Studies in Life from Jewish Proverbs

CHAPTER III

Forgotten Years

The past of human life offers an unimaginably long vista for our contemplation. Vastly many more are the years that have been forgotten than those that are remembered. Mr. Stephen Graham is therefore quite right when, in his book The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary, he insists that Christianity after nineteen hundred years is still a young religion, its doctrines imperfectly understood, its possibilities not yet unfolded. But for that matter history itself is young, since history knows at the most some six or seven thousand years of human history, and Man has been on earth hundreds of thousands of years. Glimpses of human life in those dim and distant ages are occasionally possible (as we are about to observe in the Jewish proverbs) and have a certain fascination; but their interest is apt to be overwhelmed by the disquieting ideas which the thought of so vast a stretch of time naturally raises in our mind. In comparison, our personal hopes seemed dwarfed into utter insignificance, and it is no comfort when a Psalmist (more than twenty centuries ago) suggests that to the Deity time may be a very little thing: Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. God may expend so many myriad years as seemeth good to Him in the making of sun, moon, and stars, earth and sea—what matter? But when the living bodies of men are racked with pain, when tyranny endures and love and liberty are delayed, then what is the millenial patience of God but terrifying? We cannot wait for its slow maturing. Does He not know that we who would see the salvation of the Lord in the land of the living are ready to faint?

Perhaps, however, our distress arises from the adoption of a mistaken standpoint. For, first, let the question be considered not from the point of view of God’s patience but of His greatness, and the infinitely long development will seem less dreadful. The immensity of time may then be regarded, not as a token of God’s indifference to man, but as a measure of His eternal majesty, and as evidence of an intention sublime beyond our present power to apprehend, yet not antagonistic to the value of the individual being—as indeed the author of Isaiah 40 perceived: Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from my God and my glory is forgotten by my God? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard? the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding. And, secondly, there is something to be said regarding the brevity of our bodily existence, to which an analogy will furnish the best introduction. Suppose that men were able to perceive the world of Nature only in its immensities, seeing the oceans but not the tumbling waves, seeing the plains but not each green or golden field, would they not fail to perceive an incalculably great portion of earth’s beauty? How unutterably more wonderful are all natural objects when the microscope reveals the marvel of every particle. The tree is loveliest to him who has an eye to see the perfection of each leaf or knows the miracle of its growth from a single seed or shoot. Is it not possible that something similar is true of the human spirit in its apprehension of reality? Suppose that our personality was unable to taste life except on the grand scale, so that for man a thousand years were only a passing moment, experienced only “as a watch in the night,” would not the half of life’s glory then be hidden from those who were ignorant of what one year can be? May not participation in reality on a small scale—time felt as a day, an hour, a minute—be indispensable if the human spirit is to grasp the amazing fulness of conscious life? Apparently circumscribed by the limit of our three score years and ten, are we here to learn that consciousness, even when measured in days and minutes, is of eternal worth and pure delight? For we do learn that lesson. We do discover that an instant of perfect and unselfish tenderness may be of immeasurable value. Perchance Man can never love God till he has loved his brother, never know with the Divine knowledge, until in faith, hope, and charity he has desired to win the knowledge which is in part. The cup of cold water must first be given lovingly unto the least of His brethren, or we shall never comprehend to give it into the hand of Christ Himself. “He that is faithful over a few things,” said Jesus, “shall be set over many.” Perhaps only to those who have sought to find Heaven in life sub specie temporis can life sub specie eternitatis be imparted; for to know life fully must be to know not only its infinite extension and its Divine splendour, but also the exquisite perfection of its fleeting moments.

I

Proverbs are one of the most ancient inventions of Man, far older than history. Four centuries before the birth of Christ, Aristotle, gazing as far into the past as his glance could reach, saw proverbs still beckoning him back. He spoke of them as “fragments of an older wisdom which on account of their brevity or aptness had been preserved from the general wreck and ruin.” Even the Book of Proverbs, late as it is in date, has features which, if we follow out their significance, will lead us back to the life of men in long forgotten years. The signs, of course, are slight, but they are none the less real; and even a faint trace may be a sure thread of guidance. Only some grooves upon the surface of the rock, but the lines were indubitably made by the movement of ice in the glacial age. Only a piece of jagged flint, but the edge we finger was chipped by human hands for an object conceived in a human brain. See how the conical marks where each stroke of the hammer fell are still as clear and purposeful as on the day when they were made. Flaking a flint is skilled work: the blows must be cunningly aimed and exactly struck, or the stone will be shattered instead of sharpened. This one, being well wrought, is doubtless a Neolithic weapon. But here is a specimen more rude and primitive. It is probably a thousand years older than the one we have just examined. Nevertheless, we know that it also was worked by man, and that human eyes chose it and human hands held it, and fashioned it, in days when man shared Europe with the mammoth.

What faint but real traces of a far antiquity can be seen in the Jewish proverbs?

(1) The first trace is to be found in the Numerical Sayings, a curious type of aphorism, half proverb and half riddle. Four of these occur in Proverbs 30.

Four Things Unsatisfied.

Four Small Wise Things.

Four Things Unbearable.

Four Stately Things.

