Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The title of this first appendix, according to the text lying before us, is: “The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, the utterance.”

This title of the following collection of proverbs is limited by Olewejored; and δ ΘΠ, separated from the author’s name by Rebia, is interpreted as a second inscription, standing on one _ line with "135, as particularizing that first. The old synagogue tradition which, on the ground of the general title i. 1, regarded the whole Book of Proverbs as the work of Solomon, interpreted the words, “ Agur the son of Jakeh,” as an allegorical designation of Solomon, who appropriated the words of the Tora to the king, Deut. xvii. 17, and again rejected them, for he said: God is with me, and I shall not do it (viz. take many wives, without thereby suffering injury), Scheméth rabba, c. 6. The translation of Jerome: Verba congregantis filii Vomentis, is the echo of this Jewish interpretation. One would suppose that if “ Agur” were Solomon’s name, “ Jakeh” must be that of David; but another interpretation in Midrash Mishle renders 13 (“son”) as the designation of the bearer of a quality, and sees in “ Agur” one who girded (738 =13n) his loins for wisdom; and in “son of Jakeh” one free from sin (529 ‘po iyi won). Inthe Middle Ages this mode of interpretation, which is historically and linguistically absurd, first began to prevail; for then the view was expressed by several (Aben Ezra, and Meiri the Spaniard) that Agur ben Jakeh was a wise man of the time of Solomon. That of Solomon’s time, they thence conclude (blind to xxv. 1) that Solomon collected together these proverbs of the otherwise unknown wise man. In truth, the age of the man must remain undecided; and at all events, the time of Hezekiah is the fixed period from which, where possible, it is to be sought. The name “ Agur” means the gathered (vi. 8, x. 5), or, after the predominant meaning of the Arab. dar, the bribed, mercede conductum; also the collector (cf. WP, fowler); or the word might mean, perhaps, industrious in collecting (cf. ‘alwak, attached to, and other examples in Mihlau, p. 36).

Regarding 13 = dinj (usual in 323), and its relation to the Arab. ibn, vid. Genesis, p. 555. The name Jakeh is more transparent. The noun ΠΠΡ᾽, xxx. 17, Gen. xlix. 10, means the obedient, from the verb 7p’; but, formed from this verbal stem, the form of the word would be 4? (not mp"). The form np. is the participial adj. from 7), like 75° from 75°; and the Arab. wakay, corresponding to this 1%, viii. ittakay, to be on one’s guard, particularly before God; the usual word for piety regarded as εὐλάβεια. Miihlau (p. 37) rightly sees in the proper names Lltekeh [Josh. xix. 44] and Eltekon [ Josh. xv. 59]. the secondary verbal stem 7PM, which, like e.g. 71M (ANN), 38h, THY, has originated from the reflexive, which in these proper names, supposing that 8 is subj., means to take under protection; not: to give heed =cavere. All these meanings are closely connected. In all these three forms—A>, n>, APA— the verb is a synonym of 7%; so that 7?" denotes’ the pidus, either as taking care, εὐλαβής, or as keeping, 1.6. observing, viz. that which is commanded by God.

In consequence of the accentuation, Nt27 is the second designation of this string of proverbs, and is parallel with "25. But that is absolutely impossible. δὲ (from 83, to raise, viz. the voice, to begin to express) denotes the utterance, and according to the usage of the words before us, the divine utterance, the message of God revealed to the prophet and announced by him, for the most part, if not always (vid. at Isa. xiii. 1), the message of God as the avenger. Accordingly Jewish interpreters (6.0. Meiri and Arama) remark that xv designates what follows, as "8323 735, 1.6. an utterance of the prophetic spirit. But, on the other hand, what follows begins with the confession of human weakness and short-sightedness; and, moreover, we read proverbs not of a divine but altogether

1 According to the Lez. ’Gezeri (from the Mesopotamian town of ’Geziret ibn ‘Amr), the word wakihon is, in the Mesopotamian language, ‘‘ the overseer of the house in which is the cross of the Christians;” and accordingly, in Muhammed’s letter to the Christians of Negran, after they became subject to him, “ἃ monk shall not be removed from his monastery, nor a presbyter from his presbyterate, (wakdahtah) wala watah wakahyttah” (this will be the correct phrase), ‘‘ nor an overseer from his office.” Tbe verbal stem wak-ah (Ap) is, as it appears, Northern Semitic; the South Arabian of a human and even of a decaying spiritual stamp, besides distinguished from the Solomonic proverbs by this, that the 7 of the poet, which remains in the background, here comes to the front. This xp of prophetic utterances does not at all harmonize with the following string of proverbs. It does not so harmonize on this account, because one theme does not run through these proverbs which the sing. xv requires. It comes to this, that Sw never occurs by itself in the sense of a divine, a solemn utterance, without having some more clearly defining addition, though it should be only a demonstrative ΠῚΠ (Isa. xiv. 28). But what author, whether poet or prophet, would give to his work the title of wn, which in itself means everything, and thus nothing! And now: the utterance—what can the article at all mean here? This question has remained unanswered by every interpreter. Ewald also sees himself constrained to clothe the naked word; he does it by reading together xwon ON), and translating the “sublime saying which he spoke.” But apart from the consideration that Jer. xxiil. 31 proves nothing for the use of this use of O08), the form (7237) ON) is supported by 2 Sam. xxiii. 1 (cf. ver.5 with 2 Sam. xxii. 31); and besides, the omission of the Ws, and in addition of the relative pronoun (82), would be an inaccuracy not at all to be expected on the brow of this gnomology (vid. Hitzig). If we leave the altogether unsuspected 08) undisturbed, xwnn will be a nearer definition of the name of the author. The Midrash has a right suspicion, for it takes together Hamassa and Agur ben Jakeh, and explains: of Agur the son of Jakeh, who took upon himself the yoke of the most blessed. The Gracus Venetus comes nearer what is correct, for it translates: λόγοι ᾿Α γούρου views ᾿Ιακέως τοῦ Macdov. We connect xxxi. 1, where ed oNrD?, “Lemuel (the) king,” is a linguistic impossibility, and thus, according to the accentuation lying before us, SW 320 also are to be connected together; thus it appears that x’ must be the name of a country and a people. It was Hitzig who first made this Columbus-egg to stand. But this is the case only so far as he recognised in xiv $0 5xwb a Lemuel, the king of Massa, and recognised this Massa also in xxx. 1 (wid. his dissertation: Das Kénigreich Massa [the kingdom of Massa], in Zeller’s Theolog. Jahrbb. 1844, and his Comm.), viz. the Israelitish Massa named in Gen. xxv. 14 (=1 Chron. i. 80) along with Dumah and Tema. But he proceeds in a hair-splitting way, and with ingenious hypothesis, without any valid foundation. That this Dumah is the Dumat el-jendel (cf. under Isa. xxi. 11) lying in the north of Nejed, near the southern frontiers of Syria, the name and the founding of which is referred by the Arabians to Dim the son of Ishmael, must be regarded as possible, and consequently Massa is certainly to be sought in Northern Arabia. But if, on the ground of 1 Chron. iv. 42 f., he finds there a Simeonitic kingdom, and finds its origin in this, that the tribe of Simeon originally belonging to the ten tribes, and thus coming from the north settled in the south of Judah, and from thence in the days of Hezekiah, fleeing before the Assyrians, were driven farther and farther in a south-east direction towards Northern Arabia; on the contrary, it has been shown by Graf (The Tribe of Simeon, a contribution to the history of Israel, 1866) that Simeon never settled in the north of the Holy Land, and according to existing evidences extended their settlement from Negeb partly into the Idumean highlands, but not into the highlands of North Arabia. Hitzig thinks that there are found traces of the Massa of Agur and Lemuel in the Jewish town? of pxndy, of Benjamin of Tudela, lying three days’ journey from Chebar, and in the proper name (Arab.) Malsa (smooth), which is given to a rock between Tema and Wady el-Kora (vid. Kosegarten’s Chrestom. p. 143); but how notched his ingenuity here is need scarcely be shown. By means of more cautious combinations Miihlau has placed the residence of Agur and Lemuel in the Hauran mountain range, near which there isa Dumah, likewise a Témd; and in the name of the town Mismije, lying in the Leja, is probably found the Mishma which is named along with Massa, Gen. xxv. 14; and from this that is related in 1 Chron. v. 9 f., 18-22, of warlike expeditions on the part of the tribes lying on the east of the Jordan against the Hagarenes and their allies Jetwr, Nephish, and Nodab,’ it

1 Cf. Blau’s Arab. im sechsten Jahrh. in the Deutsch. Morgl. Zeits. xxxiii. 590, and also p. 578 of the same, regarding a family of proselytes among the Jews in Taima.

2 Miihlau combines Nodab with Nudébe to the south-east of Bosra; Blau (Deut. Morg. Zeit. xxv. 566), with the Na@daios of Eupolemos named along with the Ναβαταῖοι. The Kami has Nadab as the name of a tribe.

is with certainty concluded that in the Hauran, and in the wilderness which stretches behind the Euphrates towards it, Israelitish tribes have had their abode, whose territory had been early seized by the trans-Jordanic tribes, and was held “ until the captivity,” 1 Chron. v. 22, de. till the Assyrian deportation. This designation of time is almost as unfavourable to Miihlau’s theory of a Massa in the Hauran, inhabited by Israelitish tribes from the other side, as the expression “to Mount Seir”’ (1 Chron. iv. 42) is to Hitzig’s North Arabian Jassa inhabited by Simeonites. We must leave it undecided whether Dumah and Témé, which the

Toledoth of Ismael name in the neighbourhood of Massa, are the east Hauran districts now existing; or as Blau (Deut. Morgl. Zeit. xxv. 539), with Hitzig, supposes, North Arabian districts (cf. Genesis, p. 377, 4th ed.)." “ Be it as it may, the contents

and the language of this difficult piece almost necessarily point toa region bordering on the Syro-Arabian waste. Ziegler’s view (Neue Uebers. der Denkspriiche Salomo’s, 1791, p. 29), that Lemuel was probably an emir of an Arabian tribe in the east of Jordan, and that a wise Hebrew translated those proverbs of the emir into Hebrew, is certainly untenable, but does not depart so far from the end as may appear at the first

glance” (Miihlau).? If the text-punctuation lying before us rests on the false supposition that Massa, xxx. 1, xxxi. 1, is a generic name, and not a proper name, then certainly the question arises whether xp should not be used instead of XW, much more N%", which is suggested as possible in the article ‘“Spriiche,” in Herzog’s Encycl. xiv. 694. Were Xv, Gen. x. 80, the region Meonvn, on the northern border of the Persian Gulf, in which Apamea lay, then it might be said in favour of this, that as the histories of Muhammed and of Benjamin of Tudela prove the existence of an old Jewish occupation of North Arabia, but without anything being heard of a st, the Talmud bears testimony® to a Jewish occupation of Mesene, and particularly of Apamea; and by the mother of Lemuel, the king

1 Dozy (Israeliten in Mecca, p. 89 f.) connects Massa with Mansah, a pretended old name of Mecca.

2 These German quotations with the name of Miihlau are taken from the additions to his book, which he placed at my disposal.

of Mesha, one may think’ of Helena, celebrated in Jewish writings, queen of Adiabene, the mother of Monabaz and Izates. But the identity of the MJesha of the catalogue of nations with Meonvy is uncertain, and the Jewish population of that place dates at least from the time of the Sassanides to the period of the Babylonian exile. We therefore hold by the Ishmaelite Massa, whether North Arabian or Hauranian; but we by no means subscribe Miihlau’s non possumus non negare, Agurum et Lemuélem proselytos 6 paganis, non Israelitas fuisse. The religion of the tribes descended from Abraham, so far as it had not degenerated, was not to be regarded as idolatrous. It was the religion which exists to the present day among the great Ishmaelite tribes of the Syrian desert as the true tradition of their fathers under the name of Din lbréhim (Abraham’s religion); which, as from Wetzstein, we have noted in the Commentary on Job (p. 387 and elsewhere), continues along with Mosaism among the nomadic tribes of the wilderness; which shortly before the appearance of Christianity in the country beyond the Jordan, produced doctrines coming into contact with the teachings of the gospel; which at that very time, according to historic evidences (e.g. Méjasini’s chronicles of the Ka‘be), was dominant even in the towns of Hig4z; and in the second century after Christ, was for the first time during the repeated migration of the South Arabians again oppressed by Greek idolatry, and was confined to the wilderness; which gave the mightiest impulse to the rise of Islam, and furnished its best component part; and which towards the end of the last century, in the country of Neged, pressed to a reform of Islam, and had as a result the Wahabite doctrine. If we except xxx. 5 f., the proverbs of Agur and Lemuel contain nothing which may not be conceived from a non-Israelitish standpoint on which the author of the Book of Job placed himself. Even xxx. 5 f. is not there (cf. Job vi. 10, xxiii. 12) without parallels. When one compares Deut. iv. 2, xiii. 1, and 2 Sam. xxii. 31 = Ps. xviii. 31 (from which ver. 5 of the proverbs of Agur is derived, with the change of mn into mio), Agur certainly appears as one intimately acquainted with the revealed religion of Israel, and with their literature. But * Derenbourg’s Essai sur I’ Hist. et la Géog. de la Palestine, i. p. 224.

must we take the two Massites therefore, with Hitzig, Miihlau, and Zockler, as born Israelites? Since the Bible history knows no Israelitish king outside of the Holy Land, we regard it as more probable that King Lemuel and his countryman Agur were Ishmaelites who had raised themselves above the religion of Abraham, and recognised the religion of Israel as its completion.

