2. This general preface is followed by a lengthy passage, i. 8-ix. 18, which consists, not of detached proverbs, though a number of such proverbs are scattered through it, but of connected discourses in praise of wisdom and the benefits which she confers on those who embrace her. The speaker is one of the wise, or a type of them, who addresses his youthful pupil or friend as “my son,” though at several points wisdom herself is introduced speaking, displaying her graces, offering herself to men, narrating her history, and magnifying the delights which they who follow her enjoy, as well as painting in dark colours the evils from which she preserves them. Attempts have been made to divide the passage into distinct sections, but without much success. Ewald counts three general divisions, Bertheau seven, Hooykaas eleven, and Delitzsch fifteen. The passage is in the main homogeneous, though containing at more places than one elements which at first sight might appear foreign (p.g., vi. 1 sq.), and on the whole at least is the composition of a single author. Several of its characteristics, such as the style, and particularly the personification of wisdom in chap, viii. and elsewhere, one of the most remarkable and beautiful things in Hebrew literature, indicate that the passage belongs to an advanced stage of the Hebrew wisdom.

3. Then follows the largest section in the book, x. 1- xxii. 16, with a new heading, “The Proverbs of Solomon.” This division consists of a number of verses—three hundred and seventy-four, it is said—each of which contains a single proverb or maxim in two lines, the only exception being xix. 7, which has three lines, but this is probably due to one member of a second verse having fallen out. The kind of poetical parallelism most common in these verses is the antithetic, of the type “A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother” (x. 1). This type of parallelism prevails almost exclusively in x.-xv., after which other types are more commonly introduced. The proverbs in this collection are of a very miscellaneous character, and are thrown together without any classification or regard to subject, though occasionally a few verses are found to follow one another having reference to a common topic.

4. After this comes a small collection consisting of two parts which have been put together, xxii. 17-xxiv. 22 and xxiv. 23-34. The author of the first collection informs his son or disciple that what he addresses to him is “words of the wise” (xxii. 17); and the second small code is inscribed “These also are by the wise” (xxiv. 23). The proverbs in this collection sometimes make one verse, sometimes two or three, and even occasionally run out to a short proverbial discourse.

5. Then follows an important collection, xxv.-xxix., with the inscription, “These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out” (xxv. 1 ). The expression “copied out” (LXX. εξεypaφavτo'), lit. “transferred” or removed from one place to another, implies that the men of Hezekiah made use of written sources in forming their collection. The notice is of great historical interest. Hezekiah, besides being a wise and reforming king, had probably literary tastes; he has the reputation of having been a poet himself (Isa. xxxviii.); and his “men” were no doubt scholars and scribes about his court, who shared in his tastes and pursuits, and under his direction used their opportunities to rescue from oblivion the precious remains of the most ancient wisdom by transferring them from the small collections in which they lay hidden into a single and authorized code (cf. 2 Kings xviü. 37). It may perhaps be considered some corroboration of the genuine historical character of the inscription that the collection begins with a number of proverbs relating to kings. The maxims in this code, particularly in xxv.-xxvii., approach much nearer to what we should imagine the early popular proverb to have been than many of those in the other large collection; they are simple, usually contain a comparison, and have none of the abstractness which characterizes many of the maxims in x.-xxii. This may be regarded as a guarantee of their great antiquity.

6. Two small pieces then follow, evidently related to one another, xxx. and xxxi. 1-9,—the former with the inscription, “The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh,” and the other with the heading, “The words of King Lemuel.” The inscriptions to these two pieces are very obscure. In the former the A. V. can hardly be correct. More probably by a different division of words we should read —“The words of Agur the son of Jakeh of Massa. The man said, I have wearied myself, O God, I have wearied myself, O God, and am consumed; for I am more brutish than any man,” &c. The words are those of one who has striven to comprehend God and found the task above him (Ps. Ixxiii. 22). Possibly the above rendering requires a slight correction in the text, already made in the Veneto-Greek version, which renders “Jakeh the Massaite” (Gen. xxiv. 14?). Similarly the heading in xxxi. should probably read—“The words of Lemuel king of Massa, wherewith his mother instructed him.” It is uncertain whether the names Agur and Lemuel be real or fictitious.

7. Finally the book is closed by an alphabetical poem, xxxi. 10-31, in praise of the virtuous (that is, the active, capable) woman.