Simple as these riddles may be, they imply or make definite allusion to many things; a settled community, a king, an army trained and disciplined, economic foresight, dramatic changes in social rank, laws of natural inheritance, acute reflections on the fate of man and on human character—surely a picture too elaborate for pre-historic years? Certainly, and for these particular proverbs, no such claim is advanced: the lingering trace of a forgotten world is in their form, numerical proverbs. Those just quoted are, as it were, links in a long chain, which we may follow backwards or forwards. The former process will lead to the result we seek; but first, for convenience and in further illustration, let us notice some, still later, examples of these proverbs. Two more are included in the Book of Proverbs, one of which will be quoted below (p. 51): here is the other.

Seven Hateful Things.

Though cast in the same mould, this saying with its insistence on justice, truth, honesty of purpose and humility of spirit, certainly reflects a later and more complex stage of thought than the naïve conundrums quoted above from Pr. 30. Indeed, it may be no earlier than the third century, the golden age of proverb-making, to which period belongs also the following sentence from Ben Sirach’s book: There be nine things that I have thought of and in my heart counted happy, and the tenth I will utter with my tongue—A man whose children give him joy: a man that liveth to see his enemies fall: happy is he whose wife hath understanding, and he that hath not slipped with his tongue, and he that hath not had to serve an inferior man: happy is he that hath found prudence: and he that discourseth in the ears of them that listen. How great is he that hath found wisdom! And above him that feareth the Lord is there none. The fear of the Lord surpasses all things; and he that holdeth it, to whom shall he be likened? (E. 257-11).[20]

Turn next to the Sayings of the Fathers, a treatise of Jewish ethical reflections, compiled in the first and second centuries A.D., and in the fifth chapter will be found a series of “numerical” observations. It must suffice to quote but one: There are four types of moral character. He that saith “Mine is mine and thine is thine” is a character neither good nor bad, but some say ’tis a character wholly bad.[21] He that saith “Mine is thine and thine is mine” is a commercially minded man.[22] He that saith “Mine and thine are thine” is pious: “Mine and thine are mine,” the same is wicked. For a last and latest example a modern saying current among the Jews and Arabs of Syria, can be cited: There are three Voices in the World—that of running water, of the Jewish Law, and of money.

So much for the later links in the chain, but what of its beginning? Why give thoughts in stated number? Is it a writer’s trick to catch our fancy? That it may be in the later, but certainly not in the early instances. There is only unconscious art in such an unsophisticated, child-like verse as the Four Stately Things. “Child-like,” that is the word we require to describe these riddles. True; but when were the Jews and their Semitic ancestors children? Before Abraham was called, when almost the world itself was young.

For a moment permit your thoughts to be drawn back a very great way, and consider the rude and inefficient life of early man. Unaided by the numberless resources, mental and material, that enrich our civilised life, dwelling in forests, caverns and rude huts of stone or earth, well-nigh defenceless against the larger animals, haunted and harried by a thousand perils real and imaginary, so man once lived and worked and thought, and by his thinking accomplished marvels. “From the moment,” writes A. R. Wallace, “when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, when fire was first used to cook his food, when the first seed was sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in Nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the earth’s history had had no parallel; for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe—a being who was in some degree superior to Nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance in mind.”[23] But it was not enough that the individual should think. The secret of human success has lain in the ability to communicate ideas. Yet, to this day, with what effort we find words to body forth our thoughts and feelings! Try to conceive how difficult was the formulation and transmission of ideas in those forgotten centuries. Imagine the tribesmen gathered home for the day and seated around their fire. Here is one who has had a thought when out hunting, which would amuse or interest the rest, if only it could be made articulate. But none can read, and none can write, and language is in its infancy. How then can he find a way to tell it, and they perceive his meaning, and all remember? By means of proverbs; not the neat epigram of later ages, but yet sayings which for all their simplicity were embryonic proverbs. Earliest and easiest type of all was the bare comparison—this is like that—a type which, it is interesting to note, may be illustrated by one of the oldest phrases in the Bible: Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord (Gen. 109). And the method of comparison never ceased to be a favourite mould for the formation of proverbs, as some polished examples from Proverbs will serve to show: As the swallow ever flitting and flying, so the curse that is groundless alighteth not (Pr. 262). The way of the wicked is like the darkness: they know not whereon they stumble (Pr. 419). Another device for communicating thought and storing wisdom was the riddle, and this also, under slight disguise, has its lineal descendants in the Biblical proverbs. Thus Pr. 1614, Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body, was once most probably a reply to the question, What is sweet as honey? Another example is Pr. 221: someone would ask, What is worth more than gold? and when the listeners had guessed in vain give his answer, A good repute. But better than any one comparison, more memorable than the single question, was the numerical riddle; for instance this—What four things are beyond our power to calculate?

By sayings such as these were thought and experience acquired and transmitted in forgotten years. When complex thinking was impossible, when minds were dull and expression feeble, these primitive proverbs by the barb of their wit or fancy, fixed themselves deep in the memories of men.