If we now return to the words of xxx. la, Hitzig makes Agur Lemuel’s brother, for he vocalizes 8&2 ΤΠ. 3 WN, ze. Agur the son of her whom Massa obeys. Ripa and Bjorck of Sweden, and Stuart of America, adopt this view. But supposing that AP is connected with the accusative of him who is obeyed, 13, as the representative of such an attributive clause, as of its virtual genitive, is elsewhere without example; and besides, it is unadvisable to explain away the proper name ΠΡ, which speaks for itself. There are two other possibilities of comprehending 8t37, without the change, or with the change of a single letter. Wetzstein, on xxxi. 1, has said regarding Mihlau’s translation « King of Massa: "ὦ I would more

cautiously translate, ‘ King of the Massans,’ since this interpretation is unobjectionable; while, on the contrary, this is not terra Massa, nor urbs Massa. It is true that the inhabitants of Massa were not pure nomads, after xxx. and xxxi., but probably, like the other tribes of Israel, they were half nomads, who possessed no great land as exclusive property, and whose chief place did not perhaps bear their name. The latter may then have been as rare in ancient times as it is in the present day. Neither the Sammar, the Harb, the Muntefik, nor other half nomads whom I know in the southern parts of the Syrian desert, have any place which bears their name. So also, it appears, the people of Uz (/"y), which we were constrained to think of as a dominant, firmly-settled race, since it had so great a husbandman as Job, possessed no 1") NP. Only in certain cases, where a tribe resided for many centuries in and around a place, does the name of this tribe appear to have remained attached to it. Thus from 1 531, ‘the low-country of the Dumahns, or 7233 NP, ‘the city of Dumahns,’ as also from xo’ np, ‘ the city of the Temans,’ gradually there arose (probably not till the decline and fall of this tribe) a city of Dumah, a haven of Midian, and the like, so that the primary meaning of the name came to be lost.” It is clear that, from the existence of an Ishmaelite tribe SW, there does not necessarily follow a similar name given to a region. The conj. 8, for ΘΠ (vid. Herzog’s Encycl. xiv. 702), has this against it, that although it is good Heb., it directly leads to this conclusion (e.g. 2 Sam. xxiii. 20, 29, cf. 1 Kings xvii. 1). Less objectionable is Bunsen’s and Bottcher’s 823. But perhaps ἐξ ὉΠ may also have the same signification; far rather at least this than that which Malbin, after 8#53 WT, 1 Chron. xv. 27, introduced with the LXX. ἄρχων τῶν ὠδῶν: “We ought then to compare 2 Sam. xxii. 24, pn? na 15, a connection in which, after the analogy of such Arabic connections as kaysu ’aylana, Kais of the tribe of ’Ailén (1bn Coteiba, 13 and 83), or Ma’nu Tayyin, Ma'n of the tribe of Tay, 1.6. Ma‘n belonging to this tribe, as distinguished from other men and families of this name (Schol. Hamase 144. 3), ond ma is thought of as genit.”! (Miihlau). That ond ma (instead of "2n>0 M2) is easily changed, with Thenius and Wellhausen, after 1 Chron. xi. 26, into and man, and in itself it is not altogether homogeneous, because without the article. Yet it may be supposed that instead of xvn, on account of the appellat. of the proper name (the lifting up, elatio), the word xynn might be also employed. And since np}3, along with 3x, forms, as it were, one compositum, and does not at all destroy” the regulating force of x, the expression is certainly, after the Arabic usus log., to be thus explained: The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, of the tribe (the country) of Massa.

not Ukkal; for, since Athias and van der Hooght, the incorrect form 028) has become current. J. H. Michaelis has the right form of the word D2N}. Thus, with 3 raphatum, it is to be read after the Masora, for it adds to this word the remark n°

“pm, and counts it among the forty-eight words sometimes written defectively without} Ὁ (vid. this list in the Masora finalis, 210, Col. 4); and since it only remarks the absence of the letter lengthening the word where no dagesh follows the vocal, it thus supposes that the 3 has no dagesh, as it is also found in Codd. (also Jaman.) written with the Raphe. ONIVND is doubly accentuated; the Zarcha represents the Metheg, after the rule Thorath Emeth, p. 11. The 5 after 08) is, in the sense of the punctuation, the same dat. as in ‘FIND, Ps. cx. 1, and has an apparent right in him who asks Y7 3 in the 4th verse. Ithiel and Uchal must be, after an old opinion, sons, or disciples, or contemporaries, of Agur. Thus, e.g., Gesenius, in his Lez. under °8'N's, where as yet his reference to Neh. xi. 7 is wanting. Sm is rendered by Jefet and other Karaites, “there is a God” =x ‘M's; but it is perhaps equivalent to ON ἘΝ, «( God is with me;” as for ‘AX, the form ‘D'S is also found. ΣΙΝ (228) nowhere occurs as a proper name; but in the region of proper names, everything, or almost everything, is possible.’ Ewald sees in 1b-14 a dialogue: in vers. 2-4 the 1235, 1.6. as the word appears to him, the rich, haughty mocker, who has worn out his life, speaks; and in 5-14 the “ Mitmirgott” [= God with me], or, more fully, “ ALitmirgott-sobinichstark” [= God with me, so am 1 strong], i.e. the pious, humble man answers. “The whole,” he remarks, “is nothing but poetical; and it is poetical also that this discourse of mockery is called an elevated strain.” But (1) 733 is a harmless word; and in 7233 O82, Num. xxiv. 3, 15, 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, it is a solemn, earnest one; (2) a proper name, consisting of two clauses connected by Vav, no matter whether it be an actual or ἃ symbolical name, is not capable of being authenticated; Ewald, ὃ 2744, recognises in 12) NB, 1 Chron. xxv. 4, the naming, not of one son of Heman, but of two; and (3) it would be a very forced, inferior poetry if the poet placed one half of the name in one line, and then, as if constrained to take a new breath, gave the other half of it in a second line. But, on the other hand, that Syms and 52x are the names of two different persons, to whom the address of the man is directed, is attested by the, in this

1 Vid. Wetzstein’s Inschriften aus den Trachonen und dem Haurangebirge (1864), p. 536 f.

case aimless, anadiplosis, the here unpoetical parallelism with reservation. The repetition, as Fleischer remarks, of the name Ithiel, which may rank with Uchal, as the son or disciple of Agur, has probably its reason only ‘his, that one placed a second more extended phrase simply al:.¢ with the shorter. The case is different; but Fleischer’s supposition, that the poet himself cannot have thus written, is correct. We must not strike out either of the two Sym; but the supposed proper names must be changed as to their vocalization into a declaratory clause. A principal argument lies in ver. 2, beginning with ‘3: this δ supposes a clause which it established; for, with right, Miihlau maintains that 13, in the affirmative sense, which, by means of aposiopesis, proceeds from the confirmative, may open the conclusion and enter as confirmatory into the middle of the discourse (¢.g. Isa. xxxii. 13), but cannot stand abruptly at the commencement of a discourse (cf. under Isa. xv. 1 and vii. 9). But if we now ask how it is to be vocalized, there comes at the same time into the sphere of investigation the striking phrase 7333 D8), This phrase all the Greek interpreters attest by their rendering, τάδε λέγει ὁ ἀνήρ (Venet. φησὶν ἀνήρ); besides, this is to be brought forward from the wilderness of the old attempts at a translation, that the feeling of the translators strives against the recognition in 52x) of a second personal name: the Peshito omits it; the Targ. translates it, after the Midrash, by Pain (I may do it); as Theodotion, καὶ δυνήσομαι, which is probably also meant by the καὶ συνήσομαι (from συνιέναι, to be acquainted with) of the Venet.; the LXX. with καὶ παύομαι; and Aquila, καὶ τέλεσον (both from the verb m3). As an objection to 1237 ox) is this, that it is so bald without being followed, as at Num. xxiv. 3, 15, 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, with the attributive description of the man. Luther was determined thereby to translate: discourse of the man Leithiel... And why could not bymy? be a proper-name connection like DN FoNY (OMsriee) 1 Interpreted in the sense of “I am troubled concerning God,” it might be a symbolical name of the φιλόσοφος, as of one who strives after the knowledge of divine things with all his strength. But (1) AND, with the accus, obj., is not established, and one is rather inclined to think of a name such as ow'ma, after Ps. Ixxxiv. 3; (2) moreover, syn'xd cannot be at one time a personal name, and at another time a declarative sentence —one must both times transform it into 8 YN?; but be has to be taken as a vocative, not as accus., as is done by J. D. Michaelis, Hitzig, Bunsen, Zockler, and others, thus: I have wearied myself, Ὁ God!... The nakedness of 7237 is accordingly not covered by the first Leithiel. Miihlau, in his work, seeks to introduce xwon changed into nvm: “ The man from Massa,” and prefers to interpret 723" generically:' “ proverb (confession) of the man (i.e. the man must confess): I have wearied myself, O God!...” Nothing else in reality remains. The article may also be retrospective: the man just now named, whose “ words” are announced, viz. Agur. But why was not the expression "38 ON) then used? Because it is not poetical to say: “the (previously named) man.” On the other hand, what follows applies so that one may understand, under 7337, any man you choose. There are certainly among men more than too many who inquire not after God (Ps. xiv. 2f.). But there are also not wanting those who feel sorrowfully the distance between them and God. Agur introduces such a man as speaking, for he generalizes his own experience. Ps. xxxvi. 2 (vid. under this passsge) shows that a proper name does not necessarily follow ox). With Ἴ2)Π ox: Agur then introduces what the man has to confess—viz. a man earnestly devoted to God; for with ox) the ideas of that which comes from the heart and the solemnly earnest are connected. If Agur so far generalizes his own experience, the passionate anadiplosis does not disturb this. After long contemplation of the man, he must finally confess: I have troubled myself, Ὁ God! I have troubled myself, O God!... That the trouble was directed toward God is perhaps denoted by the alliteration of *mx> with Sx. But what now, further? “bow is read as PON, ODN), DDN), SON}, P38}, and it bitte also been read as 53%). The eating boxy no one advocates; this that follows says ‘the direct contrary, et potui (pollu). Geiger (Urschrift, p. 61) supports the reading 228}, for he renders it interrogatively: “I wearied my-

