Proverbs
Nearly every country possesses proverbs of its own. The English language is specially rich in them; and a recently published collection of the proverbs of Scotland contains nearly ten thousand specimens. Perhaps there is nothing else from which a more accurate idea of the character of any people can be obtained. Thus, the prudent, thrifty, reticent nature of the Scot is admirably reflected in his proverbs. Proverbs are sparks from the fire of the national genius. They are the nation’s best wisdom applied to the details of life.
A proverb may be defined as a brief saying which arrests attention by its truth and sticks in the memory through the felicity of its language. Many of our own proverbs consist of a couple of lines of rhyme; and the Proverbs of Scripture have a corresponding structure. Only, instead of rhyme they make use of parallelism — a term fully explained in an earlier chapter. Very frequently it is ex-
97 g pressed in the one line positively and in the second negatively — thus:
The memory of the just is blessed,
But the name of the wicked shall rot.*
The wording is, as a rule, managed with much art, not a few of theProverbs attaining, in literary beauty, to the exquisite description given in the book itself: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver “;f while, in their power of penetrating and sticking in the mind, they come up to the description in Ecclesiastes:
The words of the wise are as goads,
And as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies.!
The Hebrew term for the Proverbs suggests another characteristic of them. It calls them likenesses or similes. Very often a proverb contains a picture of some natural object, § in which the truth which it desires to convey is exhibited. For example:
The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water.||
Here, in a word or two, there is summoned up before the mind’s eye the image of an embankment, beginning to be undermined by the water oozing through it, which, if not stopped, will soon be carrying destruction over the fields and endangering the life of man and beast; and thus a hint which
* x. i. t xxv. ii. I xii. ii.
§ Especially in the Proverbs of the Men of Hezekiah. xvii. 14.
cannot be mistaken is given of the way in which any sin, and especially strife, swells from small beginnings to great violence, which may do incalculable mischief. This was the way in which the great Teacher Himself taught; and, indeed, His parables may be looked upon as a fuller development of the method of teaching employed by the wise King of Israel. In fact, in the original the same word stands for both parable and proverb.
Another characteristic of at least some of the Proverbs is brought out by another name which occurs sometimes, when they are called “dark sayings.” Sometimes a proverb is intentionally obscure: there is another sense in the words than that which meets the ear; the meaning is buried a little beneath the surface, to provoke the mind to dig it out. The philosophy of this singular circumstance is that the human mind takes a more eager grasp of that which it has to search for; it experiences a kind of delight in discovering a secret; it enjoys the kernel all the more when it has first to crack the shell. In His parables our Lord practised the same art, saying to the disciples, when they inquired, why He spoke in parables: “To you it is given to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; but to those that are without all these things are done in parables, that, hearing, they may hear, but not understand.”* * Matt. xiii. 13.
To the shallow and uninquiring the parable was a gaily painted veil, with which they were satisfied; but on the inquiring spirit of true disciples it acted as a provocation to seek to see fully the face which it partially concealed.
If, as was remarked above, the proverbs of a people are an application of the national wisdom to the details of life, so in the Book of Proverbs the great principles of revelation are applied to the details of everyday experience. The spirit of the Scriptures, which in a book like Job or St. John burns as a great, all-illuminating fire, is here diffused in a thousand sparks, everyone of which shines upon some detail of practice; and, small as each spark may be, they constitute in combination one of the lights of revelation, hung up to illuminate the path of mortals.
II
It is difficult to say how ordinary proverbs are formed. They are not, like other literary products, the work of authors whose names they perpetuate. As a rule, they are anonymous. Who, for example, have been the authors of the ten thousand proverbs of Scotland? A few of them may perhaps be traced back to persons of eminence; but this is not the case with one in a hundred; and there is no writer remembered in our literary annals as a maker of proverbs. They spring up none can tell
ioo how. They fall from the lips of shrewd persons. They pass from mouth to mouth, being polished as they go. They are chips from experience, maxims hewn from life; and they come so directly from the general life that they almost seem to be produced from the general mind without the intervention of any individual mind at all. One is added here and another there, till, in course of time, the mass swells to enormous proportions, like a cairn to which every passer-by adds a stone.*
Was this, then, the way in which the Proverbs ot Scripture were formed? Were they chips from the experience of the Hebrews, formed in the same way as our own? Natural as this idea may be, a close examination does not quite support it.
The Proverbs of Scripture do not, indeed, pretend to be all by one author or to have been all issued at the same time. In the last chapter of the book we have the Proverbs of one Lemuel, who, however, is known to us only by name. In chapter xxx.