(2). The last quotation has in early Indian literature a close parallel beginning thus:

and another of the numerical sayings from the same chapter of Proverbs has an even closer parallel:

compared with:

These resemblances of thought and phrase between India and Palestine provide another hint of far-past days by raising the question of the wandering of proverbs. Variations of the same tales and sayings occur among so many different peoples throughout Europe and Asia, that the possible rise of similar ideas, finding somewhat similar expression, in the various races, seems insufficient to account for the phenomena; rather we must suppose that tales and phrases circulated from tribe to tribe over an amazing stretch of territory and in very early times. What, for example, may be inferred from the correspondence between these Jewish and Indian sayings? Does it preserve a glimpse of some one man, interested in the reflections and questionings of his people, who once ages ago travelled out of India, following the immemorial trade-routes westwards across Arabia till he reached Palestine, and in the mind of some kindred soul left a memory of his wise words? Either that, or perhaps many minds were needed to transmit the thought from East to West or West to East; so that almost one might think of the words as having had wings on which they flew from camp to camp along the routes, alighting wherever men gathered for trade and found time for friendly intercourse. The subject might be developed at some length; but, try as we may, the details of these migrations hide themselves in the mists of a too distant past, and we catch but a glimpse of scenes we can never more make clear. It is better to give more time to certain general characteristics of the Jewish proverbs.

II

The abnormal aptitude of the Jews for proverb-making and their love of concrete expression are ultimately due to the conditions of early centuries. Of these two features it will be convenient to consider the second first.

The land of Palestine, home of the Jews from about 1200 B.C., lies between an ocean of water and an ocean of sand: on the west its coasts are washed, but not threatened, by the Mediterranean Sea; on the east and on the south it has to wage incessant warfare against the indrifting sands. The country is an oasis snatched from the great deserts and kept from their insidious grasp only by the toil and ingenuity of man. Behind Palestine looms Arabia, and beneath the Jew is the Arab. Throughout the last five thousand years the population of Palestine (excepting the Philistines on the coast) has been formed by layer after layer of Arabian immigrants, who have invaded the fertile lands, sometimes by the rush of sudden conquest, but also by steady, peaceful infiltration. Despite much intermarriage with the earlier Canaanites there was always a passionate strain of the desert in Jewish blood, and throughout its whole history in Palestine Israel had to live in uneasy proximity to its kinsfolk, the wild nomads who roamed the deserts to the east and south. Consequently the ultimate back-ground of the Old Testament writings is not Palestine but Arabia, a land which sets a deep and lasting impress on its children. A life wild yet monotonous in the extreme, rigid in its limitations but unbridled in its licence within those limitations: such is the rule imposed by the vast wilderness on the men who have to wander its blazing solitudes. Arabia produces four paradoxes in the intellect and characters of its nomadic tribes.[24] First, “the combination of strong sensual grossness with equally strong tempers of reverence and worship.” Second, “a marvellous capacity for endurance and resignation broken by fits of ferocity: the ragged patience bred by famine. We see it survive in the long-suffering, mingled with outbursts of implacable wrath, which characterises so many Psalms. These are due to long periods of moral famine, the famine of justice.” Third, ingenuity of mind and swift perception, but without that power or inclination for abstruse or sustained argument which the Western world has inherited from the Greeks. Fourth, a subjective attitude to the phenomena of nature and history, combined with an admirable realism in describing these phenomena.

For thousands of years before Israel entered Canaan and became a nation its ancestors were nomads of Arabia. It would be strange indeed if the great desert which so subtly and irresistibly sets its spell upon the human spirit had left no trace on Jewish proverbs. Yet the trace is not evident in points of detail. Most of the sayings we shall study in this volume represent the thoughts of certain post-exilic Jews. Where then does the mark of the desert linger? First in the peculiar concreteness of the proverbs. All proverbs tend to concrete expression, but in this respect the Jewish ones are only equalled by those of the Arabs themselves; and this quality is shown not only in the early but also in the later sayings. Let us illustrate the point before suggesting its ultimate cause. The Jew said, “Two dogs killed a lion,”[25] where we say, “Union is strength.” We say, “Familiarity breeds contempt”; they said, “The pauper hungers without noticing it.”[26] Our tendency is to consider riches and poverty, but they talked of the rich man and the poor. The most remarkable example of this tendency is the conception that gives unity to the Book of Proverbs, namely the idea of Wisdom. Here, if anywhere, one would expect the abstract to be maintained. But the individualising instinct has conquered, and in the loftiest passages of Proverbs we shall find Wisdom praised, not as an idea, but as a person, represented as a woman of transcendent beauty and nobility. Such abnormally concrete thinking may have its disadvantages, but at least it will have one satisfactory quality—humanism. Men who thought not in generalisations but in particular instances, who saw not classes but individuals, could not help being great humanists. If now we ask whence the Jewish mind received this tendency, our thoughts will have to travel back till we discern a group of black hair-cloth tents out in the Arabian Wilderness. In the tents are men who have learnt to pass safely across the deserts and are at home in them as a seaman on the seas; wild men and strong and confident, yet never careless, knowing that they can relax vigilance only at the risk of life. For these wastes are not empty but treacherous; apparently harmless, in reality full of peril. Security in the desert depends on acute and untiring observation. No amount of abstruse reasoning, no ability in speculative thought, will save life and property there, if the first sign of a lurking foe is passed unnoticed in the trying and deceitful light. Every faculty must be trained to the swift perception of concrete facts, faint signs of movement, the behaviour of men and beasts. The great sun in heaven may be trusted to rise and set: why speculate on the mystery? While we are lost in thought the sons of Ishmael may fall upon us. “The leisure of the desert is vast, but it is the leisure of the sentinel.... To the nomad on his bare, war-swept soil few things happen, but everything that happens is ominous.”

