ther writer, and that this inference is confirmed by the contrast between the continuous strain of counsel of the one, and the brief pithy antithetic maxims of the other. (2) The warnings of i. 1019, ii. 12-15, iv. 14-17 against the life of robbers as a besetting danger for the young point, it is said, to a time of greater disorder than the reign of Solomon. (3) New words or forms, such as the plural non (Chochmoth, wisdoms) for wisdom, the Hebrew words for the "strange woman," the "stranger," for the harlot temptress, fall in with the same theory. (4) Traces of the influence of the book of Job on the writer of this portion are found in the numerous parallelisms' between the two, which meet us in it, and which are not found to the same extent, if at all, in the next section, and it is inferred that it must therefore have been written after the beginning of the seventh century, to which that book is referred. It is evident, however, that all these data are to say the least very uncertain.

(1) The difference of style is not greater than would be natural in one who was writing, it may be, in maturer age, a preface to maxims which had been noted down separately from time to time. (2) The life of the outlaw was one of constant recurrence in the earlier history of Israel (Judg. ix. 4, xi. 3; 1 S. xxii. 2), and there is no ground for supposing that it was entirely suppressed under Solomon. (3) The argument from peculiar words, always more or less fallacious, is traversed by the far larger number of words, which being characteristic of, all but peculiar to, the Proverbs, are common in nearly the same proportion to all parts of it. (4) The uncertainty as

(2) The phrase ps 1 (will increase learning), i. 5, ix. 9, xvi. 21, 23.

15.

(3)(good understanding), iii. 4, xiii.

to the date of Job makes any argument based upon it of very doubtful weight. The resemblance might be explained by the supposition, on the one hand, that it was written after Proverbs, or on the other, and more probably, that being of earlier date than the reign of Solomon the parallelisms do not prove that the passages in which they occur were not written by that king. It may be added, as arguments in favour of identity of authorship, (1) that there are no warnings against idolatry, such as would have been natural in one who lived under the later kings of Judah; (2) that the danger of contamination from foreign vices was precisely that which began to be felt under Solomon; (3) that the forms of luxury, described in vii. 16, 17, are such as were conspicuous in his reign (1 K, x. 28).

(d) x. 1-xxii. 16. The title of "the proverbs of Solomon," though not enough to warrant the inference that has just been discussed, indicates with sufficient clearness that the section to which it is prefixed had an independent origin. The continuous teaching ceases, and in place of the lofty strains of chaps. viii. and ix. we have a series of isolated maxims, short, pithy, antithetic, the true type of the Hebrew proverbs, hardly ever carried beyond the limits of a single verse, dealing with the common facts of life, and viewing them from the point of prudence. By the consent of nearly all critics, this is the kernel of the whole book, representing the wisdom which made Solomon famous among men. Containing, as it does, about 400 of these maxims, it may be thought of as probably a selection from the larger number of 3000, referred to in 1 K. iv. 32, made possibly under the

14, xviii. 18, xxi. 9, 19, xxii. 10, xxiii. 29, xxv. 24, xxvi. 20, 21, xxvii. 15, xxviii. 25, xxix. 22. The word occurs in three other passages only of the Old Testament.

(6) (void of understanding), vi. 32, vii. 7, ix. 4, 16, x. 13, 21, xi. 12, xii. II, XV. 21, xvii. 18, xxiv. 30.

in the sense of the central point of) אישון (7)

darkness), vii. 9, xx. 20.

(4)

N (gather), vi. 8, x. 5.

(5) 11

tion, known as the Proverbs of Solomon, and recognized as at once authentic and authoritative. It shews that there were also current, orally, or in writing, other proverbs not included in that collection. It brings before us an instance, marked indeed, but one which we cannot think of as solitary, of the activity of that period in collecting, arranging, editing the writings of an earlier age. It is a distinct statement, that both the collection that precedes, and that which follows, were at that time, after careful inquiry, recognized as by Solomon himself. The chapters to which it is prefixed present a general resemblance to the portion, ch. x.-xxii. 16, which all critics have regarded as the oldest portion of the book. There is the same stress laid on the ideal excellence of the kingly office (compare xxv. 2-7 with xvi. 1015), the same half-grouping under special words and thoughts, as e.g. in the verses xxv. 2-7, referring to kings, in the words "take away," in xxv. 4, 5, in the use of the same word (in Hebrew) for "strife," or "cause" (xxv. 9), of "gold" (xxv. II, 12), of the "fool" in the first ten verses of ch. xxvi., of the "slothful" in xxvi. 13-16, of the "righteous" in xxix. 2, 7, 16. The average length of the proverbs is about the same, in most there is the same general parallelism of the clauses. There is a freer use of direct similitudes. In one passage (xxvii. 23— 27) we have, as an exceptional case, a word of counsel, which is neither a proverb nor a comparison, and is carried through five verses, in which, unless we assume a latent allegory, like that of the "vineyard of the slothful," in xxiv. 3034, the instruction seems to be economic rather than ethical in its character, designed, it may be, to uphold the older agricultural life of the Israelites as contrasted with the growing tendency to seek wealth by commerce, and so fall into the luxury and profligacy of the Phoenicians.