The contents of these several sections are very various and not easy to classify. The proverbialists occupy themselves with life in all its aspects. Sometimes they simply catch the expression of men good or bad, or photograph their actions and thoughts; more generally they pass a verdict upon them, and exhort or instruct men in regard to them. The proverbs differ from the shrewd or humorous sayings which are so called in profane literature; some of them have a certain flavour of humour, but they are mainly maxims touching practical life on its religious and moral side. Such maxims cannot be regarded as wholly or even in a very large degree the production of an individual mind. A number of them may well be by Solomon, and a greater number may belong to his age; but, though the stream of wisdom began to flow in his day, its beginnings were then comparatively small; as the centuries advanced it gathered volume. In the book which now exists we find gathered together the most precious fruits of the wisdom in Israel during many hundred years, and undoubtedly the later centuries were richer, or at all events fuller, in their contributions than the earlier. The tradition, however, which connects Solomon with the direction of mind known as the wisdom cannot reasonably be set aside. The renown for wisdom which this king enjoyed among his own people, and even, though in a distorted and fantastic form, among the other peoples of the East, must have rested on some real foundation. No doubt reputations grow, and veneration magnifies its hero sometimes in proportion to the indistinctness of its real knowledge of him; and objects seen in the broad light of day are very insignificant compared with the bulk which they assume when seen between us and the light still lingering on the horizon of a day that has gone down. But, making allowance for the exaggerations of later times, we should leave history and tradition altogether unexplained if we disallowed the claim of Solomon to have exercised a creative influence upon the wisdom in Israel. At the same time it is probable that this influence did not lie in the application of new methods, much less in the creation of a new direction of thought. The supposition that Solomon was the inventor of the proverbial distich or mashal, particularly of the antithetical distich, or that he was the first to use this in his sententious sayings on men and life, and thus the father of didactic poetry among the Hebrews, is a mere conjecture. The distich was employed long before his day, and sententious maxims regarding life and men long preceded him. Moreover the conjecture is based on the very false assumption that the essence of the wisdom lay in the form of expression rather than in the matter, and that the curt, sharp, antithetical distich was its proper characteristic and belonged to it from the beginning. This assumption, made by Ewald, has been so usually accepted by writers after him that the polished pointed antithesis has been elevated into a criterion of the higher antiquity of those proverbs which possess it. Probably the opposite conclusion would be nearer the truth. The form of these antithetical proverbs betrays art, long use of the literary methods of the wise, and an approach to technicality—things not to be expected in an early age. The early mashal was probably simple, containing a figure or comparison, as the name implies; some truth of the life of mankind thrown into an image from nature, without anything artificial or technical. Proverbs like “iron sharpened iron,”or such fine similes as these—“a trampled fountain and a fouled spring is the righteous man who hath given way before the wicked,” “a city that is broken down and hath no wall is the man whose spirit is without control” (xxv. 26, 28)—are the kind of proverbs which we should look for in this earliest time. Solomon has a place of renown in the wisdom, not because he imposed any mannerism upon it, but because he threw a vigorous mind into it. He probably formed no class: the word “wise” did not, from being an adjective, become a noun in his days. The nature of his wisdom is best illustrated by the story of the two women with the living and the dead child (1 Kings iii. 16-28). He possessed a keen insight into the operations of human nature; he knew the world and men and life. Most likely also he possessed the power of giving pointed expression to his shrewd and ready judgments; and, as it is said that he spoke of beasts and fishes and trees, he probably had an eye for the analogies between human life and the external world. From his character we should judge that his three thousand proverbs were not all religious; neither were his thousand and one songs all hymns, or some of them would have been preserved to us besides the two more than doubtful poems in the Psalter (Ps. lxxii., cxxvii.). The theme of the wisdom was life, and its aims were practical; and, if the rise of the wisdom be connected with the age of Solomon, that is due to the fact that life in the civil sense began in this age, and its principles could be discovered. Then the tribes were consolidated into one community, the state rose into existence, the channels of commerce were opened, men entered into various and complicated relations with one another, and the principles which rule such relations revealed themselves to the eye that was open to observe them.

It is not quite easy to form definite conceptions of those called the wise in Israel. They were certainly no hereditary caste like the priests; neither had they any distinct call to a vocation like the prophets, although in later times at least they were so well recognized that they could be ranked with these two classes as influential in forming men’s opinions and guiding their actions (Jer. xviii. 18). They were probably men who might be named elders, not always because of their age, but because of their superior sagacity; men who, having at heart the welfare of the state and particularly the moral soundness of the citizens, sought to gain the ear of the young and inculcate upon them the principles of right conduct. While the priests were the clergy and lawyers in Israel, and the prophets the statesmen, the wise were the moralists and educationists, whose operations touched the individual in all his relations and duties. Their methods were probably simple to begin with, and natural, without anything strictly characteristic; they were moral “reprovers,” or ordinary “counsellors,” and possibly at first their ethical maxims were general, touching life as a whole. By and by they surveyed life with a keener scrutiny and subjected it to a sharper analysis, bringing their moral principles to bear on its shades and sides and aspects, and applying these principles with greater inwardness so as to strike not merely at external conduct but at the disposition of the mind. And, finally, under the influence of the universalistic ideas of God and providence suggested to the minds of men in Israel by contact with the great empires of the world and observation of their destinies, when the Jewish state became involved in political movements as wide as the known world, the wise were enabled to gather together the manifold fragments into which they had analysed the moral life of man and the operation of the providence of God, and to perceive that they were all but elements in one great divine system embracing all things, both the world of nature and the destinies of men. To this great scheme, which was but God fulfilling himself in many ways, they gave the name of wisdom in the abstract; it was the counterpart of the divine mind, God’s fellow and architect in framing the world. This -was the divine wisdom; human wisdom consisted both in intellectual comprehension of it and in moral harmony with it, and the first could be reached only through the second: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Illustrations of the wisdom in its earliest form may be seen in the collection xxv.-xxix., and in many proverbs in x.-xxii.