Keen observation, then, more than any other quality, is required by Arabia from its children. But observation is the quintessence of the art of proverb-making, provided it be combined with practice in the expression of one’s thoughts. As for practice in talk, one might readily suppose that the solitudes would have made their peoples tongue-tied. In point of fact the contrary is true, and the skill of the Jews in the devising of proverbs, no less than their love of concrete expression, goes back to habits engendered by this desert existence. Arabian life provided not only long leisure for reflection but also opportunity for social intercourse in the small tribal groups; so that the nomads came to have a passion for story-telling and for all manner of sententious talk, witness the customs of the Bedouin to this day and the immense collections of Arabian proverbs. Hour after hour, with Eastern tirelessness, the tribesmen, gathered at the tent of their sheikh, would listen approvingly to the eloquence bred of large experience and shrewd judgment. Here is the scene painted in the words of Doughty’s Arabia Deserta: “These Orientals study little else [than the art of conversation and narrative], as they sit all day idle in their male societies; they learn in this school of infinite human observation to speak to the heart of one another. His tales [referring to a Moorish rogue, Mohammed Aly], seasoned with saws which are the wisdom of the unlearned, we heard for more than two months; they were never-ending. He told them so lively to the eye that they could not be bettered, and part were of his own motley experience.” The Israelites carried this habit with them from Arabia into their settled homes in Canaan. Here is a similar scene in the hall of a modern Palestinian village-sheikh: “We were seated on mats, spread with little squares of rich carpet round three sides of a hollow place in the floor, where a fire of charcoal burned, surrounded by parrot-beaked coffee pots. This was the hearth of hospitality, whose fire is never suffered to go out; near it stood the great stone mortar in which a black slave was crushing coffee-beans. The coffee, deliciously flavoured with some cunning herb or other, was passed round. But the conversation which followed was the memorable part of that entertainment. In the shadow at the back the young men who had been admitted sat in silence. The old men, elders of the village community, sat in a row on stone benches right and left of the door. The sheikh made many apologies for not having called on us at the tents—he had thought we were merchantmen going to buy silk at Damascus. Then followed endless over-valuation of each other, and flattery concerning our respective parents and relations.... The elders sat silently leaning upon their staves, except now and then, when one of them would slowly rise and expatiate upon something the sheikh had said—perhaps about camels or the grain crop—beginning his interruption almost literally in the words of Job’s friends: “Hearken unto me, I also will show mine opinion. I will answer also for my part, I also will show mine opinion. For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.”[27] So has it been in Palestine time out of mind, and it is in settings of this description that we must imagine the art of proverb-making developing in Israel.

Such, then, is the significance of these features which we have been considering—the numerical proverbs, parallels with sayings of other nations, the love of the Jews for proverbs with their consequent skill in making them, and their remarkable penchant for concrete expression. Otherwise, antiquity has left few traces in the Jewish proverbs. That, however, is but natural, since proverb-making was a living art among the people. New maxims kept coming into use, and they crowded out of memory the favourites of byegone generations. Doubtless a few of the sayings in the Book of Proverbs are ancient, though just how old we cannot tell. For example, P. 2720, Sheol and Abaddon are never filled, and the eyes of man are never sated may be co-æval with the fear of death and the passion of greed. Cheyne discovers a relic of “that old nomadic love of craft and subtlety” in the saying (Pr. 223), A shrewd man sees misfortune coming and conceals himself, whereas simpletons pass on and suffer for it; but his interpretation of the verse seems somewhat forced. The following, however, in matter and perhaps in form also may be nearly as ancient as the settled occupation of the land:

Nothing could well be easier than the removal of those landmarks—insignificant heaps of stone, set at the end of a wide furrow. But from earliest times the East has counted them adequate guardians of the fields, and from generation to generation, by consent of all decent-minded men, they have stood inviolate. Other nations, as well as Israel, called them sacred. Greece, and Rome too, gave them a god for their protection, Hermes of the Boundary, beside whose shrine of heaped-up stones travellers would stay to rest, and, rested, lay an offering of flowers or fruit before the kindly deity:

Even the thief and murderer, we are told, would hesitate before the wickedness of moving these simple, immemorial heaps of stone: such was their sanctity. What unutterable contempt for the laws of God and man is therefore revealed in the multiple witness of the Old Testament[29] against the rich and powerful in Israel, that they scrupled not to remove the landmarks of their poorer brethren? Thieves and murderers would have kept their hands clean from such pollution:

CHAPTER IV

The Day of Small Things

Suppose that in Britain fifty or a hundred years hence men should quote “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,” when they seek an expression for the pathos and heroism that mark the acceptance of a difficult and perilous task—if those words live, why will they live? Obviously for no intrinsic merit, but for the undying memory of men who counted not their lives dear unto themselves. So with these early proverbs in the Bible. Each of them came into quickening contact with a great personality, or played a part in one of those fateful moments when the fortunes of a people or the trend of human thinking has been determined this way or that. They have lived because each has been touched by the passion of humanity. Therefore we have to study them not in isolation from the context, but in close connection with the scene or circumstance that gave them unexpected immortality.