1 Thus, viz., that 9355 denotes, not the man as he ought to be, but the man as he usually is (the article, as the Arabic grammarians say, ‘‘ not for the exhaustion of the characteristic marks of the genus,” but for the expression of ‘*‘ the quality mdahije of the genus”).

self in vain about God, I wearied myself in vain about God; why should I be able to do it?” But since one may twist any affirmative clause in this way, and from a yes make a no, one should only, in cases of extreme necessity, consent to such a question in the absence of an interrogative word. Bottcher’s ὃς mx. I have wearied myself out in vain, is not Hebrew. But at any rate the expression might be DONOR, if only the Vav did not stand between the words! If one might transpose the letters, then we might gain ΣΙΝ Nor, according to which the LXX. translates: οὐ δυνήσομαι. At all events, this despairing as to the consequence of further trouble, “I shall be able to do nothing (shall bring it to nothing),” would be better than boy} (and I shall withdraw—become faint), for which, besides, neds) should be used (cf. xxii. 8 with Job xxxiii. 21). One expects, after ‘nN, the expression of that which is the consequence of earnest and long-continued endeavour. Accordingly Hitzig reads 221, and I have become dull—snitable to the sense, but unsatisfactory on this account, because 223, in the sense of the Arab. kall, hebescere, is foreign to the Heb. usus log. Thus 52x will be a fut. consec. of mo2. J. Ὁ. Michaelis, and finally Bottcher, read it as fut. consec. Piel PON} or PDN) (vid. regarding this form in pause under xxv. 9), “and I have made an end;” but it is not appropriate to the inquirer here complaining, when dissatisfaction with his results had determined him to abandon his research, and let himself be no more troubled. We therefore prefer to read with Dahler, and, finally, with Miihlau and Zockler, πῇ, and I have withdrawn. The form understood by Hitzig as a pausal form is, in the unchangeableness of its vocals, as accordant with rule as those of 7°, xxvii. 17, which lengthen the — of their first syllables in pause. And if Hitzig objects that too much is said, for one of such meditation does not depart, we answer, that if the inquiry of the man who speaks here has completed itself by the longing of his spirit and his soul (Ps. lxxxiv. 3, cxliii. 7), he might also say of himself, in person, ΝΣ or ΣΙΩΝ An inquiry proceeding not merely from intellectual, but, before all, from practical necessity, is meant—the doubled ‘n’x5 means that he applied thereto the whole strength of his inner and his outer man; and Sox), that he nevertheless did not reach his end, but wearied himself in vain. By this explanation which we give to la, no change of its accents is required; but 10 has to be written: ON SON? Ἴ2)Π ὉΝ 78) O8 TNR? Vers. 2, 3. The ‘3 now following confirms the fruitlessness of the long zealous search: For I am without reason for a man, And a man’s understanding I have not.

3 And I have not learned wisdom, That I may possess the knowledge of the All-Ioly.

He who cannot come to any fixed state of consecration, inasmuch as he is always driven more and more back from the goal he aims at, thereby brings guilt upon himself as a sinner so great, that every other man stands above him, and he is deep under them all. So here Agur finds the reason why in divine things he has failed to attain unto satisfying intelligence, not in the ignorance and inability common to all men—he appears to himself as not a man at all, but as an irrational beast, and he misses in himself the understanding which a man properly might have and ought to have. The { of ΟΝ is not the partitive, like Isa. xliv. 11, not the usual comparative: than any one (Bottcher), which ought to be expressed by venv>3n, but it is the negative, as Isa. lii. 14; Fleischer: rudior ego sum quam ut homo appeller, or: brutus ego, hominis non similis. Regarding 3, vid. under xii. 1.2 Ver. 3 now says that he went into no school of wisdom, and for that reason in his wrestling after knowledge could attain to nothing, because the necessary conditions to this were wanting to him. But then the question arises: Why this complaint? He must first go to school in order to obtain, according to the word “To him who hath is given,” that for which he strove. Thus mM refers to learning in the midst of wrestling; but

1 The Munach is the transformation of Mugrash, and this sequence of accents—Tarcha, Munach, Silluk—remains the same, whether we regard by as the accusative or as the vocative. |

2 According to the Arab..y3 is not a beast as grazing, but as dropping stercus (ba’r, camel’s or sheep’s droppings); to the R. 43, Mihlau rightly gives the meanings of separating, whence are derived the meanings of grazing as well as of removing (cleansing) (cf. Pers. thak karadn, to make clean = to make clean house, tabula rasa).

125, spiritually understood, signifies the acquiring of a kennens [knowledge] or kénnens [knowledge=ability]: he has not brought it out from the deep point of his condition of knowledge to make wisdom his own, so that he cannot adjudge to himself knowledge of the all-holy God (for this knowledge is the kernel and the star of true wisdom). If we read 35 YIN 89, this would be synchronistic, nesciebam, with ‘rm standing on the same line. On the contrary, the positive y78 subordinates itself to mds, as the Arab. faa’ lama, in the sense of (ita) ut scirem scientiam Sanctissimi, thus of a conclusion, like Lam. i. 19, a clause expressive of the intention, Ewald, ὃ 347a. DWP is, as at ix. 10, the name of God in a superlative sense, like the Arab. el-kuddis. Ver. 4 Who hath ascended to the heavens and descended?

What is his name, and what his son’s name, if thou knowest? The first question here, ‘0 °D, is limited by Pazer; now-nby has Metheg in the third syllable before the tone. The second question is at least shut off by Pazer, but, contrary to the rule, that Pazer does not repeat itself in a verse; Cod. Erfurt. 2, and several older editions, have for y5n3._ more correctly »5n2 with Aebia. So much for the interpunction. 0350 are properly not the two fists, for the fist—that is, the hand gathered into a ball, pugnus—is called 4738; while, on the contrary, jDM (in all the three dialects) denotes the palm of the hand, vola (vid. Lev. xvi. 12); yet here the hands are represented after they have seized the thing as shut, and thus certainly as fists. The dual points to the dualism of the streams of air produced by the disturbance of the equilibrium; he who rules this movement has, as it were, the north or east wind in one fist, and the south or west wind in the other, to let it forth according to his pleasure from this prison (Isa. xxiv. 22). The third question is explained by Job xxvi. 8; the nop (from Sn, comprehendere) is a figuve of the clouds which contain the upper waters, as Job xxxviii. 37, the bottles of heaven. “ All the ends of the earth” are as at five other places, e.g. Ps. xxii. 28, the most distant, most remote parts of the earth; the setting up of all these most remote boundaries (margines) of the earth is equivalent to the making fast and forming the limits to which the earth extends (Ps. Ixxiv. 17), the determining of the compass of the earth and the form of its figures. 33M 3 is in symphony with Job xxxvili. 5, cf. 18. The question is here formed as it is there, when Jahve brings home to the consciousness of Job human weakness and ignorance. But there are here two possible significations of the fourfold question. LHither it aims at the answer: No man, but a Being highly exalted above all creatures, so that the question p82 [what his name?] refers. to the name of this Being. Or the question is primarily meant of men: What man has the ability?—if there is one, then name him! In both cases ΠῸΝ Ὁ is not meant, after xxiv. 28, in the modal sense, quis ascenderit, but as the following ΤῊΝ requires, in the nearest indicative sense, guis ascendit. But the choice between these two possible interpretations is very difficult. The first question is historical: Who has gone to heaven and (as a consequence, then) come down from it again? It lies nearest thus to interpret it according to the consecutio temporum. By this interpretation, and this representation of the going up before the descending again, the interrogator does not appear to think of God, but in contrast to himself, to whom the divine is transcendent, of some other man of whom the contrary is true. Is there at all, he asks, a man who can comprehend and penetrate by his power and his knowledge the heavens and the earth, the air and the water, 1.6. the nature and the inner condition of the visible and invisible world, the quantity and extent of the elements, and the like? Name to me this man, if thou knowest one, by his name, and designate him to me exactly by his family—I would turn to him to learn from him what I have hitherto striven in vain to find. But there is no such an one. Thus: asI feel myself limitedin my knowledge, so there is not at all any man whocan claim limitless kénnen and kennen [ability and knowledge]. Thus casually Aben Ezra explains, and also Rashi, Arama, and others, but without holding fast to this in its purity; for in the interpretation of the question, “ Who hath ascended?” the reference to Moses is mixed up with it, after the Midrash and Sohar (Parasha, np», to Ex. χχχυ. 1), to pass by other obscurities and difficulties introduced. Among the moderns, this explanation, according to which all aims at the answer, “there is no man to whom this appertains,” has no exponent worth naming. And, indeed, as favourable as is the guis ascendit in celos ae rursus descendit, so unfavourable is the quis constituit omnes terminos terre, for this question appears not as implying that it asks after the man who has accomplished this; but the thought, according to all appearance, underlies it, that such an one must be a being without an equal, after whose name inquiry is made. One will then have to judge mby and 1) after Gen. xxviii. 12; the ascending and descending are compared to our German “auf und nieder” [up and down], for which we do not use the phrase “ nieder und auf,” and is the expression of free, expanded, unrestrained presence in both regions; perhaps, since 11) is historical, as Ps. xviii. 10, the speaker has the traditional origin of the creation in mind, according to which the earth arose into being earlier than the starry heavens above.

Thus the four questions refer (as e.g. also Isa. xl. 12) to Him who has done and who does all that, to Him who is not Himself to be comprehended as His works are, and as He shows Himself in the greatness and wonderfulness of these, must be exalted above them all, and mysterious. If the inhabitant of the earth looks up to the blue heavens streaming in the golden sunlight, or sown with the stars of night; if he considers the interchange of the seasons, and feels the sudden rising of the wind; if he sees the upper waters clothed in fleecy clouds, and yet held fast within them floating over him; if he lets his eye sweep the horizon all around him to the ends of the earth, built up upon nothing in the open world-space (Job xxvi. 7): the conclusion comes to him that he has before him in the whole the work of an everywhere present Being, of an all-wise omnipotent Worker—it is the Being whom he has just named as ON, the absolute Power, and as the DP, exalted above all created beings, with their troubles and limitations; but this knowledge gained wid causalitatis, vid eminentia, and vid negationis, does not satisfy yet his spirit, and does not bring him so near to this Being as is to him a personal necessity, so that if he can in some measure answer the fourfold Ὁ, yet there always presses upon him the question ἡ ΠΟ, what is his name, ze. the name which dissolves the secret of this Being above all beings, and unfolds the mystery of the wonder above all wonders. That this Being must be a person the fourfold presupposes; but the question, “ What is his name?” expresses the longing to know the name of this supernatural personality, not any kind of name which is given to him by men, but the name which covers him, which is the appropriate personal immediate expression of his being. The further question, “ And what the name of his son?” denotes, according to Hitzig, that the inquirer strives — after an adequate knowledge, such as one may have of a human being. But he would not have ventured this question if he did not suppose that God was not a monas [unity] who was without manifoldness in Himself. The LXX. translates: ἣ τί ὄνομα τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτοῦ (122), perhaps not without the influence of the old synagogue reference testified to in the Midrash and Sohar of 32 to Israel, God’s first-born; but this interpretation is opposed to the spirit of this mn (intricate speech, enigma). Also in general the interrogator cannot seek to know what man stands in this relation of a son to the Creator of all things, for that would be an ethical question which does not accord with this metaphysical one. Geier has combined this \33-ny-ny with viii.; and that the interrogator, if he meant the nnan, ought to have used the phrase ina"ov-nm, says nothing against this, for also in iON, viii. 30, whether it means foster-child or artifex, workmaster, the feminine determination disappears. Not Ewald alone finds here the idea of the Logos, as the first-born Son of God, revealing itself, on which at a later time the Palestinian doctrine of ma N12") imprinted itself in Alexandria;’ but also J. D. Michaelis felt himself constrained to recognise here the N. T. doctrine of the Son of God announcing itself from afar. And why might not this be possible? The Rig-Veda contains two similar questions, x. 81,4: “ Which was the primeval forest, or what the tree from which one framed the heavens and the earth? Surely, ye wise men, ye ought in your souls to make inquiry whereon he stood when he raised the wind!” And i. 164, 4: “ Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life, the blood, the soul of the world? Who came thither to ask 1 Vid. Apologetik (1869), p. 432 δ.

