Studies in Life from Jewish Proverbs

He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is made in mockery; and the mockeries of wicked men are not well-pleasing (E. 3418).

Ben Sirach says of a sinner, confident in his wrong-doing because no man seeth him—But he knoweth not that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, beholding all the ways of men, and looking into secret places (E. 2319).

And again he writes of the hypocritically pious:

The Most High hath no pleasure in the offerings of the ungodly, neither is He pacified for sins by the multitude of sacrifices (E. 3419; cp. Pr. 2127).

It does not seem probable that the Almighty will be any the better impressed, should the wicked offer up hymns instead of sacrifices. Motive is still the criterion of worship: take heed how ye praise or pray, lest your words be no more than the sound of a voice; take heed how ye hear, lest, judging a sermon, you fail to hear God’s judgment of you; and above all remember that the chief act of worship, without which all else is in vain, must be rendered at home and in the city’s streets, for—said a Wise-man on whom the spirit of the prophets had descended—to do justice and equity is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice (Pr. 213). A plain commandment, but there is none greater: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

And to them that are fain to keep the commandment God giveth gifts. “But” says one, “how know you that they are God’s gifts? Is there a God to give? Faith is very difficult to attain.” Certainly faith is difficult to the sophisticated in this and every age; but to the Wise it has always seemed natural, and never impossible. Said a young Russian modernist, “I find it difficult not to believe in God.” So much in passing; we shall return to the question a little later. Meantime, however, let us turn to what cannot be denied, the reality of the gifts and the axiomatic truth of the assertion that they are from God in the sense that they are the consequence of believing God is and is good.

To believe in the true God, the high and holy and merciful God of Israel’s noblest thinkers, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, certainly gives men confidence and courage, not because the dangers and difficulties of life are removed, but because our strength being increased, it becomes possible to overcome them: The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe (Pr. 1810). Through the new spirit that is ours, life is lifted to a higher plane where we feel that, when sorrow and pain and sin have had their say, still the Lord reigneth; God is greater than His foes: Whoso feareth the Lord shall not be afraid and shall not play the coward; for God is his hope (E. 3414).

To them that seek Him God gives illumination. Evil men understand not justice, but they that seek the Lord understand it altogether (Pr. 285)—which does not mean that the pious are omniscient, but does mean that to follow after truth and goodness enlightens, whereas to seek evil and pursue it makes men blind. Accordingly it is said, There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord (Pr. 2130), and the truth of that great saying has been repeatedly displayed in the rise and fall of mighty nations and empires, as well as in the lives of individuals. Selfishness is always short-sighted, snatching greedily at shadows and missing the best there is in life. Again, The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, but He blesseth the habitation of the righteous (Pr. 333); and that is true because it is seldom that such things as passion, hatred, cruelty and haunting moral fears are absent from the former, and, whatever the good man’s house may lack, it will generally have love, joy, peace and all the fruits of the Spirit.

One remarkable proverb claims that When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him (Pr. 167); and the value of the saying is perhaps increased in that, regarded pedantically, the claim breaks down, whereas on a wider consideration it seems to be subtly and profoundly true. Thus, our truthfulness may not prevent some particular individual (our enemy) from deceiving us by a lie, but it helps many, who might become false and some day deceive us, to persevere in truthfulness; and if all men really were liars, heaven help our race! Our honesty may not prevent a thief from breaking through and stealing, but it does make it easier for other men to be honest and so helps to reduce dishonesty in the world; and if all men were deceivers, peaceful trade would cease. Mercy begets mercy; the kindness of all true men who love God and follow Christ is making the world more kind. In a word, the effect of righteous example is magnificently great. What matter then if the truth be superlatively phrased? Let us affirm it boldly: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

Here is a verse that sums up the whole topic:—

The gifts are good. But is there a Giver, a God who cares? Why not so believe? It is neither impossible nor incredible. In the last chapter we shall touch further upon the great question. For the moment our concern is only with the answer to it that we find in the Jewish proverbs. That answer is boldly affirmative. Let us begin, however, with a rather hesitant saying; A man’s goings are of the Lord, how then can he understand his ways? (Pr. 2024). Possibly the author intended not to assert God’s guidance but only to complain of the baffling character of our fortunes. If so, we will have none of it. If there be no God at all, at least let us struggle to determine our path with such intelligence as we can muster. In the following, however, there is no dubiety about the affirmation of faith: A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps (Pr. 169). Hard doctrine! theoretically possible perhaps, but is it probable? Certainly it is hard to believe, almost incredible, so long as it is considered merely from the critic’s chair. But the sublime hope that God careth for men displays an astonishing vitality; and the altogether amazing and significant fact is this, that just where it ought most surely to die down and be extinguished, there it always rises up and burns again—as now in the trenches.