(1) In days when Jerusalem was not yet Jerusalem, City of David, but only Jebus, a stronghold of the Canaanites, there had been built in the limestone uplands of Judæa an Israelitish village, Gibeah, situated (as the name implies), on a hill-top, doubtless for such security as the rising ground afforded.

At the time we are concerned with, Israel stood in sore need of every protection her settlements could find. Baffled by the great Canaanite fortresses, the invading Hebrews had never become absolute masters of the land, and of recent years their fortunes had altogether failed under the counter-pressure of new invaders, the Philistines, who had seized the coast of Canaan and whose restless armies came sweeping up the valleys that lead to the highlands from the plain along the sea. The raiders harried the Judæan villages, slaying the men and carrying the women, children and cattle captive to the lowlands. The villages were an easy prey, and the spirit of the Israelites was broken by the miseries of these repeated ravages. Wandering bands of religious devotees, preaching remembrance of the power of Jehovah, kept the embers of corporate feeling from flickering out; but, at the best, their wordy warfare must have seemed a feeble answer to the mail-clad giants of the Philistine hosts.

Imagine that we are standing on the hill of Gibeah, looking down the steep pathway which leads up to the village. A few days ago a young man, accompanied by a servant, went out to search the countryside for some strayed animals. All in Gibeah know him well, Saul, the son of Kish, a proper man, tall and powerful, one who in happier days might have been a leader in Israel. Saul and his servant are returning and have almost reached the foot of the ascent to the village. Last night they were with Samuel at Ramah, and at day-break secretly the seer had anointed the youth to be king over Israel; but of these events we are ignorant as yet; we do not know that the Saul who went out will return no more. Idly watching from the hill-top, we observe a company of devotees, who have spent the night in Gibeah, descending the slope towards Saul. As they approach, Saul stops and, to our faint surprise, is seen to be in speech with them. Question and answer pass. Suddenly our listless attention changes to astonishment. Below, excitement is rising, and on none has it fallen more than on Saul! He begins to talk and gesticulate like a man inspired. We raise a shout and the folk come running, and, as they see beneath them Saul now in an ecstasy, the incredulous cry breaks forth Is Saul also among the prophets?

What is the interest of this famous scene? That a proverb was born that day in Israel? That it marked the commencement of a new stage in the national life of Israel? More than that. The real interest is in the transformation effected by the recognition of a personal duty. Young men like the Saul who went out to seek the lost animals are useful members of a State, but, had Saul remained unaltered, what waste of his latent, unsuspected power! Saul had met devotees many times before, but their words had roused no energies in him. One touch of the faith of Samuel, one illuminating moment of consciousness that to him God had spoken, and—Saul was a king, and Israel again a people; despair became hope, and hope achievement. It has always been so, whenever men have listened to the summons of personal religion. We go upon our ordinary path a hundred times and return as we went, uncomprehending; but if once God meets us on the way, whether He speak by the mouth of a prophet, or, as now, by the shock of war, the miracle is effected: we are changed into another man.

(2) The scene of the second of these early proverbs is the steep and rugged country that mounts from the floor of the Dead Sea valley near Engedi. But the setting of the incident matters little; its point is all in the play of character between two great personalities—Saul, now nearing the dark finish of his reign and haunted by the thought that at his death the throne will pass from his house; and David, with youth and a good conscience to support him but fleeing for his life from the jealous king and hard pressed by the royal soldiery. Saul has entered a cave, unaware that David is hiding in its recesses. David suffers him to go out unharmed and still ignorant of his peril; but quietly he follows Saul to the sunlight at the cave’s mouth, and standing there, as the King moves off, he calls, “O my lord the King!” At the clear, musical, voice of the man he half-loves, half-hates, and cannot kill, Saul in astonishment turns to hear these words: “Wherefore hearkenest thou to men’s words saying ‘Behold David seeketh thy hurt’? Behold this day the Lord had delivered thee into mine hand in the cave: and some bade me kill thee; but mine eye spared thee and I said ‘I will not put forth mine hand against my lord, for he is the Lord’s anointed.’ Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of thy robe in my hand: for in that I cut the skirt of thy robe and killed thee not, know thou and see that there is neither evil nor transgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee, though thou huntest after my soul to take it. The Lord judge between me and thee, and avenge me of thee: but mine hand shall not be upon thee. As saith the proverb of the ancients, Out of the wicked cometh forth wickedness: but mine hand shall not be upon thee.” We can see how David meant it, that proverb of the ancients. It leapt to his lips in eager protestation. How could Saul deem him capable of a deed of foulest treachery? Why could he not see that only out of the basest of men could such dire wickedness proceed? But into the mind of Saul the saying sank with double edge. What had he done towards the making of this scene—that red mist of passion when he flung the javelin; those cold and cunning plots to lure David into adventure that would be his death; the unrelaxing hunt to catch and kill? Saul for an instant saw his soul laid bare by the ancient proverb: he at least was a man from whom great wickedness had come, and “A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” And Saul lifted up his voice and wept. And he said to David, “Thou art more righteous than I, for thou hast rendered unto me good, whereas I have rendered unto thee evil.” A few years later the King lay dead and vanquished on Mount Gilboa. From that day to this men have not ceased to find in him a text for moralising, with some justice but with strangely little sympathy, seeing that he sinned in one thing and paid a heavy penalty. Which was the real Saul? The King crazy with murderous hatred, or the man who answered David’s generosity in those noble words, who once “was among the prophets,” who had made Israel again a people and so long time had held the Philistines at bay? It does not greatly matter if men reply “the mad Saul, who died believing himself forsaken of God”; and so push their moralisings home. But on which Saul does the Divine judgment pass? One man, more than all others, had reason to condemn, and he did more than pardon. He sang of Saul slain on Gilboa, How are the mighty fallen?... Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided.

