Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1406

 led into the same region of the moral contemplation of the world over which this book moves?!” The explanation lies in this, that the Chokma took its stand-point in a height and depth in which it had the mingling waves of international life and culture under it and above it, without being internally moved thereby. It naturally did not approve of heathenism, it rather looked upon the fear of Jahve as the beginning of wisdom, and the seeking after Jahve as implying the possession of all knowledge (Pro 28:5, cf. 1Jo 2:20); but it passed over the struggle of prophecy against heathendom, it confined itself to its own function, viz., to raise the treasures of general religious-moral truth in the Jahve-religion, and to use them for the ennobling of the Israelites as men. In vain do we look for the name ישׂראל in the Proverbs, even the name תּורה has a much more flexible idea attached to it than that of the law written at Sinai (cf. Pro 28:4; Pro 29:18 with Pro 28:7; Pro 13:14, and similar passages); prayer and good works are placed above sacrifice, Pro 15:8; Pro 21:3, Pro 21:27 - practical obedience to the teaching if wisdom above all, Pro 28:9. The Proverbs refer with special interest to Gen 1 and 2, the beginnings of the world and of the human race before nations took their origin. On this primitive record in the book of Genesis, to speak only of the משׁלי שׁלמה, the figure of the tree of life (perhaps also of the fountain of life), found nowhere else in the Old Testament, leans; on it leans also the contrast, deeply pervading the Proverbs, between life (immortality, Pro 12:28) and death, or between that which is above and that which is beneath (Pro 15:24); on it also many other expressions, such, e.g., as what is said in Pro 20:27 of the “spirit of man.” This also, as Stier (Der Weise ein König, 1849, p. 240) has observed, accounts for the fact that אדם occurs by far most frequently in the Book of Job and in the Solomonic writings. All these phenomena are explained from the general human universal aim of the Chokma. When James (Jam 3:17) says that the “wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy,” his words most excellently designate the nature and the contents of the discourse of wisdom in the Solomonic proverbs, and one is almost inclined to think that the apostolic brother of the Lord, when he delineates wisdom, has before his eyes the Book of the Proverbs, which raises to purity by the most impressive admonitions. Next to its admonitions to purity are those especially to