this interpretation of the latter word is very questionable. Jakeh is rendered "Obedient" or "Pious," so "the Gatherer, son of the Obedient," would designate Solomon, son of David. St. Jerome countenances the allegorical interpretation by rendering, “Verba Congregantis filii Vomentis.” But one sees no reason why the king, whose name has been freely used in the previous sections, should now be introduced under an allegorical appellation. Certainly, much that is contained in the chapter may be regarded as symbolical, but that is scarcely sufficient reason for making the teacher also symbolical. Why, again, should this section be separated from the rest of Solomon's words, and not incorporated with the great body of his collection? What object could there be in introducing another batch of the king's proverbs after the "words of the wise"? If this piece had been in existence in early times, Hezekiah would surely not have omitted placing it in its proper position in his own repertory. The contents, however, leave no doubt on the subject. Solomon never could have uttered what follows:

"Surely I am more brutish than any man,

And have not the understanding of a man;
And I have not learned wisdom" (ch. xxx. 2, 3).

Nor could he be blindly groping in darkness after the Creator (ch. xxx. 4);
nor pray
that he might have neither poverty nor riches (ch. xxx. 8). The
notion, therefore, that Solomon himself is here intended must be sur-
rendered as wholly unfounded. Some have attempted to find Agur's
nationality in the word translated "the prophecy" (hamassa). Massa,
"burden," is the word generally used to denote a prophet's message, either
from its being borne by him to the appointed place, or expressive of its
grievous nature and awful importance. The term does not seem altogether
appropriate to the utterances that follow, and Hitzig has started a theory
which makes the word denote the country from which Agur came. The
old Venetian Version bad given : Λόγοι Αγούρου υἱέως Ἰακέως τοῦ Μασάου,
"the words of Agur son of Jakeh the Masaite." Now, there was a son of
Ishmael named Massa (Gen. xxv. 14; 1 Chron. i. 30), who may have given
his name to a tribe and a district, as did his brothers Duma and Tema
(Isa. xxi. 11, 14). It is mentioned in 1 Chron. iv. 38, etc., that certain
Simeonites in the days of Hezekiah made a raid into the country of Edom,
and established themselves in Mount Seir, driving out the Amalekites
whom they found settled there. Starting from this locality and moving
northwards towards Damascus, according to Hitzig, they set up the king-
dom of Massa, and hence issued this piece of poetry not long after the first
establishment. This, in his view, would account for the peculiarities of
dialect found in the composition. Others have found a Massa in the town
Mismije, on the north of the Hauran; others place it on the north of the
Persian Gulf. In fact, nothing is known with certainty about the country;
its very existence is problematical. The most likely supposition is that
Agur was an Edomite, a worshipper of Jehovah, and well acquainted with

Israelitish literature, being one of the sages for whom Edom was celebrated (1 Kings iv. 30), a man whose sayings were deemed of sufficient value and inspiration to insert in the sacred canon, though he, like Job, was not one of the chosen people. The more probable rendering of the second hemistich of ver. 1 of this chapter, which is given in the margin of the Revised Version, is noted in the Exposition.

As Agur is considered a symbolical name of Solomon, so is Lemuel in the next chapter, which opens thus: "The words of King Lemuel, the burden which his mother taught him." Lemuel (or Lemoel, as ver. 4) means "Unto God," equivalent to "Dedicated to God;" and it is supposed to be applied to Solomon, who from infancy was dedicated to God, and called by him Jedidiah, “Beloved of the Lord" (2 Sam. xii. 25). But there is no good reason for supposing Solomon to be designated Lemuel. If Agur meant Solomon, why is the name now suddenly changed? And how can we suppose the following address to have been spoken by Bathsheba, the adulteress and virtual murderess? This is a difficulty not resolved by regarding "the mother" as a personification of the Hebrew Church, which is an arbitrary assumption invented to meet an objection, rather than necessitated by an observation of evidence. Those who saw in Massa the country of Agur's residence, would here likewise translate, "the words of Lemuel, King of Massa," and weave a pleasing fiction whereby Agur and Lemuel become the sons of a Queen of Massa, who is supposed to have been, like the Queen of Sheba, a diligent seeker of wisdom. This may be true, but it is a mere conjecture, which cannot be verified. If it is accepted, Lemuel would be an Ishmaelite, whose home was in North Arabia, and who belonged to the company of the wise men for whom Arabia was proverbial. At the same time, it is unlikely that the production of an alien, particularly of a jealously regarded Ishmaelite, should be admitted to the sacred canon. Of course, there is the difficulty concerning the origin of the Book of Job, but as that controversy is not settled, we cannot regard this as an objection. Laying aside the theory of Lemuel being a non-Israelite, we must regard the word as the appellation of an ideal king, whether the poet looked back to Solomon or Hezekiah, whom he represents as taught by a careful mother in the way of piety and justice. Concerning the date of these appendices there is little to guide us in our determination, except that the language points to composition at a later period than the former portions of the book. We have many dialectical variations, Aramaic and Arabic expressions, which do not occur in the earlier sections, and which were not, as far as we know, current in Southern Israel before Hezekiah's reign, nor probably for some long time after. The free, terse proverb is now wholly wanting, a strained, mechanical composition taking its place; we have enigmas instead of maxims, laboured odelets instead of neat distichs-productions in quite different style from those hitherto handled, and showing a decline of creative power and a tendency to make artificiality and mechanical skill take the place of thought and novelty. The passages which are similar to,

and may have been derived from, Job cannot be used in proof of the late date of these sections, as the era of that work is undetermined; but the painful consciousness of man's ignorance in the presence of the great Creator, which meets us, as in Job, so in this appendix (ch. xxx. 2, etc.), implies a speculative activity very foreign to the earlier Hebrew mind, and indicative of contact with other elements, and acquaintance with philosophical questions far removed from the times of the primordial monarchy. Some, accordingly, have attributed the pieces to post-exilian days; but there is not a shadow of proof for this, not an expression or an allusion which confirms such a notion; and Delitzsch is probably correct when he dates their production at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century B.C. The closing poem, the praise of the virtuous woman, is probably still later, and certainly by a different hand. The alphabetical ode is not found till the very latest period of Hebrew poetry, though it is impossible to affix any definite date for its production.

§ 4. GENERAL CHARACTER.

The whole Book of the Proverbs is rhythmical in construction, and it is rightly so printed in the Revised Version as to exhibit this characteristic. The great feature of Hebrew poetry, as every one knows, is parallelism, the balancing of thought against thought, corresponding in form and often in sound, so that one line is an echo of the other. The second member is either equivalent to the first, or contrasted with it or similar to it in construction; the whole may consist of only two lines forming a distich, which is the normal type of proverb, or of three or four or more; but all contain one thought expanded on parallel lines. The various shapes which are thus assumed by the sentences in our book are thus noted.

The simplest and earliest form is the distich, a sentence consisting of two lines balanced one with the other, like

"A wise son maketh a glad father:

But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother” (ch. x. 1).

The second part of our book (ch. x. 1-xxii. 16) consists mainly of such sentences. Sometimes the sense extends over three lines, forming a tristich, when the thought in the first line is repeated in the second before the conclusion is reached. Thus

"Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar

With a pestle among bruised corn,

Yet will not his foolishness depart from him" (ch. xxvii. 22).

Or the idea in the second line is developed by a contrast in the third—

"Whoso causeth the upright to go astray in an evil way,

He shall fall himself into his own pit:

But the perfect shall inherit good" (ch. xxviii. 10).

Or the additional line produces a proof in confirmation—

"Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not;

And go not to thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity:

Better is a neighbour that is near than a brother that is far off" (ch. xxvii. 10).

Of tetrastichs we find some instances, where the last two lines make the application of the others

"Take away the dross from the silver,

And there cometh forth a vessel for the finer :

Take away the wicked from before the king,

And his throne shall be established in righteousness" (ch. xxv. 4, 5).

In the maxims consisting of five lines, pentastichs, the last two or three generally supply or develop the reason of the preceding

"Weary not thyself to be rich:

Cease from thine own wisdom.

Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?

For riches certainly make themselves wings,

Like an eagle that flieth toward heaven” (ch. xxiii. 4, 5).

Of a proverb in six lines, hexastich, we have a few instances

"Deliver them that are carried away unto death,

And those that are ready to be slain see that thou hold back.

If thou sayest, Behold, we knew not this;

Doth not he that weigheth the hearts consider it?

And he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it?

And shall not he render to every man according to his work?" (ch. xxiv. 11, 12).

Of the heptastich there is only one example, viz. ch. xxiii. 6—8. The connected verses in ch. xxiii. 22-25 may be regarded as an octastich, but when thus extended the proverb becomes a mashal ode, like Ps. xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii. Of this character are the introductory part, which consists of fifteen didactic poems, the hortatory address (ch. xxii. 17-21), the warning against drunkenness (ch. xxiii. 29-35), and many other passages, especially the praise of the virtuous woman (ch. xxxi. 10, etc.), written in the form of an alphabetical acrostic.

The form of the proverb being such as we have described, it remains to distinguish the different kinds of parallelisms employed which have led to their being arranged into various classes.

1. The simplest species is the synonymous, where the second hemistich merely repeats the first, with some little alteration of words, in order to enforce the truth presented in the former; e.g.—

"The liberal soul shall be made fat;

And he that watereth shall be watered also himself" (ch. xi. 25).

"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty;

And he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city" (ch. xvi. 32).

2. The antithetic presents in the second member a contrast to the first, bringing forward a fact or an idea which offers the other side of the picture

"The labour of the righteous tendeth to life:

The increase of the wicked to sin" (ch. x. 16).

"The thoughts of the righteous are judgment:

But the counsels of the wicked are deceit" (ch. xii. 5).

These are, perhaps, of more frequent occurrence than any. Sometimes the form is interrogative

"The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity:

But a broken spirit who can bear?" (ch. xviii. 1.4).

3. Synthesis in logic is an argument advancing regularly from principles conceded to a conclusion founded thereon. The term has been loosely applied to our subject, and synthetical proverbs are such as contain two different truths embodied in the distich, and not necessarily dependent one upon another, but connected by some feature common to both.

"The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him;

And the desire of the righteous shall be granted" (ch. x. 24).

The idea of the future is here the connecting link. In the following distich the misery which results in both cases is the point :

"He that is slack in his work

Is brother to him that is a destroyer" (ch. xviii. 9).

4. This last example introduces us to what Delitzsch terms the integral proverb, where the second line completes the thought which is only begun. in the first

"The law of the wise is a fountain of life,

To depart from the snares of death" (ch. xiii. 14).

"The eyes of the Lord are in every place,

Keeping watch upon the evil and the good" (ch. xv. 3).

This is called also progressive, a gradation being presented from the less to the greater, or the greater to the less, as

"Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth:
How much more the wicked and the sinner!" (ch. xi. 31).

"Sheol and Abaddon are before the Lord:

How much more then the hearts of the children of men !" (ch. xv. 11).

5. The fifth sort of proverb is named the parabolic, which is, perhaps, the most striking and significant of all, and capable of manifold expression. Herein a fact in nature or in common life is stated, and an ethical lesson grounded upon it. The comparison is sometimes introduced by particles"As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, So is the sluggard to them that send him" (ch. x. 26).