(3) In the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel two popular sayings are mentioned, which may be considered together, for their burden is one.

(a) Behold, everyone that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee saying, As is the mother, so is the daughter (Ezekiel 1644).

(b) But it shall come to pass that like as I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to overthrow and to destroy and to afflict; so will I watch over them to build and to plant, saith the Lord. In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grapes his teeth shall be set on edge (Jeremiah 3128-30); and to the same effect, this from Ezekiel, The word of the Lord came unto me saying, What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have cause any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are Mine: as the soul of the father so also the soul of the son is Mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right ... hath spoiled none by violence, hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment ... he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord God (Ezekiel 181ff).

Heredity, the question at issue in these passages, presents a more complex and stringent problem to the modern mind than to the ancient. But it would be a great error to suppose that the Jewish thinkers were less concerned about it, or that its consequences seemed to them less bitter. Indeed for the Hebrews the problem had a sinister back-ground which for us has sunk far out of sight. The solidarity of the tribe or family was a fearsome reality in days when for the sin of one member vengeance would fall upon the whole community or household. Recollect the story of Achan, who stole from the sacred spoil a Babylonish mantle, silver, and a wedge of gold: Wherefore Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan AND his sons and his daughters and his oxen and his asses and his sheep and his tent and all that he had, and burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.[30] There was a grim wisdom in the ancient procedure. Man has had a stern fight for existence. How far can he tolerate “handicaps” in the contest? What can be expected from children of corrupt and vicious parents? Good citizens? “Men do not gather grapes of thorns.” Yet who could fail to see that the children were so far innocent; and therefore, whilst Achan died unpitied and forgotten, perhaps their young voices and terror-stricken looks remained an uneasy memory in the minds of those who stood consenting unto their death? Was it necessary that the child should be irretrievably ruined through his father’s guilt?

By the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as the quotations show, the problem had deepened and become general. In the perils, hardships, and disasters which marked the decline and fall of the Judæan kingdom men felt that the whole nation was suffering the consequences of their fathers’ iniquities, and bitterly they quoted the saying The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. That way lay despair: Let us too eat of the grapes and drink of their wine and be merry, since to-morrow we die! Even the prophets experienced the temptation to hopelessness; as when Ezekiel, wrestling with Judah sunk in the old sins, thinks that in future days men will still have to cast at her the charge of idolatries handed down from the ancient Canaanites: as is the mother so is the daughter. But Jeremiah and Ezekiel both fought their way through to a new conception of life, and this it is which is proclaimed in the two chief passages quoted above. Deliverance from the entail of evil is, they declare, possible; man is not immovably fastened in chains which his ancestors have forged.

So stands religion to-day, claiming power in the building of human character. Fuller recognition and much deeper comprehension of the works of heredity (as also of environment) are desirable and are not inimical to a religious interpretation of human nature. Religion lays stress on these two points. First, the fact that if there is an entail of evil there is also an entail of good, together with the judgement that the inheritance of good is the greater and ought to be made supreme: that as St. Paul insisted Where sin did abound, grace doth much more abound[31]. And, secondly, religion insists on the reality of that power of self-determination which would seem to be characteristic of every living being and in Man to be of primary importance. All that we may become does not follow inexorably from what we now are. What we have become was not wholly involved in what we were. Crude determinism is either an Eastern idleness or a pedant’s nightmare, and freedom, though it slips through the meshes of our clumsy analysis is a reality. To each in measure it is given, though one may misuse it into the atrophy of evil habit, whilst another may use it unto the liberty of the children of God. We inherit, but, inheriting, we also originate. We are created, but are also creators. We are pressed by our environment, but our environment may become Christ, whose service is perfect freedom.

(4) One other embedded proverb occurs in a passage of Ezekiel (1221, 22): And the word of the Lord came unto me saying, “Son of man, what is this proverb that ye have in the land of Israel saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth?” Other lands besides Israel have echoed those despairing words. It is hard not to feel in a city-settlement that “the days are prolonged”; hard in a half-filled church not to wonder if “every vision faileth.” But a true man will still hold to the instinct that somehow his hopes are certainties, and will make answer with Israel’s prophet thus: Tell them therefore, “Thus saith the Lord God: I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say unto them, ‘The days are at hand, and the fulfilment of every vision.’”

