Book of Proverbs

PROVERBS, BOOK OF. This Old Testament book falls into nine sections. Each of these has its special stylistic and other characteristics, some of them containing evident traces of compila tion from earlier collections, one (as has only lately been recog nized) being almost completely paralleled in an extant Egyptian book, while individual proverbs are found to bear traces of the "international" character of their origin and are variously related to the culture of Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, etc. (see WISDOM LITERATURE). Moreover the tradition preserved in the book itself which ascribed certain parts of the book to Solomon (x. 1, xxv. 1), the "sages" (xxii. 17, xxiv. 23), Agur (xxx. 2), King Lemuel's mother (xxxi. 2) militates against the view that any one author was responsible for the composition of these various sections of the book: the ascription to Solomon in i. I probably referred orig inally to chs. i.–ix.—though this was probably the last section to be compiled.

Wellnigh the only characteristics common to all sections of the book may be summed up under three heads and these are not con fined to the Book of Proverbs but are to be found in nearly all the extant gnomic literature of the Hebrews—the presuppositions that "wisdom" comes from Jehovah, that wisdom is, or should be, the guiding principle of life, and that cardinal social virtues such as industry, thrift, discretion, truthfulness, honesty, chastity, thought for others, including the lower animals, should be inculcated. Consequently in its present form the book represents the last stage in a long compilatory history and provides many useful examples of Hebrew proverbial and gnomic thought at various stages of its development. The date of each section and sub-section must be alternately determined by the character of its contents, the relation in which the latter stands to the extant gnomic literature of other peoples, and the stage or stages of moral and theological develop ment reflected in it.

Chapters

i.–ix.—The first section serves as an introduction to the whole book, but in origin it is of late date and its contents suggest that, like the book as a whole, it was compiled from more than one source. At times, for instance, the motive advanced for good conduct is moral and religious (e.g., ii. 5-8) : at times it is frankly utilitarian (e.g., vi. 1-5). Instead of a series of unrelated proverbial couplets, such as those in the following section, com paratively long discourses follow on each other. The sage ad dresses his remarks to young men. Though not confining his warnings to these two offences, he warns them more especially against highway robbery and adultery—unless indeed the latter is an only too thinly veiled warning against Hellenism (cf. "Madam

Folly" in ch. ix. 13-18) conceived of as a prostitute enticing the uninstructed ("ye simple ones") from their allegiance to their true love, the "wisdom" which comes from Jehovah, incarnate, as it were, in His religion, Judaism. Somewhat similar warnings against woman's wiles are given by Egyptian sages such as Amenophis and Ptah-hoteph, and by the Mesopotamian author of the Wisdom of Ahikar. The section is chiefly remarkable for the developed thought contained in viii. 1-31 as to "wisdom," her relation to God, the universe and man. It is perhaps more de veloped than, not only Eccles. xxiv. 1-19, but also the descriptions of her in the Book of Wisdom. "Wisdom" claims to have existed prior to the universe (cf. "in the beginning" with the first words of Gen. i. I and John i. 1) as a possession of God (viii. 22 sff.), to have witnessed the creation of the universe, and even to have acted as a clerk of the works or architect in the process of the creation, unless, as the parallelism of the verse makes probable, the vocalization of the Hebrew word translated "master work man" should be altered to justify the rendering "nursling." But it is questionable whether even here the Hebrew author does more than poetically personify the principle of wisdom : he scarcely gives her a real hypostasis and does not go so far in this direction as did Philo in his description of the Logos as "a second god," It is not, however, outside the bounds of possibility that the author of the prologue to the Fourth Gospel was considerably influenced by this description of wisdom rather than by Philo's descriptions of his Logos, even though he substituted the latter term for "wis dom." This advanced thought as to wisdom is not confined to ch. viii., but seems to be more or less presupposed throughout the section. The author's philosophy of life other wise shows little of a pronouncedly modern character. Righteousness and wickedness are rewarded in this life (e.g., ii. 21) ; the sacrificial worship is in culcated (ii. 9, iii. 9) ; the words "law" and "commandment" are used now of the Mosaic system, now of parental injunctions, now of the sage's advice. It is the language and philosophy of life characteristic of Deuteronomy which are most prominent ; suffer ing is divine chastisement administered, however, in love (iii. r2).