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kingdom began, that cloudy aspect of the kingdom which is borne by the second supplement, Pro 24:23-25, was brought near.
Thus between Solomon and Hezekiah, and probably under Jehoshaphat, the older Book of Proverbs contained in chap. 1-24:22 first appeared. The “Proverbs of Solomon,” Prov 10:1-22:16, which formed the principal part, the very kernel of it, were enclosed on the one side, at their commencement, by the lengthened introduction 1:7-9:18, in which the collector announces himself as a highly gifted teacher and as the instrument of the Spirit of revelation, and on the other side are shut in at their close by “the Words of the Wise,” 22:17-24:34. The author, indeed, does not announce Pro 1:6 such a supplement of “the Words of the Wise;” but after these words in the title of the book, he leads us to expect it. The introduction to the supplement Pro 22:17-21 sounds like an echo of the larger introduction, and corresponds to the smaller compass of the supplement. The work bears on the whole the stamp of a unity; for even in the last proverb with which it closes (Pro 24:21., “My son, fear thou Jahve and the king,” etc.), there still sounds the same key-note which the author had struck at the commencement. A later collector, belonging to the time subsequent to Hezekiah, enlarged the work by the addition of the Hezekiah-portion, and by a short supplement of “the Words of the Wise,” which he introduces, according to the law of analogy, after 22:17-24:22. The harmony of the superscriptions Pro 24:23; Pro 25:1, favours at least the supposition that these supplements are the work of one hand. The circumstance that “the Words of the Wise,” 22:17-24:22, in two of their maxims refer to the older collection of Solomonic proverbs, but, on the contrary, that “the Words of the Wise,” Pro 24:23., refer in Pro 24:23 to the Hezekiah-collection, and in Pro 24:33. to the introduction 1:7-9:18, strengthens the supposition that with Pro 24:23 a second half of the book, added by another hand, begins. There is no reason for not attributing the appendix chap. 30-31 to this second collector; perhaps he seeks, as already remarked above, to render by means of it the conclusion of the extended Book of Proverbs uniform with that of the older book. Like the older collection of “Proverbs of Solomon,” so also now the Hezekiah-collection has “Proverbs of the Wise” on the right and on the left, and the king of proverbial poetry stands in the midst of a worthy retinue. The second collector distinguishes himself from the first by this, that he never