this from any one who knew it?”* Jewish interpreters also interpret 192 of the causa media of the creation of the world. Arama, in his work pny’ nspy, sect. xvi., suggests that by 122 we are to understand the primordial element, as the Sankhyaphilosophy understands by the first-born there in the Rig, the Prakriti, i.e. the primeval material. R. Levi b. Gerson (Ralbag) comes nearer to the truth when he explains 123 as meaning the cause caused by the supreme cause, in other words: the principium principiatum of the creation of the world. We say: the inquirer meant the demiurgic might which went forth from God, and which waited on the Son of God as a servant in the creation of the world; the same might which in chap. viii. is called Wisdom, and is described as God’s beloved Son. But with the name after which inquiry is made, the relation is as with the “more excellent name than the angels,” Heb.i.4.?_ It is manifestly not the name 3, since the inquiry is made after the name of the }2; but the same is the case also with the name nN, or, since this does not harmonize, according to its grammatical gender, with the form of the question, the name 135 (2.2); but it is the name which belongs to the first and only-begotten Son of God, not merely according to creative analogies, but according to His true being. The inquirer would know God, the creator of the world, and His Son, the mediator in the creation of the world, according to their natures. If thou knowest, says he, turning himself to man, his equal, what the essential names of both are, tell them to me! But whocan name them! The nature of the Godhead is hidden, as from the inquirer, so from every one else. On this side of eternity it is beyond the reach of human knowledge.

1 Cited by Lyra in Beweis des Glaubens Jahrg. 1869, p. 230. The second of these passages is thus translated by Wilson (Rig- Veda-Sanhita, London, 1854, vol. ii. p. 127): ‘‘ Who has seen the primeval (being) at the time of his being born? What is that endowed with substance which the unsubstantial sustains? From earth are the breath and blood, but where is the soul? Who may repair to the sage to ask this?”

Ewald sees herein the discourse of a sceptical mocker at religion; and Elster, the discourse of a meditating doubter; in ver. 5, and on, the answer ought then to follow, which is given to one thus speaking: his withdrawal from the standpoint of faith in the revelation of God, and the challenge to subordinate his own speculative thinking to the authority of the word of God. But this interpretation of the statement depends on the symbolical rendering of the supposed personal names δ ΠΝ and box, and, besides, the dialogue is indicated by nothing; the beginning of the answer ought to have been marked, like the beginning of that to which it is a reply. The confession, 14-4, is not that of a man who does not find himself in the right condition, but such as one who is thirsting after God must renounce: the thought of a man does not penetrate to the essence of God (Job xi. 7-9); even the ways of God remain inscrutable to man (Sir. xviii. 3; Rom. xi. 83); the Godhead remains, for our thought, in immeasurable height and depth; and though a relative knowledge of God is possible, yet the dogmatic thesis, Dewm quidem cognoscimus, sed non comprehendimus, i.e. non perfecte cognoscimus quia est infinitus,' even over against the positive revelation, remains unchanged. Thus nothing is wanting to make 1-4 a complete whole; and what follows does not belong to that section as an organic part of it. Ver. 5 Every word of Eloah is pure; A shield is He for those who hide themselves in Him.

6 Add thou not to His words, Lest He convict thee and thou becomest a liar.

Although the tetrastich is an independent proverb, yet it is connected to the foregoing Nim [utterance, ver. 1]. The more limited a man is in his knowledge of God,—viz. in that which presents itself to him dumine nature,—so much the more thankful must he be that God has revealed Himself in history, and so much the more firmly has he to hold fast by the pure word of the divine revelation. In the dependent relation of ver. 5 to Ps. xviii. 31 (2 Sam. xxii. 31), and of ver. 6 to Deut. iv. 2, there is no doubt the self-testimony of God given to Israel, and recorded in the book of the Tora, is here meant. NON D 1 Vid. Luthardt’s Kompendium der Dogmatik, § 27.

is to be judged after πᾶσα γραφή, 2 Tim. iii. 16, not: every declaration of God, wherever promulgated, but: every declaration within the revelation lying before us. The primary passage [Ps. xviii. 31] has not 5a here, but, instead of it, npn D>, and instead of πῖος MPS it has mn ‘ox; his change of the name of Jahve is also not favourable to the opinion that ver. 5 f. is a part of the Nim, viz. that it is the answer thereto. The proverb in this contains traces of the Book of Job, with which in many respects that Δί ιν harmonizes; in the Book of Job, τρις (with 512) is the prevailing name of God; whereas in the Book of Proverbs it occurs only in the passage before us. Miihlau, p. 41, notes itas an Arabism. ἢν (Arab. saraf, to turn, to change) is the usual word for the changing process of smelting; ΛΝ signifies solid, pure, ὁ.6. purified by separating: God’s word is, without exception, like pure, massive gold. Regarding DN, to hide oneself, wid. under Ps. ii. 12: God is a shield for those who make Him, as revealed in His word, their refuge. The part. DM cccurs, according to the Masora, three times written defectively,—xiv. 32; 2 Sam. xxii. 31; Neh. i. 7; in the passage before us it is to be written pind; the proverbs of Agur and Lemuel have frequently the plena scriptio of the part. act. Kal, as well as of the fut. Kal, common to the Book of Job (vid. Miihlau, p. 65).

In 6a, after Aben Ezra’s Moznajim 2b (110 of Heidenheim’s edition), and Zachoth 53a (cf. Lipmann’s ed.), and other witnesses (vid. Norzi), ¢ sp (the ἢ with dagesh) is to be written,—the Cod. Jaman. and others defect. without 1,—not tésf; for, since DIN (Ex. x. 28) is yet further abbreviated in this way, it necessarily loses’ the aspiration of the tenuis, as in ΠΡ (= mp), The words of God are the announcements of His holy will, measured by His wisdom; they are then to be accepted as they are, and to be recognised and obeyed. He who adds anything to them, either by an overstraining of them or by repressing them, will not escape the righteous judgment of God: God will convict him of falsifying His word (73), Ps. ]. 21; only

1 That both Shevas in tésp are quiesc., vid. Kimchi, Michlol 155 a ὃ, who is finally decided as to this. That the word should be read tésp®al is the opinion of Chajaig in myn ‘pb (regarding the quiesc. letters), p. 6 of the Ed. by Dukes-Ewald.

here with 3 of the obj.), and expose him as ἃ liar—viz. by the dispensations which unmask the falsifier as such, and make manifest the falsehood of his doctrines as dangerous to souls and destructive to society. An example of this is found in the kingdom of Israel, in the destruction of which the curse of the human institution of its state religion, set up by Jeroboam, had no little share. Also the Jewish traditional law, although in itself necessary for the carrying over of the law into the praxis of private and public life, falls under the Deuteron. prohibition,—which the poet here repeats,—so far as it claimed for itself the same divine authority as that of the written law, and so far as it hindered obedience to the law—by the straining-ata-gnat policy—and was hostile to piety. Or, to adduce an example of an addition more dogmatic than legal, what a fearful impulse was given to fleshly security by that overstraining of the promises in Gen. xvii., which were connected with circumcision by the tradition, “the circumcised come not into hell,” or by the overstraining of the prerogative attributed by Paul, Rom. ix. 4 f., to his people according to the Scriptures, in the principle, ‘All Israelites have a part in the future world!” Regarding the accentuation of the perf. consec. after 1B, vid. at Ps. xxviii. 1. The penultima accent is always in pausa (cf. vers. 9 and 10).

In what now follows, the key-note struck in ver. 1 is continued. There follows a prayer to be kept in the truth, and to be preserved in the middle state, between poverty and riches. It is a Mashal-ode, vid. vol. i. p. 12. By the first prayer, “vanity and lies keep far from me,” it is connected with the warning of ver. 6.

Ver. 7 Two things I entreat from Thee, Refuse them not to me before I die. 8 Vanity and lies keep far away from me Poverty and riches give me not: Cause me to eat the bread which is allotted to me, 9 Lest in satiety I deny, And say: Who is Jahve? And lest, in becoming poor, I steal, And profane the name of my God. We begin with the settlement and explanation of the traditional punctuation. A monosyllable like SW receives, if Legarmeh, always Mehuppach Legarmeh, while, on the contrary, the polysyllable ¥2¥8 has Asla Legarmeh. ‘>-1nR->x, with double Makkeph and with Gaja in the third syllable before the tone (after the Metheg-Setzung, § 28), is Ben-Asher’s; whereas Ben- Naphtali prefers the punctuation "0 JAR ON (vid. Baer’s Genesis, Ρ- 79, note 3). Also YAYNB has (cf. ΠΡΟ ἼΒ, xxxi. 5) Makkeph, and on the antepenultima Gaja (vid. Thorath Emeth, p. 32).

The perf. consec. ‘MYND has on the ult. the disjunctive Zinnor (Sarka), which always stands over the final letter; but that the ult. is also to be accented, is shown by the counter-tone Metheg, which is to be given to the first syllable. Also *0N) has in correct Codd., e.g. Cod. 1294, the correct ultima toning of a perf. consec.; Kimchi in the Michlol 66, as well as Aben Ezra in both of his Grammars, quotes only ἘΦΒΠῚ 22) as toned on the penult. That °7222) cannot be otherwise toned on account of the pausal accent, has been already remarked under 6d; the word, besides, belongs to the ἢ" ΜΞ nna, 1.9. to those which preserve their Pathach unlengthened by one of the greater disjunctives; the Athnach has certainly in the three so-called metrical books only the disjunctive form of the Zakeph of the prose books. So much as to the form of the text.

As to its artistic form, this prayer presents itself to us as the first of the numerical proverbs, under the “ Words” of Agur, who delighted in this form of proverb. The numerical proverb is a brief discourse, having a didactic end complete in itself, which by means of numerals gives prominence to that which it seeks to bring forward. There are two kinds of these. The more simple form places in the first place only one numeral, which is the sum of that which is to be brought forth separately: the numerical proverb of one cipher; to this class belong, keeping out of view the above prayer, which if it did not commence a series of numerical proverbs does not deserve this technical name on account of the low ciphers: vers. 24—28, with the cipher 4; Sir. xxv. 1 and 2, with the cipher 3. Similar to the above prayer are Job xiii. 20 f., Isa. li. 19; but these are not numerical proverbs, for they are not proverbs. ‘The more artistic kind of numerical proverb has two ciphers: the two-ciphered numerical proverb we call the sharpened (pointed) proverb.