* “What is wisdom f That sovereign word, as has often been pointed out, is used for two different things. It may stand for knowledge, learning, science, systematic reasoning; or it may mean, as Coleridge has defined it, common sense in an uncommon degree; that is to say, the unsystematic truths that come to shrewd, penetrating, and observant minds, from their own experience of life and their daily commerce with the world, and that is called the wisdom of life, or the wisdom of the world, or the wisdom of time and the ages.... The enduring weight of historian, moralist, political orator, or preacher depends on the amount of the wisdom of life that is hived in his pages.” Morley: Studies in Literature, P-57-
IOI there is a contribution of about the same extent from another author, named Agur, of whom, however, we know nothing except that he has left behind him a handful of Proverbs displaying marked characteristics of their own and very unlike those of the rest of the book. Immediately before Agur’s section there are five chapters xxv.-xxix., containing Proverbs said to have been collected in the reign of Hezekiah by what are called his “men,” the term in all probability meaning learned men employed in his court.
The great body of the book, however, from chapter i. to chapter xxiv., professes to be from the pen of Solomon; and, although this, like almost every other tradition about the origin of a book in the Old Testament, has been called in question, it may be literally correct. That monarch’s vast experience and matchless wisdom would have made this for him a natural task. We cannot, of course, tell whether or not he may have collected older proverbs and incorporated them with those of his own coinage. This may have been no more excluded by his inspiration than was St. Luke’s search among historical records for the materials of his Gospel. But, if Solomon did so, he must, in passing the older proverbs through his hands, have stamped them all with his own signature; for, it is allowed, they all bear the impress of a single mind.
Not much more than the half, however, of the book properly consists of proverbs. Only chapters x.-xxii. contain proverbs proper — that is, single verses, short and full of meaning, each complete in itself. The first nine chapters of the book, on the other hand, consist of an introduction, in which the attention of the reader is summoned to the treasure about to be opened before his eyes, and in a warm rhetorical style the gist of the whole is pressed on the mind and the heart. Here the verses do not stand each by- itself, but the sense runs on without interruption through a number of them — sometimes through a whole chapter. At the close, too, of the Proverbs proper — namely, from xxii. 17 to the end ot xxiv. — there is a collection, conceived in the same style as the introduction.
Thus, in the portion of the book derived from Solomon himself, we have twelve chapters of proverbs proper set in a framework of what may be termed proverbial exhortation — “apples of gold,” if this beautiful saying may so soon be quoted again, “in pictures of silver “; though it may be difficult to say in this case, which is the gold and which the silver; for the frame is perhaps even more precious than the picture. Then, to this large jewel there is attached, as a pendant, the collection made by the men of Hezekiah; and below this hang the two small additions of Agur and Lemuel. A varied ornament for the Bride of Christ! and, although it may not attain to the glorious beauty of certain of her literary jewels, it possesses a peculiar value of its own, and it could not be spared.* The Book of Proverbs ranges over a greater variety of subjects than any other book of the Bible, in many parts of it a new subject being introduced in every verse. It may, therefore, seem impossible to say in a word what is the theme. But, in spite of the variety of its contents, there is a thread which runs all through the book, taking up its scattered sayings like beads on a string. This theme is Wisdom. The book is intended to teach wisdom and explain in detail the conduct of a wise man; whilst, to bring out the same sense by contrast, it likewise describes the nature of folly and the conduct of fools.
In the introductory chapters Wisdom is praised in language of the most glowing enthusiasm:
wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: Yea, with all thou hast gotten get understanding.
* “In hoc genere autem nihil invenitur, quod ullo modo comparandum sit cum aphorismis i Ills, quod edidit rex Salomon; de quo testatur Scriptura,” cor i 11 i fuisse instar arense maris “; sicut enim arense maris universas orbis or as circundant, ita et sapientia ejus omnia humana, non minus quam divina, complexa est. In aphorismis vero illis, praeter alia magis theologica, reperies liquido haud pauca praecepta et monita civilia praestantissima, ex profundi’s quidem sapientiae penetralibus scaturientia, atque in amplissimumvarietatis campum excurrentia.” — Bacon: De Augmentis^Scientiarum, lib. viii., cap. 2.
IO4
F.xalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to
honour, when thou shall embrace her. She shall give to thine head a duplet of grace; A crown of beauty shall she deliver to thee.*
She is more precious than rubies:
And none of the things thou canst desire are to be compared with
her.
Length of days is in her right hand;
In her left hand are riches and honour.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace.t
What is the Wisdom which the Proverbs thus praise? It is not to be identified with learning. The wise man has, indeed, the attentive ear of the scholar; but it is not to the schoolmaster or professor he listens, but to the aged and experienced. Wisdom is not to be identified with cleverness either. The wise man may not be clever; and the clever man may, in the sense of this book, be anything but wise.
The wisdom of the Proverbs is not speculative, but practical. It is the best way of conducting one’s life. He is the wise man who keeps his life running on the lines appointed for it by the Creator. Man’s wisdom is, in fact, the counterpart of the wisdom of God. By His wisdom God has made all things, and, among the rest, He has made this world. In the framework of His creation He has sunk lines of guidance, upon which the life of man is intended to roll smoothly forwards; and man’s wisdom
* iv, 7-9. t iii. 15-17.
IO5 consists in discerning these lines and guiding his course by them. He is a wise man whose life follows the course appointed for it by God.
This is the general conception; but in the individual Proverbs the details of the wise man’s life are fully set down. His conduct in business and in reference to money; the way in which he is to manage his thoughts and regulate his words; his behaviour towards the poor and towards the rich, as a friend and as a citizen — all these details are comprehensively handled; and, one might say, there is not a situation in life in which the Proverbs will not indicate how a wise man ought to act.
On the other hand, it warns against folly, by describing the conduct and the fate of the fool.
Folly does not, any more than wisdom, refer to the amount of learning or the ability which anyone possesses. The fool is not one who is deficient in intellect: on the contrary, the greater the intellect, the greater may be the folly. Folly is ignorance of the laws of right and wrong, appointed by God to regulate human existence, or disregard of these laws. Our Maker has ordained and stated that true happiness is to be found by going in a certain direction; and the man who persuades himself that he can find it by going in the opposite direction is a fool.
Folly, however, exists in two degrees. In what may be called the first degree, it belongs to those whom this book calls “the simple ones,” while in the second degree it belongs to the fools proper.
This book has a great deal to say to the simple. These are persons who are ignorant of those great and august laws which govern human life and, when they violate them, are sinning unawares. They are beginners, who do not know much of either good or evil. They are not fortified yet with good principles, but neither are they corrupted with bad ones. They constitute, in fact, the large class of persons who, without having yet chosen for themselves either good or evil, are open to be influenced in either direction by wills stronger than their own.
To these the book addresses itself with great earnestness, urging them to choose the better part. It describes Wisdom as a queen, living in a fair palace, into which she invites them:
Wisdom hath builded her house,
She hath hewn out her seven pillars:
She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine;
She hath also furnished her table.
She hath sent forth her maidens, she crieth
Upon the highest places of the city,
Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither.*
But well does she know that these simple ones are wooed at the same time by other voices: the emissaries of temptation are sure to be at them. Against these, therefore, this book gives such pointed and
* ix. 1-4.
IO7 perpetual warning that it might almost bear the title of the Book of Temptation.
There are especially three forms of temptation with which it is never done — bad company, drunkenness and the strange woman.
Evil companions try to ensnare the simple one and make him like themselves:
Enter not into the path of the wicked,
And walk not in the way of evil men.
Avoid it, pass not by it;
Turn from it, and pass on.
For they sleep not, except they have done mischief;
And their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall.*
Drunkenness is another tempter that watches for the simple:
Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions?
Who hath complaining? who hath wounds without cause?
Who hath redness of eyes?
They that tarry long at the wine;
They that go to seek out mixed wine.
Look not upon the wine when it is red,
For it giveth its colour in the cup,
When it goeth down smoothly:
At the last it biteth like a serpent,
And stingeth like an adder.t
But the temptation against which the book warns most frequently and with the most passionate earnestness is what it calls “the strange woman.” It is sad to think that even in that early age of the world it was necessary to enlarge so frequently on
* iv. 14-16. ttxxiii. 28-32.
this topic; and it is sadder still that, in this late age of the world and in Christian lands, it should still be necessary to do so. The Tempter of men has surely no greater triumph than when she whose soul was intended by the Creator to be the sanctuary of modesty, and whose finer nature was destined to raise the coarser nature of man to purity, is converted into a temptress, luring man to unman himself and degrade himself into a beast. This is, indeed, in some respects, the most terrible temptation to which man is exposed, and the Book of Proverbs has dared to paint it in the colours of truth:
At the window of my house
I looked forth through my lattice;
And I beheld among the simple ones,
I discerned among the youths,
A young man void of understanding,
Passing through the street near her corner,
And he went the way to her house;
In the twilight, in the evening of the day,
In the blackness of night in the darkness.
And, behold, there met him a woman,
With the attire of an harlot and wily of heart.
She is clamorous and wilful;
Her feet abide not in her house:
Now she is in the streets, now in the broad places,
And lieth in wait at every corner.
So she caught him, and kissed him,
And with an impudent face she said unto him:
Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me;
This day have I paid my vows.
Therefore came I forth to meet thee,
Diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee.
I have spread my couch with carpets of tapestry,
IO9
With striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt.
I have perfumed my bed
With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning;
Let us solace ourselves with love.
For the good man is not at home.
1 le has gone a long journey:
He hath taken a bag of money with him;
He will come home at the full moon.
With her much fair speech she causeth him to yield,
In the flattering of her lips she forceth him away.
He goeth after her straightway,
As an ox goeth to the slaughter,
Or as fetters to the correction of the fool;
Till an arrow strike through his liver;
As a bird hasteth to the snare,
And knoweth not that it is for his life.*
* vii. 6-23. With the realism and pathos of the above sketch of one of the “simple ones “in the snares of the temptress may be compared the following picture from modern life, from the pen of one of the purest of men, as well as the choicest of writers, the late Dr. James Hamilton, Regent Square Church, London. It occurs in a volume on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, entitled The Parable of Parables; and the man of whom the incident is related became the founder of the celebrated publishing house of James Nisbet and Company:” On a wintry day in 1803 a lad left his native Kelso so sad at heart, that, as he stood that night on the bridge at Berwick, the tear had almost frozen on his cheek. It was his eighteenth birthday when he found himself for the first time in our great labyrinth; and on one of the first evenings after his arrival a youth who, from the same vicinity had gone up to town the previous year, took him out to see the sights. The stroll ended in a sort of back alley, and, as his companion knocked at a door, it was opened by some light-looking girls, evidently well acquainted with their visitor. With instant revulsion the newcomer started back, for instinctively he felt that it was “the house which inclineth unto death.” In much agitation he exclaimed, “Oh, where are you going?” and he entreated his companion to come away. That companion only laughed and went in, and, as our friend sought his
Folly, which, in the first degree, thus belongs to the simple, belongs, in the second degree, to the fool proper. He is not one lingering on the brink of temptation: he has long ago taken the plunge; he is not only inured to it, but he is now himself a tempter of others and a scorner of those who walk
way back to his lodging, he felt very desolate. It was a cold and dreary night, and in his disheartened mood he thought that London must be a devouring monster, which swallowed up whatever came into it and changed it into the likeness of its own deformity. Here in a few months it had made a virtuous youth a profligate, and, as if walking amidst snares and pitfalls and strange mysteries of iniquity, he trembled for himself. The whole thing was too painful for him till he went into the sanctuary. But next Sabbath he enquired his way to Swallow Street. There he found the worship which he had learned to love beyond the Border, and, as he listened to the earnest sermon, he began to feel, ‘God is in this place.’ The little church brightened into a Bethel, and helped to cheer the following week; and then came an introduction to the minister, and a class in the Sunday-school, and the acquisition of one good friend after another; till at last the streets, which at his first arrival were haunted by gloomy phantoms and cruel ghosts, grew populous with brethren in the Lord: till he who had himself been so graciously preserved became distinguished for his efforts in preserving -and strengthening younger brethren. It was on the fiftieth anniversary of that eventful day that our venerable friend, his heart overflowing with gratitude to God, told us this incident. By that time he was an honoured citizen and his name well known throughout the churches. Numbers of ministers and missionaries knew him. Many widows and orphans knew him. Nearly all our religious societies and benevolent institutions knew James Nisbet. Under God, that trying evening was the pivot on which turned the whole of his following history. If he had for a moment yielded — if, through curiosity or weakness, he had accompanied his friend across the sinful threshold — he might have shared the same fate, and in a few months, with ruined health and morals, been, like him, sent back to his native place, a shattered dying invalid.”
in what he considers the tame and dull path of wisdom. He has deliberately said to evil, “Thou art my good “; and he expects pleasure and success in ways everyone of which is a contradiction of the laws for man’s prosperity laid down by God. Over and over again in the Proverbs is his portrait painted at full length; and not less clearly is his fate portrayed. It is not denied that he may be happy for a time or enjoy a superficial success. But the end of these things is death; for, as one of our own proverbs says, “God comes with leaden feet, but He strikes with iron hands.”
IV
The Book of Proverbs in more places than one clearly indicates its own use. It is meant to be a handbook for the journey of life. It might be termed the Murray of youth and the Baedeker of success. It points out the snares and pitfalls which menace the traveller, with the stiles and byeways which tempt him into transient pleasures but lead in the end to ruin; while, on the other hand, it describes the true prizes of life, which are worthy of pursuit, and portrays in attractive colours those types of manhood which are noble and honourable.
It is peculiarly a book for the family, to aid in the training of the young. By preference and with sympathy it describes scenes of domestic life. The old grandfather, or grandmother, for instance:
The hoary head is a crown of glory,
It shall be found in the way of righteousness.*
It loves to exhibit youth and age side by side:
Children’s children are the crown of old men; And the glory of children are their fathers.!
Fathers receive many hints as to the upbringing of children, the general tendency being to rebuke that laxity in family-discipline which, whether arising from over-fondness, or from want of nerve and resolution, or merely from indolence and neglect, leads eventually to the ruin of the home and the misery of the pampered children. There is no other book in the Bible in which the praise of woman is so honourably expressed, and especially of woman in the capacity of wife and mother; the whole performance winding up with a glowing poem of two-and-twenty verses devoted to the portraiture of a good woman. This is an acrostic on the Hebrew alphabet: that is to say, the successive verses begin with the successive letters.
But the book addresses itself most frequently to the young themselves, proffering its guidance, in friendly guise, to conduct them through the perils of life. It urges them to lend a willing ear to the advice of their parents and elders and to suppress in themselves the disposition to rebel against discipline; for a child who has lost reverence for its father and mother is far on the path to ruin: rvi. 31. t xvii. 6.
U3 H
The eye that mocketh at his father,
And despiseth to obey hi9 mother,
The ravens of the valley shall pick it out,
And the young eagles shall eat it.*
It endeavours to attract them to the way of well-doing by picturing the joy and pride which their success will bring to their parents:
The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: And he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. Let thy father and thy mother be glad, And let her that bare thee rejoice.t
In Scotland at one time the Book of Proverbs was printed separately and used as a schoolbook; and not a few Scotsmen of eminence, among whom may be mentioned the late Professor Bain, of Aberdeen, have testified to the benefit derived from this source. It would be difficult to conceive any exercise more profitable for the family than to read over, on Sabbath evening, the chapters, from which the choicest verses might be committed to heart. These would easily stick in the fresh and retentive memories of the young, and they would prove as useful as a quiverful of arrows in fighting subsequently the battle of life.
The Book of Proverbs could not be called a very spiritual or evangelical book. It deals rather with the small things of religion than with its large and overawing mysteries. Sparks from the fire of revelation! as was remarked above; yet the sparks,
* xix. 17. tkxxiii. 24, 25.
if we follow them, will lead up to the fire from which they have proceeded. It used to be a common maxim that no book of the Old Testament is understood until its connection with Christ has been discovered; and in the present case this is not difficult. As has been remarked above, the human wisdom, which is its theme, is the counterpart of the divine wisdom, and it cannot be fully comprehended till we ascend to survey the original. When, however, we do so, what do we find? We find the wisdom of God embodied in Jesus Christ. All the wisdom of God, in coming forth into activity and visibility, passes through Him. It was by Christ that the Father created the world. In the New Testament Christ is called the Word of God — that is, the expression and embodiment of His wisdom — and, when, in the prologue to the Gospel of St. John, the Word is described in His relation to the Father, it is in terms borrowed from the Book of Proverbs. “In the beginning,” says St. John, “was the Word, and the Word was with God;” but already in Proverbs Wisdom personified says,
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning,^
Or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth;
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills was I brought forth:
While a3 yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the beginning of the dust of the world.
When He established the heavens, I was there:
When He set a circle upon the face of the deep:
When He made firm the skies above:
When the fountains of the deep became strong:
When He gave to the sea its bounds,
That the waters should not transgress His commandment:
When He marked out the foundations of the earth:
Then I was by Him, as a master workman:
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him;
Rejoicing in His habitable earth;
And my delight was with the sons of men.”*
Thus under a thin veil there lies already in this book the truth the complete revelation of which in the New Testament was to illuminate all the ages. If the Book of Proverbs be, as was said above, a guidebook for the journey of life, then is Christ the living Guide. If its aim be to teach us wisdom, then is He, of God, made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
viii. 22-31.