Proverb

PROVERB prov'-erb (mashal, chidhah; parabole (Luke 4:23), paroimia (John 16:25,29)):

I. FOLK MEANING AND USE

1. The Primitive Sense

2. The Communal Origin

3. Animus of Proverbs

II. LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROVERB

1. Discovery of Literary Value

2. The Differentiation

III. AS UNIT OF A STRAIN OF LITERATURE

1. From Detachment to Continuity

2. The Conception of Wisdom

3. In Later Times

By this term mainly, but sometimes by the term "parable" (e.g. Numbers 23:7,18; 24:3,15; Job 27:1; 29:1), is translated the Hebrew word (mashal), which designates the formal unit or vehicle of didactic discourse. The mashal was an enunciation of truth, self-evident and self-illustrative, in some pointed or concentrated form adapted to arrest attention, awaken responsive thought, and remain fixed in memory. Its scope was broader than that of our word "proverb," taking in subject matter as well as form. The mashal broadened indeed in the course of its history, until it became the characteristic idiom of Hebrew philosophy, as distinguished from the dialectic method of the Greeks. The Hebrew mind was not inductive but intuitive; it saw and asserted; and the word mashal is the generic term for the form in which its assertion was embodied.

I. Folk Meaning and Use.

1. The Primitive Sense:

The mashal, nearly in our sense of proverb, traces back to the heart and life of the common folk; it is a native form reflecting in a peculiarly intimate way the distinctive genius of the Hebrew people. As to the primitive sense of the word, it is usually traced to a root meaning "likeness," or "comparison," as if the first sense of it were of the principle of analogy underlying it; but this derivation is a guess. The word is just as likely to be connected with the verb mashal, "to rule" or "master"; so by a natural secondary meaning to denote that statement which gives the decisive or final verdict, says the master word. The idea of how the thing is said, or by what phrasing, would be a later differentiation, coming in with literary refinement.

2. The Communal Origin:

The earliest cited proverb (1 Samuel 10:12, repeated with varied occasion, 1 Samuel 19:24) seems to have risen spontaneously from the people's observation. That Saul, the son of Kish, whose very different temperament everybody knew, should be susceptible to the wild ecstasy of strolling prophets was an astonishing thing, as it were a discovery in psychology; "Therefore it became a proverb, Is Saul also among the prophets?" A few years later David, explaining his clemency in sparing the life of the king who has become his deadly foe, quotes from a folk fund of proverbs:

1 Samuel 24:13, "As saith the proverb of the ancients, Out of the wicked cometh forth wickedness; but my hand shall not be upon thee." The prophet Ezekiel quotes a proverb which evidently embodies a popular belief: "The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth"; which he corrects to, "The days are at hand, and the fulfillment of every vision" (Ezekiel 12:22,23). Both Ezekiel and Jeremiah (Ezekiel 18:2; Jeremiah 31:29) quote the same current proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge," in order to announce that the time has come for its discontinuance. These last two examples are very instructive. They show how the body of the people put the inwardness of their history into proverb form, as it were a portable lesson for the times; they show also how the prophets availed themselves of these floating sayings to point their own message. Ezekiel seems indeed to recognize the facility with which a situation may bring forth a proverb: Ezekiel 16:44, "Every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee (literally every one that mashals shall mashal against thee), saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter."

3. Animus of Proverbs:

One element of the proverb, which a wide-awake people like the Hebrews would soon discover, was its adaptability for personal portrayal or satire, like a home thrust. Hence, the popular use of the name mashal came to connote its animus, generally of sarcasm or scorn. The taunting verse raised against Heshbon, Numbers 21:27-30, is attributed to them "that speak in proverbs" (meshalim); and Isaiah's taunt in his burden of Babylon (Isaiah 14:4-20) is composed in the proverb measure:

"Thou shalt take up this parable (mashal, the King James Version "proverb") against the king of Babylon." Answering to this prevailing animus of proverbs was a corresponding susceptibility to their sting and rankle; they were the kind of utterance that most surely found the national and individual self-consciousness. To be a proverb--to be in everybody's mouth as a subject of laughter, or as a synonym for some awful atrocity--was about the most dreadful thing that could befall them. To be "a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse" (Jeremiah 24:9) was all one. That this should be the nation's fate was held as a threat over them by lawgiver and prophet (Deuteronomy 28:37; 1 Kings 9:7); and in adversities of experience, both individual and collective, the thing that was most keenly felt was to have become a byword (mashal) (Psalms 44:14; 69:11).

II. Literary Development of the Proverb.

1. Discovery of Literary Value:

The rank of proverb was by no means attributed to every popular saying, however the people might set store by it. If its application was merely local (e.g. 2 Samuel 20:18; Genesis 22:14) or temporary (note how Jeremiah and Ezekiel announce popular sayings as obsolete), it remained in its place and time. About the proverb, on the other hand, there was the sense of a value universal and permanent, fitting it for literary immortality. Nor was the proverb itself a run-wild thing, at the shaping of the crowd; from the beginning it was in the hands of "those who speak in meshalim," whose business it was to put it into skillful wording. The popular proverb, however, and the literary proverb were and continued two different things. There came a time, in the literary development of Israel, when the value of the mashal as a vehicle of instruction came to be recognized; from which time a systematic cultivation of this type of discourse began. That time, as seems most probable, was the reign of King Solomon, when in a special degree the people awoke to the life and industry and intercourse and wealth of the world around them. The king himself was `large hearted' (1 Kings 4:29), versatile, with literary tastes; "spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five"; and his whole generation, both in Israel and surrounding nations, was engaged in a vigorous movement of thought and "wisdom" (see the whole passage, 1 Kings 4:29-34). For the unit and vehicle of this new thought the old native form of the mashal or proverb was chosen; it became the recognized medium of popular education and counsel, especially of the young; and the mashal itself was molded to the classic form, condensed, pointed, aphoristic, which we see best exemplified in the Book of Proverbs 10-22:16--probably the earliest collection of this kind of literature. In this body of proverbs we see also that instead of retaining the unbalanced single assertion of the popular proverb, as it appears in 1 Samuel 10:12; 24:13, these composers of literary proverbs borrowed the poetic parallelism, or couplet, which in two lines sets two statements over against each other by antithesis or repetition, and cultivated this to its most condensed and epigrammatic construction. Thus the mashal took to itself a literary self-consciousness and became a work of art.

2. The Differentiation:

Up to the time of this literary development a proverb was recognized simply as a proverb, with little sense of its various phases, except that there was a strong popular tendency to identify it with satire, and with less thought of the elements of its life and power. With the refinement of form, however, came a recognition of its inwardness. Under the generic term mashal, certain elements were differentiated; not, however, as we are wont to distinguish--parable, fable, apologue, allegory--these remained undifferentiated. The most fundamental distinction of classes, perhaps, is given in Proverbs 1:6:

"To understand a proverb, and a figure, the words of the wise, and their dark sayings." Here it seems the word "proverb" (mashal) and "words of the wise," paired off with each other, are the generic terms; the other two, the differentiating terms, name respectively the two fundamental directions of the mashal, toward the clear and toward the enigmatic. Both are essential elements. The word translated "figure" (melitsah) is rather "interpretation," and seems to refer to the illuminative element of the mashal, and this was mainly analogy. Natural objects, phases of experience, contrasts were drawn into the mashal to furnish analogies for life; Solomon's use of plants and animals in his discourses (1 Kings 4:33) was not by way of natural history, but as analogies to illustrate his meshalim. The word translated "dark sayings" (chidhoth) is the word elsewhere translated "riddle" (Samson's riddle, for instance, was a [~chidhah, Judges 14:13,14), and refers to that quality of the proverb which, by challenging the hearer's acumen, gives it zest; it is due to an association of things so indirectly related that one must supply intermediate thoughts to resolve them. All of this of course. goes to justify the proverb as a capital vehicle for instruction and counsel; it has the elements that appeal to attention, responsive thought, and memory, while on the other hand its basis of analogy makes it illuminative.

III. As Unit of a Strain of Literature.

1. From Detachment to Continuity:

Until it reached its classic perfection of phrasing, say during the time from Solomon to Hezekiah, the formal development of the proverb was concentrative; the single utterance disposed of its whole subject, as in a capsule. But the development of the mashal form from the antithetic to the synonymous couplet gave rise to a proverb in which the explanatory member did not fully close the case; the subject craved further elucidation, and so a group of several couplets was sometimes necessary to present a case (compare e.g. about the sluggard, Proverbs 26:13-16). From this group of proverbs the transition was easy to a continuous passage, in which the snappy parallelism of the proverb yields to the flow of poetry; see e.g. Proverbs 27:23-27. This is due evidently to a more penetrative and analytic mode of thinking, which can no longer satisfy its statement of truth in a single illustration or maxim.

2. The Conception of Wisdom:

As the store of detached utterances on various phases of practical life accumulated and the task of collecting them was undertaken, it was seen that they had a common suffusion and bearing, that in fact they constituted a distinctive strain of literature. The field of this literature was broad, and recognized (see Proverbs 1:1-5) as promotive of many intellectual virtues; but the inclusive name under which it was gathered was Wisdom (chokhmah). Wisdom, deduced thus from a fund of maxims and analogies, became the Hebrew equivalent for philosophy. With the further history of it this article is not concerned, except to note that the mashal or proverb form held itself free to expand into a continuous and extended discourse, or to hold itself in to the couplet form. As to illustrative quality, too, its scope was liberal enough to include a fully developed parable; see for instance Ezekiel 17:1-10, where the prophet is bidden to "put forth a riddle, and speak a parable (literally, mashal a mashal) unto the house of Israel."

3. In Later Time:

The existence of so considerable a body of proverbs is a testimony to the Hebrew genius for sententious and weighty expression, a virtue of speech which was held in special esteem. From the uses of practical wisdom the mashal form was borrowed by the later scribes and doctors of the law; we see it for instance in loose and artificial use in such books as Pirqe 'Abhoth, which gives the impression that the utterance so grandly represented in the Solomonic proverbs had become decadent. It is in another direction rather that the virtues of the mashal reach their culmination. In the phrasal felicity and illustrative lucidity of our Lord's discourses, and not less in His parables, employed that the multitude "may see and yet not see" (Mark 4:12), we have the values of the ancient mashal in their perfection, in a literary form so true to its object that we do not think of its artistry at all.

See also GAMES, I, 6.

John Franklin Genung

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Bibliography Information

Orr, James, M.A., D.D. General Editor. "Entry for 'PROVERB'".  "International Standard Bible Encyclopedia".  1915.