CHAPTER I.
HEBREW WISDOM, ITS NATURE, SCOPE, AND IMPORTANCE.
We have studied the masterpiece of Hebrew wisdom before
examining the nature of the intellectual product which the
Israelites themselves graced with this title. The Book of Job
is in fact much more than a didactic treatise like Ecclesiastes
or a collection of pointed moral sayings like the Books of
Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Its authors were more than
thinkers, they were poets, 'makers,' great imaginative artists.
But we must not be unjust to those who were primarily
thinkers, and only in the second degree poets. The phase of
Hebrew thought called 'wisdom' (khokma) can be studied
even better in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes than in the poetry of
Job. Let us then enquire at this point, What is this Hebrew
wisdom? First of all, it is the link between the more exceptional
revelations of Old Testament prophecy and the best
moral and intellectual attainments of other nations than the
Jews. 'Wisdom' claims inspiration (as we have seen already),
but never identifies itself with the contents of oracular communications.[1]
Nor yet does it pretend to be confined to a
chosen race. Job himself was a non-Israelite (the Rabbis
were even uncertain as to his part in the world to come); and
the wisdom of the 'wise king' is declared to have been
different in degree alone from that of the neighbouring peoples[2]
