highest interest for the history of the Book of Proverbs is the relation of the lxx to the Hebrew text. One half of the proverbs of Agur (30 of the Hebrew text) are placed in it after Pro 24:22, and the other half after Pro 24:34; and the proverbs of King Lemuel (Pro 31:1-9 of the Hebrew text) are placed after the proverbs of Agur, while the acrostic proverbial poem of the virtuous woman is in its place at the end of the book. That transposition reminds us of the transpositions in Jeremiah, and rests in the one place as well as in the other on a misunderstanding of the true contents. The translator has set aside the new superscription, Pro 10:1, as unsuitable, and has not marked the new beginning, Pro 22:17; he has expunged the new superscription, Pro 24:23, and has done the same to the superscription, “The words of Agur” (Pro 30:1), in two awkward explanations (λόγον φυλασσόμενος and τοὺς ἐμοὺς λόγους φοβήθητι), and the superscription, “The words of Lemuel” (Pro 31:1), in one similar (οἱ ἐμοὶ λόγι εἴρηνται ὑπὸ Θεοῦ), so that the proverbs of Agur and of Lemuel are without hesitation joined with those of Solomon, whereby it yet remains a mystery why the proverbs beginning with “The words of Agur” have been divided into two parts. Hitzig explains it from a confounding of the columns in which, two being on each page, the Hebrew MS which lay before the translator was written, and in which the proverbs of Agur and of Lemuel (names which tradition understood symbolically of Solomon) were already ranked in order before chap. 25. But besides these, there are also many other singular things connected with this Greek translation interesting in themselves and of great critical worth. That it omits Pro 1:16 may arise from this, that this verse was not found in the original MS, and was introduced from Isa 59:7; but there are wanting also proverbs such as Isa 21:5, for which no reason can be assigned. But the additions are disproportionately more numerous. Frequently we find a line added to the distich, such as in Pro 1:18, or an entire distich added, as Pro 3:15; or of two lines of the Hebrew verse, each is formed into a separate distich, as Pro 1:7; Pro 11:16; or we meet with longer interpolations, extending far beyond this measure, as that added to Pro 4:27. Many of these proverbs are easily re-translated into the Hebrew, as that added to Pro 4:27, consisting of four lines: כי דרכי מימינים ידע יהוה ועקשׁים דרכי משׂמאילים הוא יפלם מעגלותיך ארחותיך בשׂלום יצלית
Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1411
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/page1411-1024px-04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu.jpg)