Note 34 — Chapter IV · The Day of Small Things

For these titles see Chapter II., p. 37. That such a phrase as The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel (Pr. I1) at the head of a section does not necessarily imply or even claim authorship, may seem astonishing to those unacquainted with ancient literature, but it is easily understood by those who have made so much as a moderate study of the subject. The ancient title in modern parlance would be represented by some such heading as the following, “A collection of sayings representative of Hebrew wisdom dedicated to the memory and example of that royal lover of Wisdom, King Solomon.” To suppose that the propriety of the ancient procedure ought to be judged by modern canons of literary right and wrong would be both unjust and foolish. Similarly from the heading prefixed to Pr. 25-29, These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out; it does not follow that the proverbs in those chapters were old in Hezekiah’s time. Probably Hezekiah, like Solomon, showed special interest in literary work, and it may be that a collection of proverbs formed in his reign is the nucleus of the present chapters 25-29 (So Volz, Weisheit, p. 95). On the other hand it is possible that nothing more should be inferred than that, there being a tradition of literary activity in Hezekiah’s reign, the compilers of the Book of Proverbs made use of the tradition in order to indicate (by this title) that in their opinion the proverbs of chaps. 25-29 were later than or secondary to the “Solomonic” proverbs which precede in chs. 1-24 (So Toy, Proverbs, § vi., and p. 457); and see also Driver, Literature of the Old Testament, p. 405.