A man who finds himself without confidence in God or man might save himself from pessimism by a study of the intellectual, moral and spiritual achievements of the Hebrew prophets.[32] Looking back on Jewish history it is manifest that the spiritual longings of these great personalities were realised to a wonderful extent and in ways impossible for themselves or their contemporaries to perceive or anticipate. Things did work together for good to those Jews who sought to discover the will of God and, despite perplexity and hardship, refused to abandon their imperfect but advancing faith. Thus even the Exile, apparently the dissolution of Israel’s life, proved to be the very means of its preservation and subsequent extension to a position of world-wide influence. No one who has realised on the one hand the overwhelming difficulties against which the prophets had to contend, the frankness with which they faced the naked facts, their own agonising struggle of soul against doubt and despair, and on the other side the ultimate vindication of their faith; no one with that knowledge clear before him will find it easy wholly to despair of men, or to cast from him for ever the hope of God.

Besides these few incidental proverbs, the pre-exilic literature of the Old Testament fortunately has preserved occasional glimpses of the makers of proverbs in Israel, and to these we now turn. We shall then be prepared to study the special development of Jewish proverbs which furnishes the chief interest of our subject. It will be convenient first to set down the evidential passages consecutively, and afterwards to consider their significance.

(a) The narrative in 2 Samuel 141ff relating the stratagem by which Joab succeeded in reconciling King David to his son Absalom begins thus: Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king’s heart was towards Absalom. And Joab sent to Tekoa and fetched thence a wise woman.

(b) The second passage is in 2 Samuel 2016-22—Joab, as David’s general, having pursued the rebel Sheba into the North of Israel, has compelled him to take refuge in the town of Abel, and is on the point of breaching the wall and capturing the city, when there cried unto him a wise woman out of the city ... and she said unto him “There is a saying, To finish your business ask counsel at Abel.”[33] Thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel. And Joab answered and said, “Far be it from me that I should swallow and destroy. But ... Sheba the son of Bichri ... deliver him only, and I will depart from the city.” And the woman said unto Joab, “Behold, his head shall be thrown to thee over the wall.” Then the woman went unto all the people in her wisdom. ...

(c) The famous passage in which the wisdom of King Solomon is extolled, 1 Kings 429-34: And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore. And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East (i.e. Arabia) and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men: than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all the nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of fishes.

(d) Isaiah 2913, 14: And the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw nigh with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me and their fear of me is a commandment of men which hath been taught them; therefore behold I will again do a marvellous work among this people ... and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.

(e) Jeremiah 1818 (cp. 88 and 923): Then said they, Come and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet.

Of these passages the first two show that there was a “Wisdom” in Israel before Solomon, that it was concerned with prudential counsel as to the conduct of life, and was associated with the use of maxims, some of which had passed into well-known proverbs; and further that certain persons (often, perhaps generally, women) were recognised as of pre-eminent skill in this giving of advice; and that townships (doubtless with a shrewd eye to the increase of their commerce) vied one with another in vaunting their respective sages. Slight as this evidence may be, it is sufficient, because it is in accord with the facts of later periods and with that liking for sententious talk which we have noted as characteristic of the Semites from very early ages. Observe also how in the third passage the wisdom of Solomon is not regarded as a quality peculiar to himself. True, he possessed wisdom in a rare or superlative degree, but it was comparable with the “Wisdom of the East” (Arabia) and the “Wisdom of Egypt.” Nor was Solomon alone in his wisdom. To him the first place; but he had great rivals whose names posterity thought worth preserving. One suspects that the King’s reputation for sagacity may have been enhanced by his royal estate, and that in the passage quoted from the Book of Kings we see him through the haze of grandeur with which later generations encircled his reign. Even so, the tradition of his wisdom stands, and like all firm traditions has a basis in fact. What inferences should we draw? Not that the three thousand proverbs with which tradition credited Solomon are those preserved in the Book of Proverbs, despite the fact that the main sections of the Book are prefaced by titles ascribing them to him.[34] A few of the proverbs may have been spoken by Solomon himself or at his court by persons renowned for sagacity, but nothing more than that is probable.[35] Two positive conclusions seem tenable. First, that King Solomon made a profound impression on his contemporaries by reason of his subtle judgment, and his ability to express his thoughts in just such moralistic maxims, comparisons, parables, and fables, as the Wise were wont to use. In fact, the King was a Wise-man and a Wise-man was King.[36] No wonder that his renown grew until he became, so to speak, the patron saint of Wisdom in Israel, with whose authority any “Wise” words might fittingly be associated. But further in view of the aptitude shown by the King for the art of the Wise, it is reasonable to believe that their prestige at this period must have been greatly enhanced in the estimation of all classes. The man of Wisdom was persona grata at Court. And what more is needed to secure a reputation?

