favourable to the derivation of the title from the collectors themselves. The lxx translates: Αὗται αἱ παιδεῖαι Σαλωμῶντος αἱ ἀδιάκριτοι (cf. Jam 3:17), ἃς ἐξεγράψαντο οἱ φίλοι Ἐζεκίου, for which Aquila has ἃς μετῆραν ἄνδρες ἐζεκίου, Jerome, transtulerunt. העתיק signifies, like (Arab.) nsaḥ, נסח, to snatch away, to take away, to transfer from another place; in later Hebrew_Bible_to transcribe from one book into another, to translate from one language into another: to take from another place and place together; the Whence? remains undetermined: according to the anachronistic rendering of the Midrash מגניזתם, i.e., from the Apocrypha; according to Hitzig, from the mouths of the people; more correctly Euchel and others: from their scattered condition, partly oral, partly written. Vid., regarding העתיק, Zunz, in Deutsch-Morgenl. Zeitsch. xxv. 147f., and regarding the whole title, vol. i. pp. 5, 6; regarding the forms of proverbs in this second collection, vol. i. p. 17; regarding their relation to the first, and their end and aim, vol. i. pp. 25, 26. The first Collection of Proverbs is a Book for Youth, and this second a Book for the People.
Verse 2
It is characteristic of the purpose of the book that it begins with proverbs of the king:
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing;
And the glory of the king to search out a matter.
That which is the glory of God and the glory of the king in itself, and that by which they acquire glory, stand here contrasted. The glory of God consists in this, to conceal a matter, i.e., to place before men mystery upon mystery, in which they become conscious of the limitation and insufficiency of their knowledge, so that they are constrained to acknowledge, Deu 29:28, that “secret things belong unto the Lord our God.” There are many things that are hidden and are known only to God, and we must be contented with that which He sees it good to make known to us.[1]
The honour of kings, on the contrary, who as pilots have to steer the ship of the state (Pro 11:14), and as supreme judges to administer justice (1Ki 3:9), consists in this, to search out a matter, i.e., to place in the
- ↑ Cf. von Lasaulx, Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 128f.: “God and Nature love to conceal the beginning of things.”
