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CHAPTER I.

HEBREW WISDOM, ITS NATURE, SCOPE, AND IMPORTANCE.

We have studied the masterpiece of Hebrew wisdom before examining the nature of the intellectual product which the Israelites themselves graced with this title. The Book of Job is in fact much more than a didactic treatise like Ecclesiastes or a collection of pointed moral sayings like the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Its authors were more than thinkers, they were poets, 'makers,' great imaginative artists. But we must not be unjust to those who were primarily thinkers, and only in the second degree poets. The phase of Hebrew thought called 'wisdom' (khokma) can be studied even better in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes than in the poetry of Job. Let us then enquire at this point, What is this Hebrew wisdom? First of all, it is the link between the more exceptional revelations of Old Testament prophecy and the best moral and intellectual attainments of other nations than the Jews. 'Wisdom' claims inspiration (as we have seen already), but never identifies itself with the contents of oracular communications. Nor yet does it pretend to be confined to a chosen race. Job himself was a non-Israelite (the Rabbis were even uncertain as to his part in the world to come); and the wisdom of the 'wise king' is declared to have been different in degree alone from that of the neighbouring peoples