(many examples of the period of most subtle analysis in the last-named collection), while the period of synthesis and what comes near to be a science of wisdom is represented in the passage i.-ix. Naturally along with this advance in thought there appeared a corresponding advance in the forms of expression in which the wisdom clothed itself: the wise acquired a method; a particular spirit began to animate their circles; their phraseology showed the impress of a particular mint, and ultimately assumed a form almost technical.

Perhaps some of the things which failed to attract the attention of the wise are more suggestive than those things with which they occupied themselves. Though sacrifice, for example, be once or twice alluded to, no importance is attached to the ritual system; the priest is not once mentioned, and the external exercises of worship appear to have little significance. But, what is more remarkable, the wise man differs as much from the prophet as he does from the lawgiver. All those ideas around which prophecy revolves, such as the idea of the kingdom of God, of a chosen people, of a Messiah or future king of the house of David, and the like, are entirely absent. The distinction between “Israel” and the “nations” has no place. The darling phraseology of the prophets—“Israel,” “Jacob,” “Zion,” “my people,” “the latter day ”—and the whole terminology of particularism characteristic of prophecy and many even of the Psalms nowhere occurs. The conflict between the worship of Jehovah and that of false gods, with which the pages of prophetic writers are filled, does not receive even a passing reference. Conclusions have been drawn from these peculiarities which, though not unnatural, are scarcely warranted. It has been inferred that the wise were men whose way of thinking placed them outside of their dispensation and in antagonism to the circle of beliefs cherished in Israel and represented by the prophets and other public teachers—in short, that they took up a humanistic or naturalistic position. A position to which the name naturalistic could be given is inconceivable in Israel. There were no doubt men called wise who pursued false directions (Jer. xviii. 18), as there were false prophets; but there is nothing in the Proverbs to indicate any antagonism between their authors and either priest or prophet. On the contrary the passage iii. 9—a solitary one no doubt—“Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase,” shows their friendliness to the ritual. If they say on the other hand that the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord (xv. 8), and that by mercy and truth iniquity is atoned for (xvi. 6), this is nothing but what the prophets proclaim in a body, and means merely that obedience is better than sacrifice and the moral higher than the ritual. And even Sirach, a fervent supporter of priesthood and sacrifice (Ecclus. vii. 29 sq. y ), enunciates the same doctrine: “He that keepeth the law multiplieth offerings; he that taketh heed to the commandments sacrificeth a peaceoffering. To depart from wickedness is a thing pleasing to the Lord, and to depart from unrighteousness is a propitiation” (Ecclus. XXXV. 1 sq.). And that the wise men feel themselves within the circle of the revealed religion is evident from their use of the name Jehovah, their frequent references to the “law,” that is, torah or revelation, the “commandment,” the “word,” and the like; and such a sentence as this, “Where there is no vision (prophetic revelation, 1 Sam. iii. 1) the people cast off restraint” (xxix. 18), shows no unfriendliness to the prophets. The wise men had no quarrel with the institutions of Israel, nor with the public teachers and their operations; they occupied themselves more, however, with the life of the individual than the community, and sought to distil from the particularistic thought in Israel principles which, both in morals and religion, should be universal and applicable wherever men lived.

Still this very universalism is a remarkable thing, and a different attempt has been made to explain it. It has been suggested that the wisdom, though some beginnings of it may have appeared during the prophetic period and while the autonomy of Israel as a state continued, must be in the main elements of its literature a thing posterior to the downfall of the state and the cessation of prophecy. Only in this way it is thought is it possible to explain the complete absence of all those ideas regarding Israel as a people, its relation to the heathen, and its future destiny, which fill the pages of the earlier literature. That inspiration and exaltation of mind which marked the prophetic age has disappeared and reflexion has .taken its place. Enthusiasm for the state has died out because the state has perished, and is now represented by care for the individual. Prophecy has fulfilled its mission; it has lodged its principles in men’s minds; it has seen itself fulfilled in the overthrow of the kingdom, but the hour of its triumph has been the hour of its death. Now follows the time of reflexion upon the prophetic truths, when the mind has accepted principles and risen through prophetic teaching to universal conceptions of God and the world, and an effort is made to apply them to the individual life. In short the age of the wisdom is the period of the return from exile, when. Israel was no more a nation but a community of people, when it had no king...