PROVERBS, Boox OF. in the Pentateuch, the Book of Proverbs takes its He brew title from its opening words-713V or +? VI? simply. From this are directly derived the titles it bears in the LXX. (rapovilat ZaXoh Wvros) and Vulgate (` Liber Proverbiorum quam Hebrmi Misle' appellant'), and the name by which it is universally known. Another title, perhaps more appropriate to the book as a whole, is de rived from its chief subject, Wisdom.! In the Tosaphoth to Baba Bathra we find -Proverbs and Ecclesiastes combined under the name nr:Dri ' the book of wisdom,' and this title appears to have passed thence into the early church. Clemens Rom. (c. 57) when quoting i. 23.31 says, ofh-un X6.yet .vatniperos ' wisdom which is the sum of all virtues,' a name which, according to Eusebius (H. E., iv. 22), was adopted by Hegesip pus, Irenmus, and the whole band of the ancients,' following the unwritten Jewish tradition, and by Clem. Alex. (Strom. ii., sec. 22). It is styled by Gregory Naz. (Oral. xi.) ratacryarymb owfila, and by Dion. Alex. pigNos. In the catalogue of canonical books compiled by Melito of Sardis preserved by Euseb. (H. E., iv. 26), we find Hap. ZaXop.. i7 sat Mogbla, a name which, as well as Sapientia,' is of frequent occurrence in the early Fathers (see Cotelerius in Clem. Rom., 1. c. ; Vales. ad Euseb., 1. c.), though by no means re stricted to the Book of Proverbs, being equally used, as Cotelerius proves, of Ecclesiasticus' and `the Wisdom of Solomon ;' a circumstance from which some confusion has arisen.
The word by which the so-called ' Pro verbs' of Solomon are designated (Prov. i. 1, 6 ; x. I ; xxv. 1 ; and 1 Kings iv. 32 [v. 12]), is more appropriately translated in the Vulgate ' parabola.' It is akin to the verb corresponding with the Arabic and the Syriac %L\.–D, ' to be like,' and primarily signifies ' a comparison,' similitude,' ' parable' (Ezek. xvii. 2 • xxiv. 3) ; whence it easily passed to those pithy sententious maxims which in the East so often appear in the form of a. terse comparison, of which many are to be found in the book before us—ex. gr., xxvi. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, and then to ' proverbs' in general, whether containing a similitude or not (I Sam. a.. 12 ; xxiv. 13 [14] ; Eccles. xii. 9). Its scope was still further enlarged by its application to longer compositions of a poetical and figurative character— ex, gr., that of Balaam (Num. xxiii. 7, IS, etc., and
Job xxvii. 1 ; cf. Ps. xlix. 5 ; lxxviii. 2), and par ticularly to taunting songs of triumph over fallen enemies—ex. gr., against the king of Babylon (Is. xiv. 4), the Chaldeans (Hab. ii. 6) ; cf. also Mic.. ii. 4 ; Deut. xxviii. 37 ; 1 Kings ix. 7.
2. Canonicity.—The canonical authority of the Book of Proverbs has never been called in ques tion, except among the Jews themselves. We learn . from the Talmud that the school of Shammai, thus early adopting the principle of the free handling of Scripture, were led by some apparent contradictions in the book (ex. gr., Prov. xxvi. 4, 5) to question its inspiration, and to propose to cast it out of the canon. It is indeed certain, if we credit the Jewish tradition, that it did not at once take its place on a level with the other canonical Scrip-. tures, but, like the Antilegomena of the N. T., remained for a time in suspense. According to Wolf (Bihl. Hebr., ii. i 19 ; and Zunz, Gott. Par-, trig., apud Bertheau, p. it was not till the period of the Persian rule that the men the great synagogue' admitted it to an equal rank. with the other Hagiographa. In the remarkable. passage of the Talmud, however, which contains_ the most ancient opinion of the Jews on the forma:, tion of the O. T. Canon (Baba Bathra, p. 14, spud Westcott, Bible in the Church, p. 36), its recogni-, Lion is fixed earlier : the Proverbs (` Meshalim') being included with Isaiah, Canticles (` Shir hashirim') and Ecclesiastes (` Kohelet ') in the memorial word Jamshak, specifying the books 'written'—i. e., re duced to writing—by Hezekiah and his learned men. With the trifling exception mentioned above, its. right to a place in the canon has never been ques tinned since its admission into it, and there is no book of Holy Scripture whose authority is more unshaken. The amount of inspiration in the book has been a matter of speculation since the days of Theodore of Mopsuestia, who believed that the wisdom contained in it'was that of Solomon only, not of the of God ; even as some of the. Rabbins found in Ecclesiastes no divine wisdom, but merely that of Solomon. Leaving such vain and impracticable distinctions, the canonical autho rity of the book is attested to us by the frequent use of it in the N. T. The following is a list of the principal passages :— Prov. xvii. 27 . . James i. 19.