Of such two-ciphered numerical proverbs the “words” of Agur contain four, and the whole Book of Proverbs, reckoning vi. 16-19, five—this ascending numerical character belongs to the popular saying, 2 Kings ix. 32, Job xxxiii. 29, Isa. xvi. 6, and is found bearing the stamp of the artistic distich outside of the Book of Proverbs, Ps. Ixii. 12, Job xxxiii. 14, xl. 5; Job v. 19, and particularly Amos i. 3-ii. 6. According to this scheme, the introduction of Agur’s prayer should be: and it could take this form, for the prayer expresses two requests, but dwells exclusively on the second. <A twofold request he presents to God, these two things he wishes to be assured of on this side of death; for of these he stands in need, so as to be able when he dies to look back on the life he has spent, without the reproaches of an accusing conscience. The first thing he asks is that God would keep far from him vanity and lying words. δὲ (=, from Ni¥ = MNv, to be waste, after the form M2) is either that which is confused, worthless, untrue, which comes to us from without (6.5. Job xxxi. 5), or dissoluteness, hollowness, untruthfulness of disposition (6.5. Ps. xxvi. 4); it is not to be decided whether the suppliant is influenced by the conception thus from within or from without, since 312-727 [ἃ word of falsehood] may be said by himself as well as to him, a falsehood can intrude itself upon him. It is almost more probable that by sw he thought of the misleading power of God-estranged, idolatrous thought and action; and by 313-935, of lying words, with which he might be brought into sympathy, and by which he might ruin himself and others. The second petition is that God would give him neither poverty (WS), vid. x. 4) nor riches, but grant him for his sustenance only the bread of the portion destined for him. The Hiph. ἘΣΘ (from 1D, to grind, viz. the bread with the teeth) means to give’ anything, as 9120, with which, xxxi. 15, Ph jn) is parallel: to present a fixed piece, a definite portion of sustenance. ph, Gen. xlvii. 22, the portion assigned as nourishment; cf. Job xxiii. 14 °pM, the decree determined regarding me. Accordingly, ῬΠ BM? does not mean the bread appropriately measured out fo. se (like ἄρτος ἐπιούσιος, that which is required for οὐσία, Suvsistence), but the bread appropriate for me, determined for me according to the divine plan. Fleischer compares (Arab.) ratab and marsaum, which both in a similar way designate a fixed sustentation portion. And why does he wish to be neither poor nor rich? Because in both extremes lie moral dangers: in riches, the temptation to deny God (which ‘73 wn> signifies, in the later Heb. 1p¥3 753, to deny the fundamental truth; cf. (Arab.) kafar, unbelieving), whom one flowing in superabundance forgets, and of whom one in his self-indulgence desires to know nothing (Job xxi. 14-16, xxii. 16 f.); in poverty, the temptation is to steal and to blaspheme the name of God, viz. by murmuring and disputing, or even by words of blasphemy; for one who is in despair directs the outbreaks of his anger against God (Isa. vili. 21), and curses Him as the cause of His misfortune (Rev. xvi. 11, 21). The question of godless haughtiness, M7" Ὁ, the LX X. improperly change into ANT Ὁ, τίς με opa. Regarding δ᾽ ἡ), to grow poor, or rather, since only the fut. Miph. occurs in this sense, regarding W%, vid. at xx. 13.

That the author here, by blaspheming (grasping at) the name of God, especially thinks on that which the Zéra calls “ cursing (>>P) God,” and particularly “blaspheming the name of thie Lord,” Lev. xxiv. 15, 16, is to be concluded from the two following proverbs, which begin with the catchword 9p:

Ver. 10 Calumniate not a servant with his master, Lest he curse thee, and thou must atone for it. Incorrectly Ewald: entice not a servant to slander against his master; and Hitzig: ‘ Make not a servant tattle regarding his master.” It is true that the Poel Wi (to pierce with the tongue, lingud petere) occurs twice in the sense of to calumniate; but that ἜΧΩ means nothing else, is attested by the post.-bibl. Hebrew; the proverb regarding schismatics (0°97 N33) in the Jewish Schemone-Esre (prayer of the eighteen benedictions) began with pwnd, “and to the calumniators” (delatoribus). Also in the Arab. dlsana signifies pertulit verba alicujus ad allerum, to make a babbler, rapporteur (Fleischer). ‘That the word also here is not to be otherwise interpreted, is to be concluded from δὲ with the causative rendering. Rightly Symmachus, μὴ διαβάλῃς; Theodotion, μὴ καταλαλήσῃς; and according to the sense also, Jerome, ne accuses; the Venet. μὴ καταμηνύσῃς (give not him); on the contrary, Luther, verrate nicht [betray not], renders rea with the LX_X., Syr. in ‘the sense of the Aram. pov and the Arab. dslam (ὠμῶν, prodere). One should not secretly accuse (Ps. ci. 5) a servant with his master, and in that lies the character of slander (3719 jv) when one puts suspicion upon him, or exaggerates the actual facts,and generally makes the person suspected—one thereby makes a man, whose lot in itself is not a happy one, at length and perhaps for ever unhappy, and thereby he brings a curse on himself. But it is no matter of indifference to be the object of the curse of a man whom one has unrighteously and unjustly overwhelmed in misery: such a curse is not without its influence, for it does not fruitlessly invoke the righteous retribution of God, and thus one has sorrowfully to atone for the wanton sins of the tongue (veaschamta, for ve-aschamtdé as it is would be without pause). There now follows a Priamel, the first line of which is, by 5p, connected with the 75$p» of the preceding distich: Ver. 11 A generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother; 12 A generation pure in their own eyes, And yet not washed from their filthiness; 13 A generation—how haughty their eyes, And their eyelids lift themselves up; 14 A generation whose teeth are swords and their jaw teeth knives To devour the poor from the earth and the needy from the midst of men. Ewald translates: O generation! but that would have required the word, 13a, 1179 (Jer. ii. 31), and one would have expected 1 (Cf. vol. i. p. 13. The name (from preambulum) given to a peculiar form of popular gnomic poetry which prevailed in Germany from the 12th (e.g. the Meistersinger or Minstrel Sparvogel) to the 16th century, but was especially cultivated during the 14th and 15th centuries. Its peculiarity consisted in this, that after a series of antecedents or subjects, a brieflyexpressed consequent or predicate was introduced as the epigrammatic point applicable to all these antecedents together. Vid. Erschenburg’s Denkmdlern altdeutscher Dichtkunst, Bremen 1799.]

to have found something mentioned which the generation addressed were to take heed to; but it is not so. But if “O generation!” should be equivalent to “ O regarding the generation!” then "in ought to have introduced the sentence. And if we translate, with Luther: There is a generation, etc., then ὧν is supplied, which might drop out, but could not be omitted. The LXX. inserts after ἔκγονον the word κακόν, and then renders what follows as pred.—a simple expedient, but worthless. The Venet. does not need this expedient, for it renders γενεὰ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ βλασφημήσει; but then the order of the words in 11a would have been yas S5p» "7; and in 12a, after the manner of a subst. clause, xin ya WY WI, One sees distinctly, from 13 and 14, that what follows 1 is to be understood, not as a pred., but as an attributive clause. As little can we interpret ver. 14, with Lowenstein, as pred. of the three subj., “it is a generation whose teeth are swords;” that would at least have required the words xin 17; but ver. 14 is not at all a judgment valid for all the three subjects. The Targ. and Jerome translate correctlv, as we above;* but by this rendering there are four subjects in the preamble, and the whole appears, since the common pred. is wanting, as a mutilated Priamel. Perhaps the author meant to say: it is such a generation that encompasses us; or: such is an abomination to Jahve; for 15 is a Gesamtheit = totality, generation of men who are bound together by contemporary existence, or homogeneity, or by both, but always a totality; so that these verses, 11-14, might describe guatuor detestabilia genera hominum (Ὁ. B. Michaelis), and yet one generatio, which divide among themselves these four vices, of blackest ingratitude, loathsome self-righteousness, arrogant presumption, and unmerciful covetousness. Similar is the description given in the Mishna Sota ix. 14, of the character of the age in which the Messiah appeared. “The appearance of this age,” thus it concludes, “ is like the appearance of a dog; a son is not ashamed before his father; to whom will we then look for help? To our Father in heaven!”* The undutifulness of a child is here placed

1 The Syr. begins 11a as if ἡ were to be supplied. 2 Cf. also Ali Ὁ. Abi Taleb’s dark description, beginning with hadha alzman (this age), Zur allg. Char. der arab. Poesie (1870), p. O41

In 13a the attributive clause forms itself, so as to express the astonishing height of arrogance, into an exclamation: a generation, how lofty are their eyes (cf. 6.9. vi. 17, Nin? Dy)! to which, as usual, it is simply added: and his eyelids (palpebre) lift themselves up; in Lat., the lifting up of the eyebrow as an expression of haughtiness is described by elatum (superbum) supercilium.

The fourth characteristic is insatiable covetousness, which does not spare even the poor, and preys upon them, the helpless and the defenceless: they devour them as one eats bread, Ps, xiv. 4. The teeth, as the instruments of eating, are compared to swords and knives, as at Ps. lvii. 4 to spears and arrows. With "3% there is interchanged, as at Job xxix. 17,

Jonah i. 6, ynyen (not ‘n>, as Norzi writes, contrary to Metheg-

Setzung, § 37, according to which Gaja, with the servant going before, is inadmissible), transposed from yn, Ps. lviii. 7, from YN, to strike, pierce, bite. The designation of place, YIN, “ from the earth” (which also, in pausa, is not modified into 728), and DIN, “from the midst of men,” do not belong to the obj.: those who belong to the earth, to mankind (vid. Ps. x. 18), for thus interpreted they would be useless; but to the word of action: from the earth, out from the midst of men away, so that they disappear from thence (Amos viii. 4). By means of fine but cobweb combinations, Hitzig finds Amalek in this fourfold proverb. But it is a portrait of the times, like Ps. xiv., and certainly without any national stamp.

With the characteristic of insatiableness it closes, and there follows an apophthegma de quatuor insatiabilibus que ideo comparantur cum sanguisuga (C. B. Michaelis). We translate the text here as it lies before us:

Ver. 15 The ‘Aliéka hath two daughters: Give! Give! Three of these are never satisfied; Four say not: Enough! 16 The under-world and the closing of the womb; The earth is not satisfied with water; And the fire saith not: Enough!

We begin with Masoretic externalities. The first 2 in ὩΣ is Beth minusculum; probably it had accidentally this diminutive form in the original Mss., to which the Midrash (cf. Sepher Taghin ed. Barges, 1866, p. 47) has added absurd conceits. This first [37 has Pasek after it, which in this case is servant to the Olewejored going before, according to the rule Thorath Fimeth, p. 24, here, as at Ps. Ixxxv. 9, Mehuppach. The second an, which of itself alone is the representative of Olewejored, has in Hutter, as in the Cod. Erfurt 2, and Cod. 2 of the Leipzig Public Library, the pausal punctuation 37 (cf. MP, 1 Sam. xxi. 10), but which is not sufficiently attested. Instead of TINT, 15), HOS N?, and instead of TIDNTND, 16, 7728 N? are to be written; the Zinnorith removes the Makkeph, according to Thorath Emeth, p. 9, Accentuationssystem, iv. ὃ 2. Instead of 9, 16a, only Jablonski, as Miihlau remarks, has 0°53; but incorrectly, since Athnach, after Olewejored, has no pausal force (vid. Thorath Emeth, p. 37). All that is without any weight as to the import of the words. But the punctuation affords some little service for the setting aside of a view of Rabbenu Tam (vid. Tosaphoth to Aboda zara 17a, and Hrubin 19a), which has been lately advocated by Lowenstein. That view is, that “Alika is the name of a wise man, not Solomon’s, because the Pesikta does not reckon this among the names of Solomon, nor yet a name of hell, because it is not, in the Gemara, numbered among the names of Gehinnom. Thus inpabyd would be a superscription, like 1 and nndvd, Ps. xxvi. 1, Ixxii. 1, provided with Asla Legarmeh. But this is not possible, for the Asla Legarmeh, at Ps. xxvi. 1 and Ixxii. 1, is the transformation of Olewejored, inadmissible on the first word of the verse (Accentuationssystem, xix. ὃ 1); but no Olewejored can follow such an Asla Legarmeh, which has the force of an Olewejored, as after this mprdy>, which the accentuation then does not regard as the author’s name given as a superscription.

