Excerpt from The Wise Men of Ancient Israel: Their Proverbs
Of the books of the Old Testament perhaps none is less read or studied than the book of Proverbs. Ministers sometimes search through it for a text, and the International Sunday School Committee has been wont, every seven years, to select a chapter or two from it for study. Old people ordinarily find great pleasure in reading it, since its epigrammatic verses so truly and pointedly express their own life experiences. But to the great majority of Bible students, and especially to the young, for whom it has the most valuable message, it is a terra incognita.
The reason for this general neglect is patent. The book of Proverbs is the supreme example of the sententious type of literature so dear to the Semitic mind. Like many another product of the East, it is also in its external form signally deficient in scientific arrangement, and consequently in logical connection. To the Oriental this seems most natural, but to the Occidental it is simply confusing. No sooner has the latter grasped the meaning of one maxim than he is plunged into an entirely different realm of thought. Having made the conquest of the truth contained in the second proverb, he is obliged to repeat the same experience in each succeeding verse. The result is most discouraging. All that was gained from the earlier verses is lost, because association of ideas is impossible.
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