Such, tben, is the =hal collection in this book· regarded in its mechanical aspect. Viewed as poetry, it offers the greatest contrasts, ranging from the bald and commonplace to the heights of the sublime. If we meet with vulgar truisms in one place, in another we are sitting at the feet of a bard who discourses of heavenly things with pure and fervid eloquence. I£ in one place we find only maxims of secular tendency, to be t.aken as t.he out.come of worldly experience in matters of daily life, in another we are dealing with parables of things Divine, which need and are intended to receive spiritual handling, and cannot be thoroughly understood under any other treatment. The portrait of Wisdom is an adumbration of the eternal Son of God, who invites all to share his bounty and enrich thom- sel ves from. his boundless store. The " strange woman " is not morely a representation of vice ; she is a type of the great opponent of Christ, the antichrist, the false doctrine, the harlotry of the intellect, which opposes the truth as it is in Jesus. And the virtuous woman is not merely an example of the perfect woman, wife, and mother; but also a figure of the Church of God, with all its ennobling influence, its vivifying ordinances, its super- natural graces. The book reflects the circumstances of the times in whfoh its various parts were composed. There are pictures of savage rapine and plunder, insecurity of life and property, and the evils that attend days of anarchy and confusion. There are pictures of peace and prosperity, quiet home-life, agriculture, grazing, farming, with its pleasures and profit. There are signs of luxury, bringing in its train excess, profligacy, fraud, covetousness. There is the ideal king, upright, discerning, pious, the enemy of all that is base, dishonourable, or vicious, the rewarder of the just and God-fearing. There is the rnler, tyrannical, oppressive, iniquitous, hated by his subjects, and caring nothing for their best interests. Here we have the judge whose verdict is as God's own judgment, pure and equitable; there the judge venal, corrupt, selling the truth, perverting the right, and making the tribunal a. mart for the gain of filthy lucre. On these and such- like circumstances the Proverbs offer warnings and instructions ; antidotes against evil influences; encouragements to perseverance in the right way. Much may have originally been written by Solomon for the benefit of hie son Rehoboam, who in that age was exposed to peculiar temptations; but thereby the Holy Spirit has produced a manual fitted for the use of all who in active life are open to the seductions of their time and conntry and society. We have spoken above of the nee of secondary motives in the teaching of our book; but we must not omit to observe that, under the earthly and secalar element, there is present a vein of heavenly wealth. The con. sciousness of a Divine presence, of a moral Governor, of an exterior Law- giver, dominates every lesson. The heart is to be guarded whose secrets are known only to God; the tongue is to be diligently watched, though human law punishes not its transgressions. All actions are to be referred to God's will and Word, and are only right when conformed to these. THE PROVERBS. xxix
The absence of all mention of polytheism, which some have used as a reason for e.esigning a post-exilian date to the book, may be otherwise acconnted for. If the Proverbs _reflect the earlier days of Solomon's reign before h~s great decline and apostasy, the days when the temple had new!; been bn1lt and consecrated, and men's minds were filled with the grand ceremonies of its opening services and the marvels which attended its dedi- cation, there would be then no tendency to idelatry, the evil propensity for unlawfnl worship would at any rate for a time have been checked, and the moralist wonld have had no reason for warning against this particnlar offence.
§ 5. HISTORY OF THE TEXT, The Book of Proverbs has always been enumerated by the Jews among the twenty-two books into which they divided their canon. Thus it was found to be by Melito of Sardis, when he personally investigated the matter during his journey in the East, as mentioned by Eusebius (' Hist. Eccl.,' iv. 26). To the same effect is the testimony of Origen, addnced also by Eusebius (ibid., vi. 25). In the Christian Church the catalogues of Holy Scripture drawn np by councils and private persons never fa.il to include Proverbs in the canon. The frequent quotation of the work by the writers of the New Testament (e.g. Rom.xii. 16, 17; 2 Cor. ix. 7, Septuagint, etc.) placed it at once beyond the pale of donbt, and lent indisputable confirma- tion to its claims. The inspiration of the works attributed to Solomon was indeed denied by Theodore of Mopsuestia at the end of the fourth century, but his opinions found no support among the orthodox, and were condemned by the Fifth (Ecumenical Council. Since that time no doubt has ever been thrown. by Christians npon the claim of our book to its place in the sacred volume. But the settlement of the original text is quite a dillerent matter from establishing the canonicity of the work as e. whole. To compare with the existing Masoretic text we have the Targnm, the Syriac, Greek, and Latin versions, all of which present variations from the original which we possess. The Targum, which usually takes the form of a Chaldee Paraphrase, is in the present case a tolerably close version without much comment or additional matter. It is plainly dependent upon the Syriac in a great degree, though it varies from it occasionally, the translator having other sources to appeal to. In many passages the Peshito and the Targum agree in receding from the Masoretic reading, in these often coinciding with the Septuagint, which version it is most unlikely that the Targnmist himself consulted, the strictest of Hebrews holding that translation in abhorrence. Noldeke concludes that a Jew took the Syriac as the foundation of a. Targum, but also consulted the Masoretic text, correcting from it certaiu prominent errors, but for the most part leaving t~e _rest unaltered. The Syriac itself offers many remarkable deviat10ns from our text, not XXX INTRODUC'l'ION 'l'O