In its devotion, however, to the principles which avail in social and industrial life, Wisdom never cut loose from or ignored religion. Its beginning, or positive principle, was taken as the fear of Jehovah, or, as we should say, reverence (Prov. i, 7); its principle of negation, departing from evil (Job xxviii, 28). Thus it identified Wisdom values squarely with religious. To be wise was the same as to be righteous; to be wicked was to be a fool. The unscrupulous cleverness or crookedness which grasps at immediate success is a delusion:

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man ;

But the end thereof are the ways of death (Prov. xiv, 12; xvi, 25).

The wealth that one gains in dishonest ways has no life value; the true guaranty of life is righteousness :

Treasures of wickedness profit nothing;

But righteousness delivereth from death (Prov. x, 2).

It is not on superficial or opportunist motives that this philosophy of life is founded, but on the permanent elements of character; not on acuteness of intellect alone but on loyalty to conscience :

There are many devices in a man's heart;

But the counsel of Jehovah, that shall stand (Prov. xix, 21).

Through this practical moralizing on the active principles of life it came about that the ideal of righteousness, of strict loyalty to conscience, was ingrained in the Hebrew mind as its distinctive bent. We distinguish its racial genius by that; just as beauty and clear thinking distinguished the Greeks, and order and system the Romans. The Hebrew education, as this body of the proverb literature reveals, was an education in conscience and practical good sense.

As to form, the utterances of Hebrew Wisdom do not mind the distinctions that we draw between proverbs, parables, fables, allegories, apologues, and the like. All are alike mashals; all use in some way the principle of comparison

Wisdom as to Form

१९

or analogy; and the term. mashal" covers a range from the most condensed maxim to a flowing and continuous line of narrative, like the parables of Jesus. The element common to them is their didactic purpose, and their elucidation of spiritual truths by material facts and objects, or, as in the antithetic proverbs, of one spiritual truth by another.

The main distinction of the Solomonic mashals, as to form, seems to be that they are detached lessons, not making up a system or continuity but each complete in itself; expressed generally in the couplet, and not often extending beyond a quatrain. As the Wisdom literature becomes more developed and mature, however, there is a tendency to make the lesson longer, more flowing and more continuous; in other words, to give more amplification and elucidation to the thought, while still the couplet remains the verse unit. It is thus that from detached counsels on life Wisdom in course of time becomes a coördinated philosophy. This is seen especially in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, which are written in the non-Solomonic or continuous mashal. How this differs from the Solomonic can be seen in several passages outside the Book of Proverbs; for example, Balaam's oracles (Num. xxiii, xxiv); Job's discourses (Job xxvii, xxix); and two of the Psalms (Psa. xlix, lxxviii). Isaiah also composed a passage in the later mashal form (Isa. xxviii, 23-29). It was about in his time, probably, that the Wisdom literature was in greatest vogue among all classes of the people.

CHAPTER III

LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER

[Under the early kings of Judah and Israel, until cir. 783 B.C.]

ROM the death of Solomon, which occurred about

FRO

940 B.C., to the so-called literary prophets, about 754 B.C., a period of nearly two centuries, the people of Israel were undergoing politically the varying fortunes of the two rival kingdoms into which the nation split as soon as Solomon's son Rehoboam came to the throne. The immediate occasion of the disruption was ascribed to Rehoboam's insolent determination to perpetuate the despotic rule of his father (1 Kings xii, 1-15); but conditions were ripe for it, and it had been foreseen and sanctioned by prophecy while Solomon was yet alive (1 Kings xi, 26–40).

This political separation was in fact only the culmination of a rivalry which had from early times existed between southern and northern Israel; a rivalry which centered in the two strongest tribes, Judah and Ephraim. Each of these tribes accordingly became the nucleus of a kingdom. The kingdom of Judah, or the southern kingdom, inherited the capital Jerusalem, the Temple with its religious traditions and worship, and the kingly dynasty from the heroic times of David. The kingdom of Ephraim, or the northern kingdom, was set up anew, with a capital shifting until Omri buift Samaria; with the worship not centralized at the capital but carried on at various high places or local shrines, of which Bethel and Dan were the chief; and with the royal dynasty frequently changed, generally by usurpation and assassination.

NOTES. 1. The Capitals of the Northern Kingdom. Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, chose Shechem (now Nablous) for his capital (1 Kings xii, 25), a town not well situated for fortification or defense. A later king, Baasha, who came to the kingdom by usurpation, began to build Ramah as a frontier capital against Judah (1 Kings xv, 17), but on an invasion from Syria left off building Ramah and dwelt in Tirzah (1 Kings xv, 21). This continued to be the capital until Omri built Samaria, which remained the capital until the kingdom was broken up (1 Kings xvi, 24).

2. The Centers of Worship. Jeroboam, on coming to the northern kingdom, soon perceived that it would not do to let his people go up to Jerusalem for pilgrimage and worship; so he caused images to be made and set up shrines at Bethel and Dan, at the south and the north of his kingdom, and also established centers of worship at other places (1 Kings xii, 28–31). The corruptions of worship that came to characterize these places are denounced in Amos iv, 4.

Of these two kingdoms Judah, retaining only two of the twelve tribes (1 Kings xi, 36) together with the priestly tribe of Levi, was the weaker in numbers and power, but the more organized and stable, retaining its autonomy nearly a century and a half longer; its religious culture, too, being more centralized, was more defined and homogeneous. Ephraim, the northern kingdom, taking the general name of the kingdom of Israel, and comprising ten of the twelve tribes, was stronger and more prosperous in wealth and agriculture and trade, having in fact a much more fertile and attractive territory; but more exposed to the evils of foreign invasion, in closer contact with the idolatrous Canaanites, and in general of looser moral and religious character.

I. ONE PEOPLE IN TWO KINGDOMS When, after the secession of the northern tribes, Rehoboam was minded to force them back by war, the word of

prophet came to him: "Thus saith Jehovah, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel return every man to his house; for this thing is of

me" (1 Kings xii, 24). A similar intimation of Jehovah's purpose had been given to Jeroboam, the first ruler of the northern kingdom, while Solomon was yet living (1 Kings xi, 29-37). The political separation of the kingdoms was evidently of Jehovah's design: he had a larger mission and destiny for the Hebrew race than men could plan or see. But while the kingdoms were two states, often in rivalry and war with each other, they continued to be one people: one in the consciousness of ancestry and origin; one in tribal affiliation; one in religion and sense of the claims of righteousness. Their disunion was in fact only superficial, confined to matters of state polity and perhaps of religious orthodoxy; while in all vital things they had not only the sense of brotherhood but of communal unlikeness to all the nations round about them. On this homogeneous character the prophets and sages could reckon; to it they could appeal in matters of history and motive and destiny.

I

Traits and Tendencies in the Two. The two centuries from the literary awakening in Solomon's time until the literary prophets begin their work may be regarded as a kind of melting-pot .era, during which the racial and religious idea is fused and shaped into a general consciousness of the nation's place in history and the world. The period coincides with the existence of the two kingdoms as unviolated states; while each can realize its national idea and character, and before the shadow of invasion and overthrow comes upon it from the east. During this time the race's character and conscience are forming. The two kingdoms are becoming aware of the claims of their history upon them: their ancestral faith, their peculiar heritage of ideas, their noble roll of patriarchs and leaders, their God Jehovah and his intimate relations with them. All this is fostered by unnamed men of leading among them, sages