Here is the witness of an educated man, who had long ceased to be a Christian in the conventional usage of the term. He is writing freely to one who had been more than a friend for Christ’s sake, and it is fair to give his words, because death is no longer a mystery to him. “Half-unconsciously I hummed the tune rather than the words of the famous hymn [When I survey the wondrous Cross]; As I did so there appeared before me, not a vision of Christ’s person, but of the meaning of the glorious crown of thorns He wore. The King of Heaven, the Prince of Peace, is a man—He took not upon Him the nature of angels. That would have been easy but futile. It would not have linked Him with us closely enough. So my vision told me. He must needs suffer for us.... And if suffering, and forgiveness, and love of our fellows, and general self-forgetfulness be what is required of every one of us, how greatly we all stand in need of His atonement. That was the lasting impression of my vision: but, subsidiary, there was another. I felt, for a moment, a sense of divine spectatorship, as if there was but God in the world besides me; and God, all-seeing, all-understanding, with whom no words were necessary[153].”

But also those whose training in the school of life has brought them no such command of words as had the writer of the above, have their own way of voicing the instinct, saying that “if a fellow’s name is written on a bullet he’ll get it, and if it isn’t, he won’t.” Press the naïve metaphor. Who writes the name on the bullet? Not Krupps; they are too busy for that. Then is the writing the writing of God, graven upon the bullet? Probably the man himself would say, Fate is the writer. “Fate” on the lips of men who have nineteen centuries of Christian tradition behind them is only another name, and imperfect, for God the Father. There is fatalism and fatalism. The fatalism of men who, being conscious (however dimly) that duty has drawn them into a war which is at bottom an immense conflict of ideas and ideals regarding the use and abuse of national power, feel somehow that they will not die except they were appointed to lay down their life for others; that fatalism is separated by a hair’s breadth from explicit trust in the overshadowing love of God. Belief in God’s providence may seem difficult to the student at his ease, but it is high human doctrine. It was the doctrine of Jesus; and keen and earnest thinkers, and simple men and women innumerable, facing the sternest facts of life, have found it possible to place their trust in it, and, trusting, have found themselves at peace.

In conclusion, here is a proverb which needs a few words of introduction. The graces and benefits of religion are frequently associated in the Bible with “meekness” or “humility.” Now those English words carry unfortunate associations which are absent from the Hebrew they represent. The “humility” commended by the Prophets and Psalmists is a certain frank simplicity of soul—a quality from which not a few of the most effective and virile personalities in the world’s history have derived their power. It has little or nothing to do with softness or timidity of character; indeed courage is its hall-mark. Those who first rallied round the Maccabean leaders in the struggle against an unclean Hellenism were of “the meek ones of the earth.” The Russian peasant has this Biblical “humility,” but the proudest military empire in the modern world has tasted the fortitude of his soul. Wherefore we may claim that this exquisite saying is not merely beautiful, but is also profound:

CHAPTER XX

The Gift of God

But the Jewish proverbs range wide enough to have a word for everyone, for the grave or the gay, for pious or profane, for those in haste just as much as for those at leisure; and many of their comments on life are very far removed from being trifling. In our enquiry we have met not a few winged words worth capturing and holding fast even in war-time; great thoughts such as this assertion, He that followeth after righteousness shall attain unto life, but he that pursueth evil doeth it to his own death (Pr. 1119), or this reassuring hint of the fundamental goodness of human nature, When the righteous triumph there is great glorying, but when the wicked come to power men hide themselves (Pr. 2812; cp. 1110), or this grand medicine for a tempted people, Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any folk (Pr. 1434).