(h) xxx. The two chapters that follow present problems of greater difficulty, and open a wider field for conjecture. New names meet us, entirely foreign to all that we know of the history of Israel; a new word is applied to the teaching, which is commonly used to describe prophetic, rather than didactic utterances.

The word translated "prophecy" (xxx. 1, xxxi. 1) (No massa) is elsewhere, with scarcely an exception, rendered "burden," either in its literal sense (as in Num. iv. 15, 19, xi. 11, 17 et al.), or, as denoting a solemn speech or oracle, uttered by a prophet, as in the titles of the series of chapters in Isaiah (xiii.— xxiii.) that contain such predictions. In Jer. xxiii. 33-38, the "burden of the Lord" occurs with a strange frequency as the word for a prophet's warning as to the immediate future of his own, or of another people, but is nowhere translated "prophecy," except in the two passages now under discussion'. A somewhat obscure passage in 1 Chro. xv. 22, where Chenaniah, chief of the Levites, is said to have been "for massa," or (as in the A.V.) for "song," and to have instructed "about the song, for he was skilful," may present a partial approximation to a like use of the word. If this meaning be received here, we must think of it, as applied to both these chapters, as indicating a marked difference between them and the hortative addresses, or the collections of apophthegms of which, up to this time, the book had been composed.

It has been maintained, however, by some critics of eminence, that the word is here a proper, not a common noun; that we have in these two chapters fragments of the gnomic wisdom of two sages of a "land" of Massa. The existence of a country so called is inferred from the appearance of the name in the list of the sons of Ishmael, in Gen. xxv. 14, and 1 Chro. i. 30, in close connection with Dumah, and it is assumed that those who dwelt there, whether belonging to Ishmael or Israel, were among

1 The Vulgate in both passages gives "visio." The LXX. substitutes an entirely different verse for xxx. 1, and in xxxi. 1 gives xpημatioμós.

2

Hitzig, Bertheau, Vaihinger, Bunsen, Zoeckler, and, though with many differences in detail, Muehlau and Delitzsch.

this interpretation, that the kingdom of Massa The hypothesis which Hitzig connects with

was founded by the Simeonites in the reign of Hezekiah, as a sequel to the emigration mentioned in 1 Chro. iv. 39-43, does not call for special notice here. It comes in as the explanation of the fact that the two fragments supposed to have had this origin bear, as they do, the im press of a faith identical with that of Israel.

the "children of the East," whose wisdom had become proverbial (1 K. iv. 30), and that their words were therefore thought worthy of being appended to those of the sage by whom they were surpassed. And so, with the help of some changes in the vowel-points of the original, "Agur the son of Jakeh, the prophecy," is transformed into "Agur the son of her to whom Massa is obedient," sc. the queen of Massa; and xxxi. I appears, after a like change, as "The words of (or "for") Lemuel, king of Massa, which his mother taught him." Agur and Lemuel are thus made out to be brothers, and the queen, who is referred to as more famous than either of her children, is made the possessor of a wisdom which places her on a level with the queen of the South, or the son of David himself.

Ingenious as the hypothesis is, the evidence can hardly be received as satisfying. We have no distinct proof of the existence of any kingdom of Massa, still less of its being identical with any settlement of the Israelites. Other theories, maintained by older writers, that Agur and Lemuel are identical with Solomon, or that Agur, as meaning the "collector," is an ideal name for one who gathers up the wise sayings of others, may also be dismissed as having little or nothing to support them. The conclusion to which we are led is that we must be content to take Agur as the name of some sage otherwise unknown to us, and the word rendered "prophecy" as pointing to the higher, more solemn tone, that marks at least the opening of each of the two chapters.

The remaining words of the superscription of ch. xxx. have given rise to conjectures as conflicting. By Ewald the two names Ithiel (which appears in Neh. xi. 7) and Ucal are taken as two ideal names, the first meaning "God is with me," and the second "I am strong," both names of the same ideal person, the representative of a divine wisdom, meeting, as in vv. 4, 5, the confession of ignorance and blindness. By others (Hitzig, Bertheau, Muehlau) the words are treated as not being names at all, but part of the opening words of Agur himself, the introduction to the strange complaint, or confession, which opens so abruptly, in

v. 2', "I have toiled for God, have toiled for God, and am weary." Leaving the problems of the title, we may note with more certainty the leading features of the section itself, the less didactic, more enigmatic character of the whole, as though it corresponded specially to the "dark sayings" of i. 6, the grouping of the phænomena into quaternions, the "four" sometimes coming (as in Amos i., ii.) as the climax after "three" (vv. 15, 18, 21, 29), sometimes standing by itself (v. 24), or omitted, though the quaternion itself is complete (vv. 1114). The phænomena themselves shew a strange intermingling of facts belonging to the brute and to the human world, in some cases with an analogy between the two, expressed or implied, as in vv. 19, 30, 31, while in others (as in vv. 21 -23, 24-28) each group stands apart by itself. In the prominence given to these facts connected with the living creatures round us, we seem to catch imperfect echoes of the strain which pervades the description of the wild ass, the horse, behemoth, and leviathan in Job, just as xxx. 4 is unmistakeably a reproduction of the thought, almost of the words, of Job xxxviii. 4. Whensoever and by whomsoever written, this section shews the influence of that poem as clearly as the earlier sections did. Probably, without adopting the precarious hypotheses discussed above, we may see in it a fragment of a work written by one belonging originally to the country to which many critics have been led to refer the book of Job itself, a proselyte to the faith which the occurrence of the name Jehovah in v. 9 proves that the writer had received. The reign of Hezekiah was conspicuous for the re-opening of intercourse with these neighbouring nations (2 Chro. xxxii. 23), for the admission of converts from them among the citizens of Zion (Ps. lxxxvii.), and, as we have seen, for the zeal shewn in collecting and adding to the canon whatever bore upon it the stamp of a lofty and heavenly wisdom.

(i) xxxi. 1-9. The title of this section has been in part discussed already. Retaining the A.V. rendering of "the prophecy," and therefore rejecting the

1 See for fuller details the note on xxx. I.

Proverbs.

1. The teaching of individual proverbs will be discussed in the notes. What is aimed at here, is a statement of the principles on which that teaching rests, and of their application to the varying circumstances of life.

Here also we must be content to confess our ignorance who Lemuel was; what was the occasion of the "prophecy" addressed remains a problem which we have no data for solving. All that can be said is that it probably be longs to the same period as ch. xxx. and was added to the book not earlier than the time of Hezekiah.

(j) xxxi. 10-31. The last portion of the book forms, more distinctly, perhaps, than any other, a complete whole in itself. From beginning to end there is but one subject, the delineation of a perfect wife; and it is alphabetic in its structure. The form may have been adopted, as in the case of the alphabetic psalms, partly as a help to memory, partly from the delight which, in certain stages, generally comparatively late, in the history of literature, is felt in choosing a structure which presents difficulties and requires ingenuity to overcome them. The absence of any historical allusions makes it impossible to fix any precise date for it. The assumption that the acrostic form is itself an evidence of a date as late as the seventh century is a somewhat arbitrary one, and involves our assigning Pss. xxv. and xxxiv. to the same periods. All that can be said is (1) that the Lamentations of Jeremiah indicate a preference for that form, as characteristic of the time immediately before the captivity, and (2) that as regards the order of two letters (y and D) it follows the received Hebrew alphabet, recognized in most of the acrostic psalms, and not that which we find in Lam. ii. iii. and iv.

Whatever view we take of the structure and date of the book in its present form, it is clear that it belongs to a period when men had been taught to see more clearly than before the relative importance of the moral and the ceremonial precepts which seemed, in the Law of Moses, to stand on the same level as enjoined by divine authority. Language, such as we find in the teaching of Samuel (1 S. xv. 22), of Asaph (Ps. l. 13, 14), of David (Ps. li. 16, 17), had, we may well believe, impressed itself, through the schools of the Prophets, on the minds of the people at large, and was sure to leave its stamp on one who, like the writer of the book of Proverbs, had grown up under the immediate influence of the teacher (Nathan) who, after the death of Samuel, stood at the head of the prophetic order. The tendency to discriminate between what we have learnt to call moral and positive obligations thus originated, would be fostered, in the nature of things, by intercourse with other Semitic nations, such as Edom and Sheba, standing on the same footing as regards the fundamental principles of ethics, but not led, as Israel had been, through the discipline of typical or symbolic ordinances. If the book of Job was already known, or became known about this period, to the Israelite seekers after wisdom, the grandeur of its thoughts and the absence in it of any reference to the Law as such, would strengthen the conviction that instruction might be given, leading to a life of true wisdom and holiness and yet not including any direct reference to ceremonial or ritual precepts. It would not follow that these were slighted, or that men were taught to disobey them. They might safely be left to the traditions of household life, the example of parents, the teaching of priests and Levites. What a teacher such as