npyoy is not the name of a person, and generally not a proper name, but a generic name of certain traditional signification. “One must drink no water”—says the Gemara Aboda zara 122—“ out of a river or pond, nor (immediately) with his mouth, nor by means of his hand; he who, nevertheless, does it, his blood comes on his own head, because of the danger. What danger? mpoY M230,” i.e. the danger of swallowing ἃ Jeech. The Aram. also designates a leech by Npry (cf. 6.0. Targ. Ps. xii. 9: hence the godless walk about like the leech, which sucks the blood of men), and the Arab. by ’alak (γι. unit. ‘alakat), as the word is also rendered here by the Aram. and Arab. translators. Accordingly, all the Greeks render it by βδέλλη; Jerome, by sanguisuga (Rashi, sangsue); also Luther’s Kigel is not the Jgel erinaceus [hedgehog], but the Egel, 2.¢., as we now designate it, the Blutegel [leech], or (less correctly) Blutigel. npey is the fem. of the adj. Prey, attached to, which meaning, together with the whole verbal stem, the Arab. has preserved (vid. Miihlau’s Mittheilung des Art. ‘aluka aus dem Kamus, p. 42). But if, now, the “Aléka is the leech,? which are then its two daughters, to which is here given the name 37 37, and which at the same time have this cry of desire in their mouths? Grotius and others understand, by the two daughters of the leech, the two branches of its tongue; more correctly: the doublemembered overlip of its sucker. Οὐ. B. Michaelis thinks that the greedy cry, “Give! Give!” is personified: voces iste concipiuntur ut hirudinis filie, quas ex se gignat et velut mater sobolem impense diligat. But since this does not satisfy, symbolical interpretations of “Aluka have been resorted to. The Talmud, Aboda zara 17a, regards it as a name of hell. In this sense it is used in the language of the Pijut (synagogue

1 Noldeke has remarked, with reference to Miihlau’s Monographie, that ‘aluka, in the sense of tenacious (tenaz), is also found in Syr. (Geopon. xiii. 9, xli. 26), and that generally the stem ρὸν, to cleave, to adhere, is more common in Aram. than one would suppose. But this, however common in Arab., is by no means so in Syr.; and one may affirm that, among other Arabisms found in the Proverbs of Agur, the word ‘Aluka has decidedly an Arab. sound.

2 In Sanscrit the leech is called galaukas (masc.) or galauka (fem.), i.e. the inhabitant of the water (from gala, water, and dkas, dwelling). Ewald regards this as a transformation of the Semitic name.

poetry).’ If‘ Aléka is hell, then fancy has the widest room for finding an answer to the question, What are the two daughters? The Talmud supposes that mw5 (the worldly domination) and

1 (heresy) are meant. The Church-fathers also, understanding by “Aléka the power of the devil, expatiated in such interpretations. Of the same character are Calmet’s interpretation, that sanguisuga is a figure of the mala cupiditas, and its twin-daughters are avaritia and ambitio. The truth lying in all these is this, that here there must be some kind of symbol. But if the poet meant, by the two daughters of the ‘Alika, two beings or things which he does not name, then he kept the best of his symbol to himself. And could he use ‘Alika, this common name for the leech, without further intimation, in any kind of symbolical sense? ‘The most of modern interpreters do nothing to promote the understanding of the word, for they suppose that “Alika, from its nearest signification, denotes a demoniacal spirit of the character of a vampire, like the Dakini of the Indians, which nourish themselves on human flesh; the ghouls of the Arabs and Persians, which inhabit sraveyards, and kill and eat men, particularly wanderers in the désert; in regard to which it is to be remarked, that (Arab.) ‘awlak is indeed a name for a demon, and that al‘aluwak, according to the. Kamus, is used in the sense of alghwal. Thus Dathe, Doderlein, Ziegler, Umbreit; thus also Hitzig, Ewald, and others. Miihlau, while he concurs in this understanding of the word, and now throwing open the question, Which, then, are the two daughters of the demoness ‘Aliika? finds no answer to it in the proverb itself, and therefore accepts of the view of Ewald, since 15)-16, taken by themselves, form a fully completed whole, that the line ‘x mmbys is the beginning of a numerical proverb, the end of which is wanting. We acknowledge, because of the obscurity—not possibly aimed at by the author himself—in which the two daughters remain, the fragmentary characters of the proverb of the ‘Aliéka; Stuart also does this, for he regards it as brought out of a connection in which it was intelligible—but we believe that the line ‘1 wav

1 So says e.g. Salomo ha-Babli, in a Zulath of the first Chanukka-Sabbats (beginning Abn AY PS): poy ‘2373 3?) they burn like the flames of hell.

is an original formal part of this proverb. For the proverb forming, according to Miihlau’s judgment, a whole rounded off: myaen xd msn vibe spn yx xd yrs DN AYN Dine pp nya xd prs 7 mI ND vind the fourth, the step from the third to the fourth is taken by the connecting Vay: ver.18, YIN; 21, YS HNN; 29, ΠΡ ΣΝ, We therefore conclude that "3 xb yu“ is the original commencement of independent proverb. This proverb is:

Four things say not: Enough! The under-world and the closing of the womb [i.e. unfruitful womb |—

And the fire says not: Enough! a tetrastich more acceptable and appropriate than the Arab. proverb (Freytag, Provv. iil. p. 61, No. 347): “three things are not satisfied by three: the womb, and wood by fire, and the earth by rain;” and, on the other hand, it is remarkable to find it thus clothed in the Indian language,’ as given in the Hitopadesa (p. 67 of Lassen’s ed.), and in Pantschatantra, i. 153 (ed. of Kosegarten):

nagnis trpjati kashthanan naépaganan mahédadhih nantakah sarvabhitdnan na punsdn vdmalocanéh.

Fire is not sated with wood, uor the ocean with the streams, Nor death with all the living, nor the beautiful-eyed with men.

As in the proverb of Agur the 4 falls into 2 + 2, so also in this Indian s/oka. In both, fire and the realm of death (dntaka is death as the personified “‘ end-maker’’) correspond; and as there the

1 That not only natural productions, but also ideas and literary productions (words, proverbs, knowledge), were conveyed from the Indians to the Semites, and from the Semites to the Indians, on the great highways by sea and land, is a fact abundantly verified. There is not in this, however, any means of determining the situation of Massa.

womb and the earth, so here feminarium cupiditas and the ocean. The parallelizing of y>x and om is after passages such as Ps. exxxix. 15, Job i. 21 (cf. also Prov. v.16; Num. xxiv. 7; Isa. xlviii, 1); that of ww and wx is to be judged of! after passages such as Deut. xxxii. 22, Isa. lvi. 24. That yn wow wd repeats itself in pm MN ND is now, as we render the proverb iviclepeme dently, much more satisfactory than if it began with ‘1 wady: it rounds itself off, for the end returns into the beginning. Regarding }in, vid. 1. 13. From pn, to be light, it signifies living lightly; ease, superabundance, in that which renders life light or easy. ‘“ Used accusatively, and as an exclamation, it is equivalent to plenty! enough! It is used in the same sense in the North African Arab. brrakat (spreading out, fulness). Wetzstein remarks that in Damascus lahdén, ¢.e. hitherto, is used in the sense of hajah, enough; and that, accordingly, we may attempt to explain 1 of our [Heb.] language in the sense of (Arab.) hawn haddah, i.e. here the end of it!” (Mihlau.) But what do we now make of the two remaining lines of the proverb of the ‘Alika? The proverb also in this division of two lines is a fragment. Ewald completes it, for to the one line, of which, according to his view, the fragment consists, he adds two:

The blood of the wicked child.” A proverb of this kind may stand in the O. T. alone: it sounds as if quoted from Grimm’s Mdhrchen, and is a side-piece to Zappert’s altdeutsch. Schlummerliede. Cannot the mutilation of the proverb be rectified in a less violent way without any selfmade addition? If thisis the case, that in vers. 15 and 16, which now form one proverb, there are two melted together, only the first of which lies before us in a confused form, then this phenomenon is explained by supposing that the proverb of the ‘Alika originally stood in this form:

The under-world and the closing of the womb; There are three that are never satisfied.

1 The parallelizing of on7 and Sei, Berachoth 15), is not directly aimed at by the poet.

piece of the lost tetrastich, beginning with ymix. One might suppose that if Swi and om sayy have to be regarded as the daughters of the ‘Aliéka, which Hitzig and also Zéckler have recognised, then there exists no reason for dividing the one proverb into two. Yet the taking of them as separate is necessary, for this reason, because in the fourth, into which it expands, the “Alika is altogether left out of account. But in the above tristich it is taken into account, as was to be expected, as the mother with her children. This, that sheol (ANY is for the most part fem.), and the womb (897 =0, which is fem., _ Jer. xx. 17) to which conception is denied, are called, on account of their greediness, the daughters of the “Alika, is to be understood in the same way as when a mountain height is called, Jsa. v. 1, a horn of the son of oil. In the Arab., which is inexhaustibly rich in such figurative names, a man is called “ ason of the clay (limi);” a thief, “a son of the night;” a nettle, “the daughter of fire.” The under-world and a closed womb have the ‘Alka nature; they are insatiable, like the leech. It is unnecessary to interpret, as Zockler at last does, ‘Alika as the name of a female demon, and the m>?, “daughters,” as her companions. It may be adduced in favour of this view that nproye is without the article, after the manner of a proper name. But is it really without the article? Such a doubtful case we had before us at xxvii. 23. As yet only Bottcher, ὃ 394, has entered on this difficulty of punctuation. We compare Gen. xxix. 27, 77492; 1 Kings xii. 32, DDI?; 1 Chron. xiii. 7, ΠΡ; and consequently also Ps. cxlvi. 7, D pwye; thus the assimilating force of the Chateph appears here to have changed the syntactically required 5 and 3 into 5 and 3, But also supposing that ΠΡῸΝ in mpioye is treated as a proper name, this is explained from the circumstance that the leech is not meant here in the natural history sense of the word, but as embodied greediness, and is made a person, one individual being. Also the symbol of the two daughters is opposed to the mythological character of the ‘Alika. The imper. 23, from 37, occurs only here and at Dan. vii. 17 (={f), and in the bibl. Heb. only with the intentional "—, and in inflection forms. The insatiableness of sheol (xxvii. 20a) is described by Isaiah, v. 14; and Rachel, Gen. xxx. 1, with her “ Give me childyen,”

is an example of the greediness of the “ closed-up womb” (Gen. xx. 18). The womb of a childless wife is meant, which, because she would have children, the nuptie never satisfy; or also of one who, because she does not fear to become pregnant, invites to her many men, and always burns anew with lust. “In Arab. ’aluwak means not only one fast bound to her husband, but, according to Wetzstein, in the whole of Syria and Palestine, the prostitute, as well as the κίναιδοι, are called 'ulak (plur. ’alwak), because they obtrude themselves and hold fast to their victim” (Miihlau). In the third line, the three: the leech, hell, and the shut womb, are summarized: tria sunt que non satiantur. Thus it is to be translated with Fleischer, not with Miihlau and others, tria hee non satiantur. “ These three” is expressed in Heb. by mpx-wow, Ex. xxi. 11, or nv>w ms (71), 2 Sam. xxi. 22; 737 (which, besides, does not signify hec, but illa) is here, taken correctly, the pred., and represents in general the verb of being (Isa. li. 19), vid. at vi. 16. Zockler finds the point of the proverb in the greediness of the unfruitful womb, and is of opinion that the poet purposely somewhat concealed this point, and gave to his proverb thereby the enhanced attraction of the ingenious. But the tetrastich ‘0 yous shows that hell, which is compared to fire, and the unfruitful womb, to which the parched and thirsty earth is compared, were placed by the poet on one and the same line; it is otherwise with vers. 18—20, but where that point is nothing less than concealed.