Hence it is not unexpected, though very interesting, to find two or three centuries later that when Isaiah and Jeremiah speak of the Wise they refer to them as an influence in the land ranking with the prophets and the ceremonial religion. To the true prophets it appeared to be an influence not always for good, or even inimical to their moral idealism. Thus Isaiah declares that in the glorious day when Jehovah reveals His truth the Wisdom of the wise men shall perish (Isaiah 2914); and Jeremiah gives as the reason why his enemies consider that his death or imprisonment would be small loss to the nation their belief that “the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet” (Jer. 1818).

This evidence might be augmented by passages in the Book of Job, where, for instance, the wisdom of Israel is described as an ancient, though living, tradition: it is that which wise men have told from their fathers (Job 1518.) But enough has been said. To sum up, it appears that the Hebrews, like their near kinsmen the Arabs, loved to listen to the conversation of those, who, having ripe experience, shrewd wits, and a sharp tongue, were able to cast their reflections on life into parables and maxims which the hearer could readily remember. Persons with an aptitude for such discourse were acknowledged among their fellows as “wise.” Anyone with the necessary intelligence and dignity might acquire this reputation. The Wise were never sharply differentiated from the rest of the community; they did not become a strict order or a caste like the priests, but remained a type or class; a class, however, of such importance that it could be spoken of in the same breath with the prophets and the priests. Egyptian analogies suggest that the Wise may have taken on themselves duties in the instruction of the young: but just what these early sages said and thought we cannot ascertain. Nor is it likely we have lost much in consequence. Some of their favourite sayings may eventually have been incorporated in the Book of Proverbs, but the antagonism of the great prophets shows that they were not enthusiasts for reform, and doubtless the bulk of their maxims were prudential counsels suitable to the standards of the age. In short, their teaching must have been desultory, lacking the inspiration of a definite purpose and a clearly conceived ideal. Thus far we find nothing that matters to the modern world, nothing to awaken more than a flicker of our interest. No reason has yet appeared to prompt the hope that Israel would make more of her Wisdom than Edom or Egypt of theirs, and that was little enough. In all this we find only “the Day of Small Things,” and need dwell no longer on its trifles. But equally we ought to avoid the folly of despising it. The Hebrews, after all, were not precisely as their neighbours of Philistia, Edom, or Egypt. Behind them they had, as a people, an astonishing history, and in their midst a succession of amazing men, the prophets who had prophesied to them words which it was not possible should die, seeds of the ultimate Wisdom. In Judah there was growing up a capacity for faith, a spiritual interpretation of life and an enlightenment of moral conscience unique in the ancient world. Hence Israel’s Wise-men were not as other Wise-men; they had great potentialities. At length, after the exile, circumstances came to pass which favoured the development of latent genius in these men. All that had been needed was an immediate stimulus, a liberating idea, a flash to kindle the flame.

CHAPTER V

Iron Sharpeneth Iron

Almost everyone knows that there is in the Bible a Book of Proverbs. A few of its sayings are in daily use. Most men have read a chapter or two. But at that point knowledge is apt to flag. What lack of enterprise! It is like giving up an excursion at the first mile-stone. Why should there be a Book of Proverbs? Why did men think it worth transmitting, and why did they finally count it sacred literature? Why has it just the form it has? How comes it, for instance, that single sayings have sometimes blossomed into little essays, and brief comparisons grown into finished pictures? What is the note of clear intention which pervades the chapters and gives them a certain unity and individuality? Zeal and energy characterise the Book. Zeal for what? The previous chapter indicates that the answer to that last question may be stated concisely in the one word “Wisdom,” the meaning of which subsequent pages will unfold. The aim of the present chapter is to discover an adequate reason for the zeal.

Not seldom it happens that enthusiasm for a cause is first provoked by opposition. For example, belief that international relationships ought to be governed by ethical principles was generally and genuinely held by the vast majority of English-speaking people in 1914; but the belief lacked energising force. It seemed enough to entertain it. Of the existence of a fundamentally different conception—that Might is the ultimate right in national affairs—we were of course aware, but the knowledge did not disturb us greatly. We fondly imagined that after some more debate, and a little more reflection, so unenlightened and unneighbourly a notion must disappear. When, however, Germany suddenly put false theory into infamous practice, mark how our amiable opinion became not only an urgent and indispensable ideal, but a definite policy which must at all costs be upheld and made effective, if humanity was to be saved from the yoke of an utterly immoral tyranny. In a moment we realised the awful immediacy of the issue that had been at stake. The debate was not as we supposed, on paper. Here was no wordy strife. Nay! the battle at our gates was not confined even to the quick bodies of men; it penetrated to the very mind and spirit, so that almost St. Paul’s words seemed again in place: “Ours is not a conflict with mere flesh and blood, but with ... the spiritual hosts of evil arrayed against us in the heavenly places.”[37]

Similarly it was an insistent menace that roused the fervour of the Wise-men of Israel. Subtle but deadly opposition compelled them either to champion their cause or see it fall. Wisdom in consequence acquired a firmer outline. Because another Creed was in the air, it also became a definite “Way of life.” The issues were clarified, the trend of things revealed. It was felt there were but two paths for a man to choose, now sharply defined and seen to lead in opposite directions: