The Literature of the Old Testament Part 11

CHAPTER XXII

PROVERBS

The Book of Proverbs bears the t.i.tle "The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, King of Israel." Other t.i.tles scattered through the book prove that it is made up of several collections of proverbs which once circulated independently. Thus Prov. 10 begins, "The Proverbs of Solomon"; xxii. 17-21 is an introduction inviting the reader to give attention to "Sayings of Sages," and dwelling on the profit of so doing; xxiv. 23, "These also are by the Sages"; xxv. 1, "These also are Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah edited"; x.x.x. 1, "The Sayings of Agur son of Jakeh"; x.x.xi. 1, "The sayings of Lemuel King of Ma.s.sa (?), which his mother taught him"; finally, x.x.xi. 10-31 is an anonymous alphabetic poem in praise of the good housewife.

The inference of diverse origin drawn from these t.i.tles is confirmed by diversity of character and form, and by the repet.i.tion of proverbs in the different sections, especially in Prov. x. 1-xxii. 16 and cc.

25-29; on the other hand, the similarity of all parts of the book in thought and expression indicates that there is among them no wide difference in time. The theme of the book is "wisdom," by which is meant primarily a practical wisdom in the conduct of individual life under the social, political, and economic conditions of the time. The end is a prosperous and happy life, and the motive is enlightened self-interest. Experience shows that morality conduces to prosperity and happiness, and immoral and unsocial actions to the opposite. To inculcate this truth and to apply it is the aim of the wise, who make this knowledge the foundation of virtue and of well-being.

Their instruction is not given in the form of a philosophical ethic, with a discussion of the nature of the highest good and of the principles and motives of conduct, but in sententious maxims, or aphorisms, sometimes grouped upon a central theme, often without any thread of connection. Religion is affirmed by the most reflective of these authors to be the first principle of wisdom (Prov. i. 7; ix. 10; cf. xv. 33), but there is no appeal to a divine law or to the conscience of the individual; the maxims are based on observation and experience. The opposite of wisdom is folly; it is an unintelligent selfishness which ignores the consequences of its course, and sooner or later involves itself in loss or ruin. For ruin is the end of persistent folly as happiness is the fruit of wisdom. This is the order of the world; G.o.d's ordering, no doubt, but working itself out by natural law. Wise men and fools are two permanent cla.s.ses of men, divided by as hard a line as in the Stoic ethics is drawn between the virtuous man and the rest of mankind. The authors know no degrees of wisdom; they recognize different kinds of folly, but no difference in fools.

The pictures of society they draw are chiefly of city life, with its temptations and vices, and they closely resemble those which Jesus the son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) paints about 200 B.C. Monotheism is taken for granted; among the many follies the sages condemn, the folly of polytheism and idolatry does not appear. The national particularism of the Jewish religion is nowhere in evidence; the cultus is hardly referred to, except to say that the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination, or that justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

These features are doubtless due in part to the distinctive tendencies of the moralists, but they also reflect the times. We find them in Job, in Sirach, and in Ecclesiastes, other products of Jewish "Wisdom"

which date from the later Persian or Greek period; and we have every reason to believe that this peculiar development, of which we have no trace earlier, was characteristic of that age. With this the evidence of language accords.

Of the several parts of the book, Prov. x. 1-xxii. 16 seem to be the oldest, and may be from the Persian period; the following chapters are later. So also is Prov. 1-9, which may well have been written under Ptolemaic rule (say 320-200 B.C.), when the Jews enjoyed times of peace and prosperity. The latter author treats his topics more sustainedly, though without logical disposition or connection, in a warm and friendly tone such as an experienced elder might use toward a youth. The style is easy and flowing, and sometimes rises to poetic inspiration. The personifications of wisdom and folly in c. 9 give a good example of his manner. A more philosophical mind is recognized in c. 8, with its personification of the divine wisdom, first of G.o.d's creations, the skilled artificer who was by his side at the making of the world, rejoicing in G.o.d's habitable earth and the sons of men who people it. Here the author comes near the conceptions of the Greek "Wisdom of Solomon," and prepares the way for the theological hypostases of Wisdom and the divine Reason and Word (Logos).

Even among the aphorisms of the older collections, there are few that have the stamp of true popular proverbs, the wisdom of the generations finding the pregnant phrase in the mouth of the people; they are, what indeed they profess to be, maxims of the sages, fashioned with conscious art for a didactic end. And these sages seem to have been, like the Greek sophists, professional teachers of the youth of the well-to-do cla.s.ses.

That the bulk of this wisdom, when compilation of it came to be made, should have been labelled Solomonic, is explained by Solomon's fame for wisdom, which is the subject of numerous anecdotes in the historical books (see 1 Kings iii. 4-15, with the examples, ibid. vs.

16-28; 1 Kings x. 1-14, etc.), coupled with the explicit statement that he "spake three thousand proverbs," not to mention his songs and his expeditions into natural history (1 Kings iv. 29-34). In later times Solomon's fame for wisdom was not that of an ethical philosopher but of an adept in magic. It is almost a pity to take away from Solomon the urgent warnings against women in which the Proverbs abound; they have in his mouth such a mordant irony.

CHAPTER XXIII

JOB

The Book of Job is the greatest work of Hebrew literature that has come down to us, and one of the great poetical works of the world's literature. In the form of a colloquy between Job and his friends, in which at last G.o.d intervenes, it discusses the gravest problem of theodicy, How can the suffering of a good man be reconciled with the moral government of G.o.d?

In a prose introduction the reader is apprised of the true cause of Job's sufferings, of which the parties to the colloquy are, of course, ignorant: they are a trial of his uprightness, more specifically, of his disinterested virtue. In this "prologue in heaven," Satan insists that Job's exemplary virtue is no wonder, since G.o.d rewards him so well for it, and G.o.d, who has full faith in the patriarch, gives Satan permission to test him. In an hour all his wealth is swept away and his children perish, but Job bows submissive to G.o.d's will. Then he himself is smitten with a loathsome and distressful ailment which was regarded as in a peculiar sense the stroke of G.o.d, his wife bids him "bless" G.o.d (a euphemism for "curse") and die; but he rebukes her: "What? shall we receive good at the hand of G.o.d, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips." His three friends come to bemoan him and to comfort him, but the sight of his misery makes them dumb; they sit down with him in silence for seven days. So far the prologue.

On this scene the poem opens: Job's long suppressed grief breaks out in bitter words; he curses the day of his birth, he envies the dead who are at rest. The eldest of the three friends answers him, and so the colloquy begins. The structure of the poem is symmetrical. Each friend speaks in turn and to each Job replies. The cycle is thrice repeated (cc. 4-14; 15-21; 22-26), but, at least in the present text, the third round is incomplete--Zophar has no speech. The friends being apparently convinced that it is useless to argue with him, Job soliloquizes (cc. 27-31), contrasting his former prosperity with his present adversity, and again protesting his good conscience before G.o.d and men.

Now a new disputant comes on the scene, whose name does not appear among the dramatis personae, the youthful Elihu; a short prose introduction tells us who he is, and why he intrudes. He is incensed at them all; at Job for justifying himself at G.o.d's expense, at the friends for not having found arguments to put him down. For his part, he is so full of words that he cannot hold in. He delivers himself, accordingly, of four speeches (cc. 32 f.; 34; 35; 36), to which Job vouchsafes no reply.

Suddenly G.o.d, whom Job had alternately challenged and implored to appear, answers him out of the whirlwind (cc. 38-41); with Job's confession of his presumption in speaking of things he understood not (xlii. 1-6), the poem ends.

In the prose epilogue G.o.d condemns the three friends, whom he pardons at Job's prayer; and the trial over, G.o.d, in poetical justice, restores Job to a prosperity greater than the first.

In the argument, the three friends and Elihu maintain throughout the view of divine retribution which was plainly the orthodoxy of the author's time: G.o.d rewards piety and virtue with prosperity and requites sin with adversity. This law is grounded in the righteousness of G.o.d; it is inconceivable that he should act otherwise.

Consequently if a man is overwhelmed by calamity, as Job is, the only explanation their religion can allow is that he is a great sinner; any other interpretation would impugn the justice of G.o.d or bring into question the existence of a divine providence. They recognize, indeed, that in sending suffering G.o.d may design through chastis.e.m.e.nt or by way of warning to bring the sinner to repentance and amendment; they admit that suffering may be a trial of man's faith. They present the matter to Job thus, especially in their earlier speeches; but the character of Job's replies convinces them that neither of these is his case, and they come at last to outspoken accusation.

Job denies their insinuations and their charges. He has done nothing to deserve such a fate; if they insist on calling this G.o.d's justice, he will say straight in G.o.d's face that he is an almighty tyrant, who unjustly destroys an innocent man. If G.o.d slay him for it, he will not belie his conscious rect.i.tude.

The argument goes round and round, takes this or that turn, grows hotter as it proceeds, but does not get beyond this deadlock. The author's motive so far is clear: he means to controvert the dogma that all suffering, or at least extraordinary suffering, is retributive, and to show in the instance of Job how this doctrine may drive a G.o.dly man to the denial of G.o.d's justice altogether. With remarkable psychological insight, however, he makes Job not only cling to the belief that G.o.d is more just than his dealings with him show, but makes this faith grow in even steps with his pa.s.sionate charges of injustice. He appeals from the injustice of G.o.d to the just G.o.d who some day will have to justify him.

The author meant to refute the doctrine that G.o.d's providence is exhaustively explained by distributive justice. Had he his own solution of the problem of theodicy to put in the place of that cruel dogma? Job, we have seen, finds no solution. In the speeches of Jehovah, where dramatic fitness would lead us to look for the author's solution if he had one, there is no refutation of Job's charges, no response to his pleadings. The speeches are splendid, but the gist of them is that G.o.d's ways are inscrutable. If man cannot comprehend G.o.d's operations in nature, what folly, what presumption, to pretend to fathom his dealings in providence! In that Job acquiesces for the soul of man. Let his sufferings be a mystery, he can submit and trust; call them punitive, and he revolts against the injustice. That is the end to which the author would bring his readers. Some one has said that there is nothing about which men are usually so sure as about the character of G.o.d, and nothing they are so ready to do as to interpret his dealings by his character--especially his dealings with others.

Such were Job's friends. And from this point of view we have no difficulty in understanding, what has stumbled some critics, how they, with their zeal for G.o.d's character--that is, for their orthodox conception of it--come off in the epilogue with so smart a rebuke, while Job, whose words seemed to them sheer blasphemy, is praised for saying what was right about G.o.d.

The theme of the Book of Job is one which exercised the greatest of the Greek tragic poets, and it is treated with an aeschylean grandeur; in conception and execution it declares the genius of its author. It has not come into our hands altogether as it left his, and certain parts of the poem are generally recognized as additions by other pens.

The most considerable of these are the speeches of Elihu (cc. 32-36).

It has already been noted that Elihu's name is not in the prologue, he comes in with a bit of a prologue of his own (x.x.xii. 1-5); and when the three friends are rebuked in the epilogue, he, who surely deserved the same condemnation, is ignored. All his speeches, provocative enough, draw no reply from Job. When, at the end of Elihu's discourse, G.o.d answers out of the whirlwind (x.x.xviii. 1 ff.), "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge," it is to Job he addresses himself, not Elihu; and the appearance of G.o.d is naturally taken as the response to Job's challenge in x.x.xi. 35, "O that I had one to hear me," etc., just before Elihu breaks in. All these signs indicate that Elihu is an intruder. This inference is borne out by the arguments so pretentiously announced. They are in the main variations on the themes in the preceding speeches of the friends, with a certain evident predilection for the idea that suffering is a warning. It would seem that another poet thought, as he makes Elihu boast, that he could improve on the arguments of the friends. The unbia.s.sed reader, without depreciating the poetical merit of the speeches, will be likely to differ with him.

The eulogy of the divine wisdom (Job 28) is a very fine poem, in the vein of Prov. 8, of which it is probably not independent, but it is, to say the least, inappropriate in the mouth of Job at this point in the debate. The description of ancient mining is particularly noteworthy. In the speeches of G.o.d, the long descriptions of the hippopotamus and the crocodile (xl. 15-xli. 34) are not without reason suspected of being purple patches, and in putting them in some damage has been done to the margins. It has been questioned whether the prose prologue and epilogue really belong with the poem; but it would not be intelligible without them.

In Ezek. xiv. 14, 20 the name of Job occurs with Noah and Daniel as exemplary righteous men, who, if they were alive, could nevertheless not save the wicked city of Jerusalem from its doom; but whether the story Ezekiel knew about Job had any resemblance to the prologue of our book, no one can tell. It may very well be that there was a prose book of Job (in which, possibly, the friends played the opposite role from that given them in the poem), and that the poet took from it the incidents and setting that he needed; but about that also nothing can be known.

The age of the book is determined chiefly by the problem with which it deals. The doctrine of individual retribution is the application to the individual of the prophetic teaching about G.o.d's dealing with the nation; it appears in a peculiarly crude and hard form in Ezekiel at the moment of the break up of the nation. It was furthered by the teaching of the sages, as in Proverbs, about the connection between prosperity and happiness and virtue. Experience contradicted the dogma, and so the problem of theodicy arose--arose in a peculiarly difficult form, because all that befell a man was attributed to the immediate act of G.o.d, who was not relieved of any part of his responsibility by talk of second causes and natural laws, and because the sphere of retribution was limited to this life, with no relief in the possible compensations of another.

This is the problem of Job, and of itself suffices to put the book in what is called the post-exilic age. It belongs to the literature of Jewish Wisdom, with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The latter book, one of the latest certainly in the Old Testament, is much concerned with the same conflict of dogma with experience, though in a very different spirit. Job may be a work of the fifth century B.C., or perhaps of the fourth. The language would incline us to the earlier date.

CHAPTER XXIV

ECCLESIASTES. SONG OF SONGS

Two singular books remain, about the inspiration of both of which the straitest sect of the Pharisees in the first century of our era had grave difficulties, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. Both are attributed to Solomon, the Song by t.i.tle, Ecclesiastes by implication in the book itself, and doubtless the supposed authorship had much to do with finally securing the two books a place in the Jewish Bible.

ECCLESIASTES.--The t.i.tle of Ecclesiastes runs, "The words of Koheleth the son of David, king in Jerusalem," under which pseudonym no one but Solomon can be meant; see also Eccl. i. 12, and especially ii. 1-11.

In the body of the book, Koheleth is regularly used as a proper name; it is apparently coined for the nonce. Like many pseudonyms in other literatures, it is probably a mystification, piquant to the author's contemporaries but impenetrable to us. That it means "Preacher"--an ancient guess--is highly improbable; but even if the meaning were transparent, there is no more reason for translating a fict.i.tious proper name than a real one.

The theme of this symphony of pessimism is stridently announced in the first notes of the overture: "Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities!

Everything is vanity." The world and its happenings, man and his strivings, pleasure, pain, wisdom, folly, good and evil--all is utterly empty; existence has no meaning and no worth. All is chance and change, in which things endlessly go round and round, but plan, purpose, progress is nowhere to be seen. And as all have one lot, even this senseless and inconstant fortune, so death sooner or later overtakes all alike and ends the strange play without plot we call human life.

Of a divine providence directed to any end or by any principle, of a justice above which requites men according to their deeds, long years and happiness to the wise and good, adversity and premature death to the wicked and foolish, Koheleth, looking on the world of things as they are with searching eyes, discovers no sign. Of another world and an immortal soul, with which some of his contemporaries consoled themselves, he, keeping his thinking within the bounds of experience, knows nothing. Man dies as the beast dies, the same vital breath is in them both, all are of dust and turn to dust again; nor has man any advantage over the beast, they all have the same end (iii. 19-21; ix.

4-6). There is consolation in this thought, when the misery of the world weighs too heavy on the heart. The dead are better off than the living, but happier still it would be never to be born to see the evils that are under the sun (iv. 2 f.).

When we look the facts squarely in the face, the only counsel of wisdom is to make the most of what capricious fortune gives us in its friendly moods, to enjoy the pleasures life offers while we can, with abandon, but without excess. For the "too much" is always evil, even too much wisdom and virtue! "Be not over righteous nor put on too much wisdom, why shouldest thou die before thy time?" (vii. 16 f.).

The author's religion makes G.o.d somehow the cause of what happens under the sun, the evil and the good. In one place he seems to express the belief that all that G.o.d does is fine and opportune, if man could only understand it; but G.o.d has denied man the intelligence to penetrate the secret of his ways. So there is nothing better for man to do than to be merry, and have a good time while he is alive!

It is easy to imagine what scandal all this gave to pious souls, and it was very natural that orthodox editors should try to neutralize Koheleth's scepticism and his epicurean counsels by notes in an opposite sense. A modern editor would have put his protests into footnotes, as for example to Gibbon's famous chapters on the spread of Christianity; an ancient editor, having no footnotes, put his incontinently into the text.

To these editorial improvements belong the last verses (Eccl. xii. 13 f.), with its conclusion, "Fear G.o.d and keep his commandments, for this is the business of every man; for G.o.d will bring every deed into the judgment on all secrets, whether it be good or bad." The judgment after death is evidently meant. The warning against many books and much reading in xii. 12 is also a gloss, while xii. 9-11 appears to be written by an earlier editor of the book, commending it to reading and study. In the body of the book, also, several verses are obviously introduced to give an orthodox twist to the author's very heterodox utterances.

That Ecclesiastes belongs to the latest stratum of Hebrew Biblical literature is evident from both its matter and its style; but there is nothing in it by which its age can be exactly fixed.