The proverb of the ‘Alika is the first of the proverbs founded on the figure of an animal among the “ words” of Agur. It is now followed by another of a similar character:

Ver. 17 An eye that mocketh at his father,

And the young eagles shall eat it. If “an eye,” and not “eyes,” are spoken of here, this is accounted for by the consideration that the duality of the organ falls back against the unity of the mental activity and mental expression which it serves (cf. Psychol. p. 234). As haughtiness reveals itself (ver. 13) in the action of the eyes, so is the eye also the mirror of humble subordination, and also of malicious scorn which refuses reverence and subjection to father and mother. As in German the verbs [verspotten, spotten, hihnen, hohnsprechen| signifying to mock at or scorn may be used with the accus., genit., or dat., so also 1? [to deride} and na [to despise] may be connected at pleasure with either an accusative object or a dative object. Ben-Chajim, Athias, van der Hooght, and others write ΜΡ; Jablonski, Michaelis, Lowenstein, ayn; Miihlau, with Norzi, accurately, ah, with Munach, like 113N, Ps. lxv. 5; the writing of Ben- Asher? is yn, with Gaja, Chateph, and Munach. The punctuation of nap’ is more fluctuating. The word nape (e.g. Cod. Jaman.) may remain out of view, for the Dag. dirimens in ἢ stands here as firmly as at Gen. xlix. 10, cf. Ps. xlv. 10. But it 15 a question whether one has to write nap’? with Yod quies. (regarding this form of writing, preferred by Ben-Naphtali, the Psalmen-Comm. under Ps. xlv. 10, in both Edd.; Luzzatto’s Gramm. § 193; Baer’s Genesis, p. 84, note 2; and Heidenheim’s Pentateuch, with the text-crit. Comm. of Jekuthiél ha-Nakdans, under Gen. xlvii. 17, xlix. 10), as it is found in Kimchi, Michlol 45a, and under ΠΡ", and as also Norzi requires, or Np? (as e.g. Cod. Erfurt 1), which appears to be the form adopted by Ben-Asher, for it is attested? as such by Jekuthiél under Gen. xlix. 10, and also expressly as such by an old Masora-Cod. of the Erfurt Library. Lowenstein translates, “the weakness of the mother.” Thus after Rashi, who refers the word to ΠΠΡ, to draw together, and explains it, Gen. xlix. 10, “ collection;” but in the passage before us, understands it of the wrinkles on the countenance of the aged mother. Nachmani (Ramban) goes still further, giving to the word, at Gen. xlix. 10, everywhere the meaning of weakness and frailty. Aben Ezra also, and Gersuni (Ralbag), do not go beyond the meaning of a drawing together; and the LXX., with the

1 The Gaja has its reason in the Zinnor that follows, and the Munach in the syllable beginning with a moveable Sheva; syon with Scheva quiesc.

2 Kimchi is here no authority, for he contradicts himself regarding such word-forms. Thus, regarding bo, Jer. xxv. 36, in Michlol 870, and under Obs. The form also wavers. between finn’ and fins, Eccles. ii. 13. The Cod. Jaman. has here the Jod always quiese. δῷ

Aram., who all translate the word by senectus, have also ΠΠΡ in the sense of to become dull, infirm (certainly not the AZthiopic leh*ka, to become old, Hk through old age). But Kimchi, whom the Venet. aid Luther* files is informed by Abulwalid, skilled in the Arab., of a better: ΠΠΡ᾿ (or Mp, ef, 733, Ps. cxli. 3) is the Atel wakhat, obedience (vid. above AP, under la). If now it is said of sucha haughty, insolent eye, that the ravens of the brook (cf. 1 Kings xvii. 4) will pluck it out, and the 1721 eat it, they, the eagle’ s children, the unchild- ΠΑ human eye: it is oul the description of ilies fate that is before such an one, to die a violent death, and to become a prey to the fowls of heaven (cf. ¢.g. Jer. xvi. 3 f., and Passow’s Lex. under κόραξ); and if this threatening is not always thus literally fulfilled, yet one has not on that account to render the future optatively, with Hitzig; this is a false conclusion, from a too literal interpretation, for the threatening is only to be understood after its spirit, viz. that a fearful and a dishonourable end will come to such an one. Instead of ΠΥ͂Ρ", as Miihlau reads from the Leipzig Cod., ™P, with Mercha (Athias and Nissel have it with Tarcha), is to be read, for a word between Olewejored and Athnach must always contain a conjunctive accent (Thorath Emeth, p. 51; Accentuationssystem, xviii. § 9). "ΠΣ ΔῚΣ is also irregular, and instead of it ὉΠ ΠΣ is to be written, for the reason given above under ver. 16 (8%).

The following proverb, again a numerical proverb, begins with the eagle, mentioned in the last line of the foregoing:

Ver. 18 Three things lie beyond me,

19 The way of the eagle in the heavens, The way of a serpent over a rock, The way of a ship on the high sea, And the way of a man with a maid.

20 Thus is the way of the adulterous woman: She eateth and wipeth her mouth, and saith: I have done no iniquity.

1 Jerome translates, ef qui despicit partum matris sux. To partus there separates itself to him here the signification expectatio, Gen. xlix. 10, resting on a false combination with ΠΡ. To think of pareo, parui, paritum (Mublau), was not yet granted to him.

"31019 SNP), as relative clause, like 15d (where Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion rightly: τρία δέ ἐστιν ἃ οὐ πλησθήσεται), is joined to M57 nwo, On the other hand, yrs (τέσσαρα, for which the Keri, conforming to 18a, NYDN, τέσσαρας) has to be interpreted as object. accus. The introduction of four things that are not known is in expressions like Job xlii. 3; cf. Ps. exxxix. 6. The turning-point lies in the fourth; to that point the other three expressions gravitate, which have not an object in themselves, but are only as folie to the fourth. The articles wanting after 1039: they would be only the marks of the - gender, and are therefore unnecessary; cf. under xxix. 2. And while D'W2, in the heavens, and pr-30a, in the sea, are the expressions used, Wi¥ ὯΝ is used for on the rock, because here “on” is not at the same time “in,” “within,” as the eagle cleaves the air and the ship the waves. For this same reason the expression, “ the way of a man mspya,” is not to be understood of love unsought, suddenly taking possession of and captivating a man toward this or that maid, so that the principal thought of the proverb may be compared to the saying, “ marriages are made in heaven;” but, as in [idduschin 26, with reference to this passage, is said cottus via appellatur. The 2 refers to copula carnalis. But in what respect did his understanding not reach to this? Wonderful,” thus Hitzig explains as the best interpreter of this opinion elsewhere (cf. Psychol. p. 115)

propounded, “ appeared to him the flying, and that how a large and thus heavy bird could raise itself so high in the air (Job xxxix. 27); then how, over the smooth rock, which offers no hold, the serpent pushes itself along; finally, how the ship on the trackless waves, which present nothing to the eye as a guide, nevertheless finds its way. These three things have at the same time this in common, that they leave no trace of their pathway behind them. But of the fourth way that cannot be said; for the trace is left on the substrat, which the man ΤΠ, and it becomes manifest, possibly as pregnancy, keeping out of view that the nody may yet be nna. That which is wonderful is consequently only the coition itself, its mystical act and its

incomprehensible consequences.” But does not this interpretation carry in itself its own refutation? To the three wonderful ways which leave no traces behind them, there cannot be compared a fourth, the consequences of which are not only not trackless, but, on the contrary, become manifest as proceeding from the act in an incomprehensible way. The point of comparison is either the wonderfulness of the event or the tracklessness of its consequences. But now “ the way of a man nina” is altogether inappropriate to designate the wonderful event of the origin of a human being. How altogether differently the Chokma expresses itself on this matter is seen from Job x. 8-12; Eccles. xi. 5 (cf. Psychol. p. 210). That “‘way of a man with a maid” denotes only the act of coition, which physiologically differs in nothing from that of the lower animals, and which in itself, in the externality of its accomplishment, the poet cannot possibly call something transcendent. And why did he use the word anya, and not rather 7223 [with a female] or ΠΟ Ξ [id.]? For this reason, because he meant the act of coition, not as a physiological event, but as a historical occurrence, as it takes place particularly in youth as the goal of love, not always reached in the divinely-appointed way. The point of comparison hence is not the secret of conception, but the tracelessness of the carnal intercourse. Now it is also clear why the way of the serpent ἫΝ ‘5y was in hiseye: among grass, and still more in sand, the trace of the serpent’s path would perhaps be visible, but not on a hard stone, over which it has glided. © And it is clear why it is said of the ship n-25a [in the heart of the sea 7: while the ship is still in sight from the land, one knows the track it follows; but who can in the heart of the sea, 7.6. on the high sea, say that here or there a ship has ploughed the water, since the water-furrows have long ago disappeared? Looking to the heavens, one cannot say that an eagle has passed there; to the rock, that a serpent has wound its way over it; to the high sea, that a ship has been steered through it; to the maid, that a man has had carnal intercourse with her. That the fact might appear on nearer investigation, although this will not always guide to a certain conclusion, is not kept in view; only the outward appearance is spoken of, the intentional concealment (Rashi) being in this case added thereto, Sins against the sixth [=the seventh] commandment remain concealed from human knowledge, and are distinguished from others by this, that they shun human cognition (as the proverb says: ΠΛ DINNLEN px, there is for sins of the flesh no ἐπί- tporros)—unchastity can mask itself, the marks of chastity are deceitful, here only the All-seeing Eye (5 πὴ py, Aboth ii. 1) perceives that which is done. Yet it is not maintained that “the way of a man with a maid” refers exclusively to external intercourse; but altogether on this side the proverb gains ethical significance. Regarding mney (from Ddy, pubes esse et ceundi cupidus, not from ody, to conceal, and not, as Schultens derives it, from ody, signare, to seal) as distinguished from nana, vid. under Isa. vii. 14. The mark of maidenhood belongs to moby not in the same way as to myna (cf. Gen. xxiv. 43 with 16), but only the marks of puberty and youth; the wife ΠΡ (viz. MS NWS) cannot as such be called nosy. Ralbag’s gloss ΠΡῚΝ seni moby is incorrect, and in Arama’s explanation (A keda, Abschn. 9): the time is not to be determined when the sexual love of the husband to his wife flames out, ought to have been 71) invxa ws. One has therefore to suppose that ver. 20 explains what is meant by “the way of aman with a maid” by a strong example (for ‘the adulterous woman” can mean only an old adulteress), there not inclusive, for the tracklessness of sins of the flesh in their consequences.

This 20th verse does not appear to have been an original part of the numerical proverb, but is an appendix thereto (Hitzig). If we assume that }2 points forwards: thus as follows is it with the... (Fleischer), then we should hold this verse as an independent cognate proverb; but where is there a proverb (except xi. 19) that begins with 12? 15, which may mean eodem modo (for one does not say 53 13) as well as 60 modo, here points backwards in the former sense. Instead of ANNs mp (not 12; for the attraction of that which follows, brought about by the retrogression of the tone of the first word, requires dageshing, Thorath Emeth, p. 30) the LX X. has merely ἀπονι- vrapévn, i.e. as Immanuel explains: MSY HNP, abstergens semet ipsam, with Grotius, who to tergens os suum adds the remark: σεμνολογία (honesta elocutio). But eating is just a figure, like the “ secret bread,” ix. 17, and the wiping of the mouth belongs to this figure. This appendix, with its 15, confirms it, that the intention of the four ways refers to the tracklessness of the consequences.

It is now not at all necessary to rack one’s brains over the grounds or the reasons of the arrangement of the following proverb (vid. Hitzig). There are, up to this point, two numerical proverbs which begin with D’AY, ver. 7, and ‘AW, ver. 15; after the cipher 2 there ‘then, ver. 18, Βα ον ἃ the eiphet 3, hilt is now here continued:

Ver. 21 Under three things doth the earth tremble, And under four can it not stand: 22 Under a servant when he becomes king, And a profligate when he has bread enough; 23 Under an unloved woman when she is married, And a maid-servant when she becomes heiress to her mistress.

