard only when the tempest is rising, when some crisis in the people s history is approaching. We can hardly doubt that the intervals were filled up by the operations of men who pursued a calmer method, such as the wise, who were the " reprovers " and monitors fre quently alluded to by the prophets themselves (Hos. iv. 4 ; Amos v. 10 ; Jer. xviii. 18). There is some danger of pushing the principle of development to an extreme so as under the influence of too ideal a conception of progress to divide the history and thought of Israel into sections by drawing straight lines across it, as Ezekiel in his vision divided the holy land into rectangular belts. No people moves forward on one line or in a mass. Alongside of the main current of thought and progress there are always minor currents running. And finally, while there are many proverbs that from their nature can hardly be placed in the period of the restoration, there are really none that from their internal character require to be dated so low. The proverb already quoted, "Where no vision is the people cast off restraint " (xxix. 18), must be contempor aneous with the prophetic period. The other, " My son, fear the Lord and the king " (xxiv. 21), would scarcely be spoken later than the monarchy (cf. 1 Kings xxi. 10). Many of the references to kings are no doubt general, though they are more natural under the native kingdom than at any other period (e.y., xvi. 12, xx. 8) ; but such a saying as this, " A divine sentence is on the lips of the king, his mouth shall not transgress in judgment " (chap. xvi. 10), seems to take us back to the more ancient days in Israel when the king actually judged causes in person. And undoubtedly the national tradition at the time of the composition of Job, as we see it reflected in the speeches of that book, was that the moral wisdom was so ancient as to be of immemorial antiquity. The questions regarding the age of the individual collections contained in the present book and the age of the book as a whole are complicated. 1. It is an unfortunate thing that the headings cannot be absolutely relied on. Such headings are often founded on tradi tion, or are merely suggestions of later editors or collectors. The heading of the collection xxv.-xxix., "These are also proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah copied out," does not of course elate from the men of Hezekiah, for the word "also" shows that it is
- the editor who brought the collection into our present book,
m which other proverbs of Solomon, viz., x.-xxii., already stood. 3 is no reason, however, to doubt the historical accuracy of the inscription. This collection is at least as old as the end of the 8th century. At this period the proverbs contained in it were considered and called Solomonic. This of course does not guarantee that every proverb in the collection is by Solomon, though it guarantees the antiquity of the maxims, for the individual proverbs in a collection will always be older than the collection itself, and some of them may be of great antiquity. The term " copied out " implies that the men of Hezekiah confined themselves to written sources. We have little knowledge how the wise conducted their operations. 1 robably their instructions were in the main given orally. But small collections of their sayings were occasionally made by them selves or by others. Several such collections were in existence in Hezekiah s days, and his scribes gathered them into one book. The usual extent of such small codes may be inferred from some of those embodied in our present book, e.g. , xxii. 17-xxiv. 22, xxiv. 23-34, and xxx. There is no probability that the term "copied out" implies that the men of Hezekiah proceeded critically and made a selection from a large mass of proverbs of such as they considered Solomonic, neither can their collection have been a gleaning made from a number of small codes after the large code x.-xxii. had already been extracted from them. They can hardly have been acquainted with x.-xxii., otherwise their code would not have contained so many duplicates of maxims in that collection. It is certainly not improbable that Hezekiah s collection forms the oldest element in our book. Many of the proverbs contained in it have the stamp of antiquity. It comprises almost all the proverbs that we still use. Such sayings as "iron sharpeneth iron," "as face answereth to face in water," "the dog is returned to his vomit," " bray a fool in a mortar," phrases like " heap coals of fire upon his head," "singing songs to a weary heart," "good news from a far country," " the curse causeless," " a whip for the horse, and a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool s back," are examples. Almost all the proverbs in xxv.-xxvii. contain a comparison, and some are of great beauty, as for example, "an earthen vessel glazed with silver dross, so are fervent lips and a bad heart. " The youngest elements in this collection are found in xxviii.-xxix., which ap proach nearer the abstract and analytic manner of many of the proverbs in x.-xxii. 2. The passage i. 8-ix. is in all likelihood by one author, though some of the individual maxims contained in it may have been drawn from foreign sources (comp. vi. 9 sq. with xxiv. 30 sq. ), and does not appear to be of very high antiquity. The general preface extends at least to xxii. 16 ; but, while its author says, " The pro verbs of Solomon, son of David" (i. 1), a new inscription, "The proverbs of Solomon," heads x. This implies that i.-ix. were not considered Solomonic ; the proverbs properly so-called commenced with the tenth chapter. Several things point towards a particular age as that to which the passage belongs. (1) The passage is pro bably prior to the book of Job, for the personification of wisdom seems referred to in that book (xv. and xxviii. , though xxviii. may be later than the main portions of the book). The age of Job is no doubt uncertain, but it can hardly be considered anterior to the exile, nor yet much later. (2) The descriptions given of wisdom taking her stand by the broadways and at the gates and addressing the throng ing crowds of men (i. , viii. ), as well as the picture of the strange woman prowling in the streets at nightfall (vii. ), suggest that the writer had the idea of a large and populous city present to his mind. This could be no other than Jerusalem, and certainly Jerusalem before its destruction. The miserable city of the restoration could not until many generations after the return have afforded materials for the ideal before the author s eye, for nearly a century after the first exiles returned great part of it was still in ruins (Neh. vii. 4). Though the author warns the youth of his day against disorderly and violent men, his references to life suggest a condition of general comfort and plenty. (3) On the other hand the personification of the wisdom marks the highest point to which Hebrew thought on the world rose, and cannot belong to an early age. It is scarcely conceivable except at a time when the operations of the wise had been long pursued. Wisdom, pausing in the work of expounding providence and the laws of human happiness, which she had long instinctively pursued with self-forgetful fascination in her task, becomes self-conscious, and turning her eyes upon herself displays her own graces and beauty before the sight of men. A philosophy of wisdom has now been reached. These facts together point to a time not very long anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem, possibly about a century after the men of Hezekiah made their collection. With this agrees the language of the piece, which, though generally good, has several marks of a somewhat late age, e.g. , the frequent formation of abstracts in -uth. 3. It is more dillicult to form an opinion regarding the large code, x.-xxii. It has generally been considered the oldest collection in our book ; and without doubt many of the proverbs contained in it may be old, as old as those in Hezekiah s collection, though others may be of more recent origin. From the nature of such general maxims there is little about them to suggest one age in preference to another. The grounds, however, on which these proverbs
have been considered the oldest in the book hardly support such