Proverb. "'^- mash il, rendered in the A. V. "by- word," "parable," "proverb" (irapa(So\ii, 7rapot/«'o),
expresses all and even more than i- conveyed by these il > English representatives. It is derived from a root ~'~'l. mashdl, -to he likef' (Arab, mathala, t. ble"), and the primary idea involved in it i- thai of likenc--. comparison. This form of comparison would very naturally l>c taken by the short, pithy sentences which passed into use as popular -a_\ ings and proverbs, especially when employed in mockery and sarcasm, as in Mic. ii. 4; Ilah. ii. 6, and even in the more devel- oped taunting song of triumph for the fall of Babylon in 1-a. xiv, I. Probably all proverbial sayings were at first of the nature of similes, hut the term ma acquired a more extended significance. It was applied to denote such short, pointed sayings as do not involve a comparison directly, hut still convey their meaning by the help of a figure, as in 1 Sam. .x. 12; Ezek. xii. 22, 23; x\ii. 2, :; (comp. irapa(io\i), Luke iv, 23). Prom this stage of its application it passed to thai of sententious maxims generally, as in Prov. i. I : \. 1 : XXV, 1 : x.xvi. 7. !»; Eccles. xii. 9; Job xiii. 12, many of which, however, still involve a comparison (Prov. xxv, :;. II. 12, 13, l 1. etc.; xxvi. 1. •_'. ::. etc.). ■'such com- parisons are cither expressed, or the things compared
are placed side hy side, ami the Comparison left for the
hearer or reader to supply. Next we find it used of those larger pieces in which a single idea is no longer exhausted in a sentence, hut forms the germ ol the whole, and is worked oul into a didactic poem. .Many iii-lanoes of this kind occur in the firs I section of the hook id' Proverbs; others arc found in .loh xxvii and xxix. in both which chapter- .loh take- up hi- mashdl, or "parable," a- it is rendered in the A.V. The "par- able" of Balaam, in Numb, xxiii, 7 Hi; xxiv, 3 9,15 1'.'. 20, 21 22, 23 24, are prophecies conveyed in figures; hut mashdl also denotes the "parable" proper, a- in K/.ck. xvii. _ : xx. 19 (xxi, 5) ; xxiv, 3. Lowth, in his notes on Isa. xiv, I. speaking of mashdl, say> : " I take i his to he the genera] name for poetic stj le among the Hebrews, including every -on of it. a- ranging under one, or other, or all of tha character-, sentt nt ion-, fig- urative, and sublime; which arc all contained in the original notion, or in i he use and application of the word mashdl. Parables or proverbs, such as those of Solo- mon, arc always expressed in short, pointed sentences; frequently figural ive, being formed on Bome comparison, both in the mailer and the form. Such, in general, is the Btyle of the Hebrew poetry. Balaam's first proph- ecy (Numb, xxiii. 7 Um i- called in- mashdl, although ii ha- hardly anything figurative in it: hut it is beau- tifully sententious, and, from the very form and manner of ii. ha- greal spirit, force, ami energy. Thus Job's lasl speeches, in answer to the. three frit ml- | ch. xxvii-
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xxxi), are called mashdls, from no one particular char- acter which discriminates them from the rest of the poem, but from the sublime, the figurative, the senten- tious manner which equally prevails through the whole poem, and makes it one of the first and most eminent examples extant of the truly great and beautiful in po- etic style." — Smith. Sir W. Jones says, " The moralists of the East have in general chosen to deliver their pre- cepts in short, sententious maxims, to illustrate them by sprightly comparisons, or to inculcate them in the very ancient forms of agreeable apologues: there are, indeed, both in Arabic and Persian, philosophical tracts on ethics written with sound ratiocination and elegant perspicuity. But in every part of the Eastern world. from Pekin to Damascus, the popular teachers of moral wisdom have immemorially been poets, and there would be no end of enumerating their works, which are still extant in the five principal languages of Asia." See Parable. Our Lord frequently employed proverbs in his public instructions; and the illustration of these proverbs has occupied many learned men, who proceed partly by the aid of similar passages from the Old Test., and partly from the ancient writings of the Jews, espe- cially from the Talmud, whence it appears how much they were in use among that people, and that they were applied by Christ and his apostles agreeably to common usage. The proverbs contained in the Old and New Tests, are collected and illustrated by Drusius and An- dreas Schottus, whose works are comprised in the ninth volume of the Critici Sacri, and also by Joachim Zeh- ner, who elucidated them by parallel passages from the fathers, as well as from heathen writers, in a treatise published at Leipsic in 1601. The proverbs which are found in the New Test, have been illustrated by Vor- stius and Visir. as well as by Lightfoot and Schbttgen in their floras Hebraicce et Talmudicce, and by Buxtorf in his Lexicon Chaldaicum Talmudicum et Rabbinicum, from which last-mentioned works Rdsenmuiler, Kuinbl, Dr. Whitby, Dr. Adam Clarke, and other commentators, have derived their illustrations of the Jewish parables and proverbs. See Kelly, Proverbs of all Nations (Lond. 1859, 8vo) ; Sterling, Literature of Proverbs (ibid. 1860, 8vo); Bofm, Book of Proverbs. See Proverbs, Book of.