We cannot say here that the 4 falls into 3 +1; but the four consists of four ones standing beside one another. 8 is here without pausal change, although the Athnach there, as at ver. 24, where the modification of sound occurs, divides the verse into two; 728, 140 (cf. Ps. xxxv. 2), remains, on the other hand, correctly unchanged. The “earth” stands here, as frequently, instead of the inhabitants of the earth. It trembles when one of the four persons named above comes and gains free space for acting; it feels itself oppressed as by an insufferable burden (an expression similar to Amos vil. 10);—the arrangement of society is shattered; an oppressive closeness of the air, as it were, settles over all minds. ‘The first case is already designated, xix. 10, as improper: under a slave, when he comes to reign (quum rex fit); for suppose that such an one has reached the place of government, not by the murder of the king and by the robbery of the crown, but, as is possible in an elective monarchy, by means of the dominant party of the people, he will, as a rule, seek to indemnify himself in his present highness for his former lowliness, and in the measure of his rule show himself unable to rise above his servile habits, and to pass out of ee limited circle of his earlier state. The second case is this: a 232, one whose mind is perverted and whose conduct is profligate,—in short, a low man (vid. xvii. 17), —on-yaen (cf. Metheg-Setzung, § 28), t.e. has enough to eat (cf. to the expression xxviii. 19, Jer. xliv. 17); for this undeserved living without care and without want makes him only so much the more arrogant, and troublesome, and dangerous. The nx’, in the second case, is not thought of as a spouse, and that, as in supposed polygamy, Gen. xxix. 31, Deut. xxi. 15-17, as fallen into disfavour, but who again comes to favour and honour (Dathe, Rosenmiiller); for she can be AN’ without her own fault, and as such she is yet no ΠΟ}: and it is not to be perceived why the re-assumption of such an one should shatter social order. Rightly Hitzig, and, after his example, Zockler: an unmarried lady, an old spinster, is meant, whom no one desired because she had nothing attractive, and was only repulsive (cf. Grimm, under Sir. vii. 264). If such an one, as Syan ‘2 says, at length, however, finds her husband and enters into the married relation, then she carries her head so much the higher; for she gives vent to ill-humour, strengthened by long restraint, against her subordinates; then she richly requites her earlier and happily married companions for their depreciation of her, among whom she had to suffer, as able to find no one who would love her. In the last case it is asked whether ¥1'N7"3 is meant of inheriting as an heiress (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targ., Jerome, the Venet., and Luther), or supplanting (Euchel, Gesenius, Hitzig), 1.6. an entering into the inheritance of the dead, or an entering into the place of a living mistress. Since w', with the accus. of the person, Gen. xv. 3, 4, signifies to be the heir of one, and only with the accus. of peoples and lands signifies, “to take into possession (to seize) by supplanting,” the former is to be preferred; the LX.X. (Syr.), ὅταν ἐκβάλῃ, appear to have read wna, This %a would certainly be, after Gen. xxi. 10, a piece of the world ‘turned upside down; but also the entering, as heiress, into the inheritance, snakes the maid-servant the reverse of that which she was before, and brings with it the danger that the heiress, notwithstanding her want of culture and dignity, demean herself also as heiress of the rank. Although the old Israelitish law knew only intestate succession to an inheritance, yet there also the case might arise, that where there were no natural or legal heirs, the bequest of a wife of rank passed over to her servants and nurses.

Vers. 24-28. Another proverb with the cipher 4, its first line terminating in ON:

Ver. 24 Four are the little things of the earth, And yet they are quick of wit—wise: 25 The ants—a people not strong, And yet they prepare in summer their food; 26 Conies—a people not mighty, And yet set their dwelling on the rocks; 27 No king have the locusts, And yet they go forth in rank and file, all of them together; 28 The lizard thou canst catch with the hands, And yet it is in the king’s palaces.

By the disjunctive accent, XYD8, in spite of the following word toned on the beginning, retains its ul/ima-toning, 18a; but here, by the conjunctive accent, the tone retrogrades to the penult., which does not elsewhere occur with this word. The connection N30? is not superlat. (for it is impossible that the author could reckon the 35¥, conies, among the smallest of beasts), but, as in the expression #1877232, the honoured of the earth, Isa. xxiii. 8. In 240, the LXX., Syr., Jerome, and Luther see in 2 the comparative: σοφώτερα τῶν σοφῶν (Ὁ 2372), but in this connection of words it could only be partitive (wise, reckoning among the wise); the part. Pual 0'22n'> (Theodotion, the Venet. cecopicpéva) was in use after Ps. lviii. 6, and signified, like ΟΣ 2v2, Ex. xii. 9, boiled well; thus psn» DDN, taught wit, wise, cunning, prudent (cf. Ps. lxiv. 7, a planned plan=a cunningly wrought out plan; Isa. xxviii. 16, and Vitringa thereto: grounded = firm, grounding), Ewald, ὃ 3l3c. The reckoning moves in the contrasts of littleness to power, and of greatness to prudence. The unfolding of the Ayn [four] begins with the pan [the ants] and D°35Y [conies], subject conceptions with apposit. joined; 26a, at least in the indetermination of the subject, cannot be a declaration. Regarding the fut. consec. as the expression, not of a causal, but of a contrasted connection, vid. Ewald, ὃ 342, la. The ants are called DY, and they deserve this name, for they truly form communities with well-ordered economy; but, besides, the ancients took delight in speaking of the various classes of animals as peoples and states. That which is said, 250, as also vi. 8, is not to be understood of stores laid up for the winter. For the ants are torpid for the most part in winter; but certainly the summer is their time for labour, when the labourers gather together food, and feed in a truly motherly way the helpless. {5¥, translated arbitrarily in the Venet. by ἐχῖνοι, in the LXX. by χοιρογρύλλιοι, by the Syr. and Targ. here and at Ps. civ. by 030, and by Jerome by lepusculus (cf. λαγίδιον), both of which names, here to be understood after a prevailing Jewish opinion, denote the Caninichen* (Luther), Latin euniculus (xovixdos), is not the kaninchen [rabbit], nor the marmot, χοιρογρύλλιος (Ὁ. B. Michaelis, Ziegler, and others); this is called in Arab. yarbuw’; but jaw is the wabr, which in South Arab. is called thufun, or rather thafan, viz. the klippdachs (hyrax syriacus), like the marmot, which lives in societies and dwells in the clefts of the mountains, e.g. at the Kedron, the Dead Sea, and at Sinai (vid. Knobel on Lev. xi. 5; ef. Brehm’s Thierleben, ii. p. 721 ff., the Illustrirte Zeitung, 1868, Nr. 1290). The klippdachs are a weak little people, and yet with their weakness they unite the wisdom that they establish themselves among the rocks. The ants show their wisdom in the organization of labour, here in the arranying of inaccessible dwellings.

Ver. 27. Thirdly, the locusts belong to the class of the wise little folk: these have no king, but notwithstanding that, there is not wanting to them guidance; by the power and foresight of one sovereign will they march out as a body, ὙΠ, dividing, viz. themselves, not the booty (Schultens); thus: dividing themselves into companies, ordine disposite, from 78M, to divide, to fall into two (cogn. M37, e.g. Gen. xxxii. 7) or more parts; Miihlau, p. 59-64, has thoroughly investigated this whole wide range of roots. What this 787 denotes is described in Joel ii. 7: “Like mighty men they hunt; like men of war they climb the walls; they march forward every one on his appointed way, and change not their paths.” Jerome narrates from his own observation: tanto ordine ex dispositione jubentis (LXX. at this passage before us: ἀφ᾽ ἑνὸς κελεύσματος εὐτάκτως) volitant, ut instar tesserularum, que in pavimentis artificis figuntur manu,

1 The kaninchen as well as the klippdachs [cliff-badgers] may be meant, Lev. xi. 5 (Deut. xiv. 7); neither of these belong to the bisulca, nor yet, it is true, to the ruminants, though to the ancients (as was the case also with hares) they seemed to do. The klippdach is still, in Egypt and Syria, regarded as unclean.

suum locum teneant et ne puncto quidem et ut ita dicam unque transverso declinent ad alterum. Aben Ezra and others find in ὙΠ the idea of gathering together in a body, and in troops, according to which also the Syr., Targ., Jerome, and Luther translate; Kimchi and Meiri gloss ysn by yn)n and mp, and understand it of the cutting off, z.e. the eating up, of plants and trees, which the Venet. renders by ἐκτέμνουσα.

Ver. 28. In this verse the expression wavers in a way that is with difficulty determinable between ΠΟ and MnDY. The Edd. of Opitz Jablonski and Vin der Hooght have ‘ny, but the most, from the Venetian 1521 to Nissel, have "οὐ (vid Miihlau, p- 69). The Codd. also differ as to the reading of the word; thus the Codd. Erfurt 2 and 3 have ‘nw, but Cod. 1294 has ‘ow. Isaak Tschelebi and Moses Algazi, in their writings regarding words with w and & (Constant. 1723 and 1799), prefer ‘nv, and so also do Mordecai Nathan in his Concordance (1563-4), David de Pomis (1587), and Norzi. An important evidence is the writing ΠΡΌ, Schabbath 776, but it is as little decisive as iD [coat of mail], used by Jeremiah [xlvi. 4], is decisive against the older expression iY. But what kind of a beast is meant here is a question. The swallow is at once tobe set aside, as the Venet. translates (χελιδών) after Kimchi, who explains after Abulwalid, but not without including himself, that the Heb. word for (Arab.) khutiaf (which is still the name given to the swallow from its quickness of motion), according to Haja’s testimony, is much rather ΠΛ), a name for the swallow; which also the Arab. (Freytag, ii. p. 368) and the modern Syriac confirm; besides, in old Heb. it has the name of pw or D'D (from Arab. shash, to fly confusedly hither and thither). In like manner the ape (Aben Ezra, Meiri, Immanuel) is to be set aside, for this is called ip (Indian hap, kap, kamp, to move inconstantly and quickly up and down), and appears here admissible only on the ground that from wann ova they read that the beast had a resemblance to man. There remains now only the lizard (LX X. Jerome) and the spider (Luther) to be considered. The Talmud, Schabbath 770, reckons five instances in which fear of the weaker pursues the stronger: one of these instances is ἼΠ by map nos, another sipyn Sy neyo nos. The swallow, thus Rashi explains, creeps under the wings of the eagle and hinders it from spreading them out in its flight; and the spider (araigne) creeps into the ear of the scorpion; or also: a bruised spider applied heals the scorpion’s sting. A second time the word occurs, Sanhedrin 1036, where it is said of King Amon that he burnt the Tora, and that over the altar came a ΩΦ (here with w), which Rashi explains of the spider (a spider’s web). But Aruch testifies that in these two places of the Talmud the explanation is divided between ragnatelo (spider) and (Ital.) lucérta (lizard). For the latter, he refers to Lev. xi. 80, where nxyd (also explained by Rashi by /ézard) in the Jerus. Targ. is rendered ὦ by nnn (the writing here also varies between & and & or Ὁ). Accordingly, and after the LX X. and Jerome, it may be regarded asa confirmed tradition that ΠΥ means not the spider, for which the name 339 is coined, but the lizard, and particularly the stellion (spotted lizard). Thus the later language used it as a word still living (plur. ni"212D, Sifre, under Deut. xxmiil. 19). The Arab. also confirms this name as applicable to the lizard.?, “To this day in Syria and in the Desert it is called samawiyyat, probably not from poison, but from samawah = ΠΟ, the wilderness, because the beast is found only in the stony heaps of the Kharab” (Miihlau after Wetzstein). If this derivation is correct, then ΠΟ is to be regarded as an original Heb. expression; but the lizard’s name, samm, which, without doubt, designates the animal as poisonous (cf. DD, samam, samm, vapour, poisonous breath, poison), favours Schultens’ view: mony = (Arab.) samamyyat, afflatu interficiens, or generally venenosa. In the expression ¥BNA O'S, Schultens, Gesenius, Ewald, Hitzig, Geier, and others, understand no of the two fore-feet of the lizard: “the lizard feels (or: seizes) with its two hands;” but granting that py is used of the fifteen feet of the stellio, or of the climbing feet of any other animal (LXX. καλα-