CHAPTER IV

THE WISDOM BOOKS

I

I HAVE already pointed out that since the Hebrew language had no apparatus for embodying any complication of thought, all the narrative of the Old Testament is extremely simple in form. In like manner we have seen that the poetry embodies only man's immediate experience and the deep emotions which are his reaction to that experience, and that the Jews never reached the point of figuring to themselves the feelings of fictitious persons. As in the narrative, the mental habit behind the poetry is of extreme simplicity.

In this chapter and in the next I shall discuss those parts of the Bible which contain the nearest approach to what we call philosophising: in the Old Testament, the books of wisdom-Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job; and in the New Testament the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles. I shall confine the discussion of them almost entirely to a single point,

the habit of mind and the manner of thought which they reveal to us; for we shall gain much light on the literature of the Bible as a whole if we can see wherein the mode of thought of these ancient writers was similar to ours and wherein it was dissimilar; moreover, by understanding this point we shall see better in the end how this literature which is so foreign could weave itself so deeply into the texture of English thought and speech.

Proverbs is a somewhat miscellaneous collection, in part of short poems on various subjects, in still larger part of the shrewd and pithy apothegms in which the Oriental mind delighted to sum up its observations on man and his life. It begins with nine chapters in which are contained a number of short poems generally in praise of wisdom, though some contain particular admonitions and warnings. Then comes the main portion of the book, which is also the most typical: its character is summed up in the heading of the tenth chapter in the Authorised Version, "From this chapter to the five and twentieth are sundry observations of moral virtues, and their contrary vices." This classification, however, is somewhat too sweeping, for at verse 17 of Chapter xxii begins a new section, the so-called Words of the Wise. Here instead of separated and isolated proverbs we have brief poems on various subjects,

sometimes only a couple of verses long, sometimes six or eight verses, such as the poem on the drunkard which I have already cited, and the following poem on the sluggard:

I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;

And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.

Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:

So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.1

Then follows another collection of separate proverbs and axioms," proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out "; these, however, are somewhat classified, as is recognized by such a heading as that of Chapter xxvi in the Authorised Version, "Observations about fools, about sluggards, and about contentious busybodies." The rest of the book is thoroughly miscellaneous; Chapter xxx begins with a very obscure passage denominated "the words of Agur," and runs on into a series of numerical proverbs, such as:

1 Prov. xxiv. 30-34.

There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:

The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer;

The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks;

The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands;

The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.1

The last chapter begins with the "words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him," and concludes with an alphabetical poem which describes the virtuous woman. Between these very different parts there are no transitions and no attempt on the part of the authors or compilers to create the possibility of continuous thought. The canons of Hebrew authorship never demanded the welding together of dissimilar parts into a single whole.

The exact date both of the individual proverbs and poems and of the book as a whole is indeterminable; but in its present state the book like the other wisdom books, though incorporating material which in ultimate origin may be early, comes most probably from the later period after the Exile when the experience of the Jews became so much widened. To 1 Prov. xxx. 24-28.

this conclusion point the tacit assumption of monotheism, the absence of any definite national traits, the predominant interest in urban life, the somewhat technical use of the words wisdom and the wise, and the general unity of the group of wisdom books. But after all, the settlement of dates in works of such character can never be very exact, especially when one takes into account the unbroken and slow-changing tradition of ideas among Eastern peoples: if the customs of Syrian peasants in our own day throw light on the nature of the Song of Solomon one can hardly look for much difference in ways of thought between the days of Jeremiah and those of Alexander. In view of such facts, and also of the fact that much Hebrew authorship consisted in compilation and amplification of existing materials we may fairly suppose that Proverbs gives us materials which were originally produced by many writers of very different ages: and that Jews of times as far apart as the seventh century and the third held in general about the same views of life, and thought in about the same way.

Thus we may look on the book as offering us the reflections on life of sages who lived in an indefinite past and with the restricted experience of the Oriental world. Yet it is indubitably stimulating to us to-day, and it impresses one at each new reading by