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himself that this name has not merely a common ethical sense, but begins to be the name of those who made wisdom, i.e., the knowledge of things in the depths of their essence, their special lifework, and who connected themselves together in oneness of sentiment and fellowship into a particular circle within the community. To this conclusion we are conducted by such proverbs as Pro 13:20 -
He that walketh with wise men becomes wise,
And whoever has intercourse with fools is destroyed;
Pro 15:12 -
The scorner loveth not that one reprove him:
To wise men he goeth not; - and by the contrast, which prevails in the Book of Proverbs, between לץ (mocker) and חכם (wise), in which we see that, at the same time with the striving after wisdom, scepticism also, which we call free thought, obtained a great ascendency in Israel. Mockery of religion, rejection of God in principle and practice, a casting away of all fear of Jahve, and in general of all δεισιδαιμονία, were in Israel phenomena which had already marked the times of David. One may see from the Psalms that the community of the Davidic era is to be by no means regarded as furnishing a pattern of religious life: that there were in it גּוים (Gentile nations) which were in no way externally inferior to them, and that it did not want for rejecters of God. But it is natural to expect that in the Solomonic era, which was more than any other exposed to the dangers of sensuality and worldliness, and of religious indifference and free-thinking latitudinarianism, the number of the לצים increased, and that scepticism and mockery became more intensified. The Solomonic era appears to have first coined the name of לץ for those men who despised that which was holy, and in doing so laid claim to wisdom (Pro 14:6), who caused contention and bitterness when they spake, and carefully avoided the society of the חכמים, because they thought themselves above their admonitions (Pro 15:12). For in the psalms of the Davidic time the word נבל is commonly used for them (it occurs in the Proverbs only in Pro 17:21, with the general meaning of low fellow, Germ. Bube), and the name לץ is never met with except once, in Psa 1:1, which belongs to the post-Davidic era. One of the Solomonic proverbs (Pro 21:24) furnishes a definite idea of this newly formed word:
An inflated arrogant man they call a scorner (לץ),
One who acts in the superfluity of haughtiness.