Moreover it ought to be recognised that, properly regarded, morality is never unimportant; moralisms being trifling only so long as they remain mere words, not when they are translated into deeds. Act upon the good that is found in these proverbs, and immense results would follow. But just there is the crux: “It is a small matter to get right principles recognised, the whole difficulty lies in getting them practised. We need a power which can successfully, contend against the storm of our passion and self-will.”[154]

Now there is one deeply significant fact which we have seen in our study of the Jewish proverbs, but on which we have not yet laid sufficient stress—the fact that they seemed to their authors to point beyond themselves to a Divine Source. They were not fortuitous atoms gathered no man knew whence or why, but part of a marvellous system inspired and originated by God, sustained by His inexhaustible power, and governed by His holy purposes. Whatever may be thought regarding particular proverbs, no sensible person can imagine that Wisdom itself is idle or unimportant talk. Wisdom remains wise even in such a war as this, though the nations rage and the kingdoms are moved.

But is there a Divine Wisdom? Or is the aspiring faith of men only an unsubstantial dream? From first to last the Jews believed that Wisdom is a reality, and, far from weakening as the years went on, their confidence even increased, and their thoughts of the wonder and glory of the Heavenly Wisdom became, if possible, more sublime and yet no less intimate. And high as they exalted Wisdom, her chiefest glory remained this, that she was willing to dwell with men. Let us take as a last quotation some beautiful and loving words from that late work, the Wisdom of Solomon, to which reference was made in Chapter IX:

Is there this Heavenly Wisdom? Century by century, Life is accumulating its patient answer to the question, building up its vast evidence that the word of God endures, generation by generation confirming the intuition that the visible is for man the least real and that it is the unseen things that are eternal. But out of the midst of history there has also come one finished and marvellous reply—the personality of Jesus Christ.

Wisdom, whence cometh it? And where is the place of understanding? cried one who had despaired to find an answer. But the day came when certain of the Jews declared that Wisdom was found, that the infinite Divine Wisdom in its full glory had dwelt amongst us. All, and more than all, that had been said or thought or hoped of the Heavenly Wisdom, they had discovered in Christ Jesus. For one who had been man among men to be thus by Jews identified as the Perfect Wisdom, which was but an aspect of God Himself, is clearly wonderful; but just how utterly amazing it is, perhaps only those can realise who are conscious of the innate and magnificent monotheism of the Jews, and who have listened with sympathy and understanding to these reverent and rapturous praises of Wisdom. That a human being could possibly be felt to be the incarnation of Wisdom’s Self is a miracle. But the miracle is precisely that which has happened, and it is explicable only by a cause as great as the effect; that is, by the miracle of what Jesus was and is.

Recognition of Christ as the Divine Wisdom, and of Wisdom as incarnate in Christ, permeates the tradition and theology of the New Testament. It is visible in almost every passage where His disciples have sought to express the mystery and majesty of Him whose human love they had known on earth, whose divine power they now felt from heaven. The idea of Wisdom is the basis of St. Paul’s great utterances regarding Christ in the Epistle to the Colossians; of the affirmations in Hebrews that by Christ were the worlds made and that He is the Radiance of the Divine Glory and the Reflection of the Divine Being; and behind the wonderful opening chapter of St. John’s Gospel there is a hymn to the Eternal Wisdom, which was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God.[155]

Who hath ascended into heaven and descended?—asked a sceptical questioner in the Book of Proverbs (Pr. 304). No man ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man, rings out the answer of the Gospel (John 313).

If any man lack Wisdom let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him, writes St. James. Surely God’s gift is Christ? There are now nineteen centuries to show that nothing that has set itself against His wisdom has endured and been accepted as the truth.

“We need a power which can successfully contend against the storm of our passion and self-will.”—St. Paul affirms that the need has been met and answered in Christ crucified, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, and the Gospel holds out the same promise: as many as received Him to them gave He power to become the children of God.

But are they many who throughout these centuries have sought to find Wisdom in Christ, and in His redeeming compassion, His perfect knowledge of human weakness and human need, His calm unfailing strength, His infinite holiness, His glorious ideal, His faith, His sacrifice, have declared that they have found that which they sought? They are very many. Already they are a multitude which no man can number—out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples—of whom some have sealed the confession with their life-blood, and some have given equal testimony in the unfaltering purity and patience of a quiet and unselfish life. Some of them have been learned and some unlearned in this world’s knowledge, but it is abundantly evident that all who have been faithful to His word have possessed in its fulness the deeper Wisdom which is from above.

The sum of it all is this. Christ has come. There are those who do not trouble to seek for Wisdom with their whole heart, but that is a foolish attitude which should be shunned. The miracle has happened, and we ought to face its challenge. What think ye of Christ? Whose son is He?

Index

A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY