5. More than two thirds of the words of King Lemuel, "the oracle which his mother taught him" (xxxi), are taken up with the alphabetic poem already mentioned, twenty-two couplets long, beginning, A worthy woman who can find? For her price is far above rubies, and continuing in a lovely series of domestic traits. This concluding strain of the Book of Proverbs merits remark both for the perfection of its art and for the beauty of its substance. Expressed in that strange acrostic form which to the Hebrew mind represented the severest art in versification (something like our sonnet or stately ode), it is the most chaste and limpid specimen of that species of verse to be found in Scripture, that perfection of art which conceals art.1 As such it presents both in style and in substance the mashal wrought to highest sweep and freedom. It is worth while to note, in our feeling of the increasing freedom and breadth as the Book of Proverbs goes on, how fitly the end, leaving its summarizing message with the woman and mother, answers to the poetic conception of the introductory section. Standing thus at the culmination of this manual of homely and practical wisdom, this woman section enshrines a chivalrous portrayal not unworthy of that adventurous personification, almost apotheosis, in which the Hebrew realism of imagination reached its highest mark. It is the noble literal of which the other is the conceptual type and figure, giving for the master of men (vss. 2-9) and the mistress of the household (10-31) — adult and self-controlled age-what the other gives for immature and teachable youth. Only one idealizing step beyond the capable woman, with her household gift of management and tender sway, is our Lady Wisdom in her seven-pillared mansion, entering the lists of alluring warfare against the false Madam Folly,—thus realizing something like the idea later expressed by Goethe at the close of "Faust," The woman-Soul leadeth us Upward and on. 1 For a list of acrostic Psalms see above, p. 446, footnote 5. May we not regard this as an interrelation of end and beginning in which all the best elements of the book blend in one beauty and fullness? istic The Crest of Wave Like other strains of literature the prophetic, the legalthe Wisdom strain had its curve of ascent, culmination, and gradual subsidence; and it is hard to the Wisdom say when it reached its highest point of vogue and popularity. This point would of course be much earlier than when the various deposits were assembled into a Book of Proverbs and the introduction commendatory was written. It would come at some time when the Wisdom way of thinking was so "in the air" that it threatened to monopolize men's regards, as if no other way of thinking could be tolerated. To my mind this seems likeliest to have been about in the time of Isaiah, when the men of Hezekiah were copying out the aftermath of Solomonic proverbs (Prov. xxv, 1). That some such situation existed there is an indication in Isa. xxviii, where the sentiment of the ruling classes comes into clash with the faith and insight of prophecy.1 Isaiah is urging trust in the mystically revealed word of Jehovah as against reliance on man-made diplomacies. Seeing that he can make no headway against the "scoffers that rule this people that is in Jerusalem" (vs. 14), the prophet composes a discourse I in the current Wisdom idiom (vss. 23-29) to show by a superior line of analogy that Jehovah no less truly than they is "wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom" (v. 29). He introduces his discourse by the accepted Wisdom formula (v. 23; cf. Prov. xxii, 17; see also Psa. xlix, 1-4; lxxviii, 1, 2), and for the word "wisdom" he makes use of the term thushiyah, which by this time seems to have become a kind of technical term to denote the human intuition in which men were placing unlimited trust as a guaranty of truth absolute. We may regard it as the sages' word to 1 This has already been touched upon above; see pp. 203, 204. designate the human initiative of intellect and sagacity, the earthly counterpart to authoritative revelation from above. Earlier in the present chapter this sense of endowment is noted as underlying the literary consciousness of this third canon division. It was when the feeling was at its pristine height, and when its sagacious pronouncements were most popular, that Isaiah came into conflict with it—not, however, to denounce it but to reveal its limitations. NOTE. Isaiah does not quarrel with this reliance on thushiyah or human intuition; rather he boldly makes Jehovah coöperate as an abler practitioner in the use of it. Micah, Isaiah's contemporary, uses the same word (Mic, vi, 9, where it is dimly translated "[the man of] wisdom") in evident appreciation of its value. In the older part of the Book of Proverbs it occurs only once (Prov. xviii, 1), apparently not yet stereotyped to a philosophical term. In the introductory section, however, it occurs three times (ii, 7; iii, 21; viii, 14), twice as "sound wisdom," promised to the upright and resolute disciple, and the third time as " sound knowledge,” claimed by Our Lady Wisdom herself. Both Isaiah and Micah seem thus to appeal to the Wisdom strain of culture as the prevailing one in their day, with intimation of its infirmity and of what ought to be made of it. In their view it was not keen to read aright the prophetic signs of the times; it was perhaps too hidebound and opportunist, too self-centered (cf. Prov. xviii, 1). We shall learn more of its limitations in the Book of Job. From Isaiah's time onward the Wisdom or worldly' senti- ' ment seems to have kept on in this same static way, as the common educative factor in the Hebrew national economy, until we hear the leaders of Jeremiah's time, in their dread of innovation, saying, "The law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet" (Jer. xviii, 18). Wisdom had gained an established status as a strand in the threefold web of national guidance and culture. 1 See "The Human Genius and Initiative," p. 428, above. We have thus got a little glimpse of the Wisdom strain of thinking in its most popular days. The Book of Proverbs preserves for us its typical utterances, in their initial vigor, in their developing art, in their adventurous estimate of Wisdom meanings and values; utterances gathered from early times and from various guilds or centers, reflecting the practical working of the sound Hebrew mind in the everyday concerns of human experience and intercourse. And like the Book of Psalms it has taken its place, in its genre, as a leading world classic. No other collection of aphoristic writings approaches it for compass and cleanness and spiritual worth. III Job: Crucial Test of the Heart of Man. In the middle of our Bible, massive and majestic, stands a monumental work of the world's literature before which the sincere scholar can only stand with the awe of one who takes his shoes from his feet. It is the Book of Job. One's proper attitude toward it must needs be such as to justify the maxim of Goethe quoted elsewhere: "We really learn only from those books which we cannot criticize. The author of a book which we could criticize would have to learn from us." Job is beyond our criticism and our praise, but there are few if any books in the world from which we can learn such sublime and weighty things as its pages reveal. NOTE. A Modern Estimate. Carlyle's estimate of the Book of Job, given with the fervid unction of a kindred spirit, has become a kind of classic pronouncement. Speaking, in his lecture on Mahomet,1 of the Arabs and their land, he says: "Biblical critics seem agreed that our own Book of Job was written in that region of the world. I call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! It is our first, 1 "On Heroes and Hero-Worship," Lecture II. "The Hero as Prophet." oldest statement of the never-ending Problem,- man's destiny, and God's ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual: the Horse,-'hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?' — 'he laughs at the shaking of the spear!' Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind; so. soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit." Literary It is in the composition of the Book of Job, with its consistent correlation and progress of parts and plot, that the Hebrew literature approaches nearest in type and structure to the literature of other nations, especially to that of the Greeks, from whom our modern standards are derived. Whether this was due to conscious imitation is doubtful; the thing cannot be proved one way or the other. The main question, however, to which the book's suggestive analogies of form give rise, is, whether it is to be considered as essentially a drama, with scenario and distribution of characters, or a vehicle of controversy, something like a Platonic dialogue. This diversity of estimate comes from the different relative values accorded to its form, which is narrative and dialogue-wise, or to its inner substance, which from a short narrative prologue passes into a series of impassioned discourses on the profoundest problems of life. I am not sure, however, that this is the essential alternative. Another type of discourse seems to me worthy of consideration by the side of the dramatic — namely, the epic; this on account of the heroic spiritual achievements, as we may truly call them, of Job in his tremendous encounter with the mysterious dealings of God and the mistaken judgments of his friends. It is as if the patriarch's words were veritable deeds of valor and victory. Accordingly, in my studies of the book I have ventured to assign it to the epic type, calling it for |