is that young men in the higher circles of society (for such our moralist appears to address) should be thought capable of joining the banditti, at a time when 'bandit' could not be synonymous with 'patriot.' Our moralist contents himself with dissuading his disciple from doing so, on the ground of the retribution which will follow (i. 18, 19). The exhortation to industry, with its slow but sure profits, comes later, and in a less appropriate place (vi. 6-8). But the other besetting sin of youth is still more earnestly denounced as the most glaring specimen of 'folly.' Once indeed the 'strange, or alien, woman,' i.e. the adulteress, is introduced dramatically as 'Madam Folly' (ix. 13). The picture is remarkable, and forms a designed contrast to that at the beginning of the chapter. She sits at the door of her house, counterfeiting her great rival Wisdom (comp. ver. 14 with ver. 3, and ver. 16 with ver. 4), like Dante's Siren; but the disciple of the 'wise man' knows
. . . that phantoms are there,
and that her guests are in the depths of Sheól
(ix. 18; comp. ii. 18, xxi. 16).
'Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?' is the problem for our moralist to solve. He does so by insisting on an education conducted in reliance on divine Wisdom. The reward of diligent attention to the earlier lessons (for each chapter is a lesson, and its repetitions have a pedagogic justification) is the famous portrait of Wisdom in viii. 22-31. She (for Wisdom, khokma, is a feminine word) has indeed been mentioned before (i. 20, iii. 13-20, iv. 5-9), but from viii. 1 to ix. 6 the poet is absorbed in his grand personification. Wisdom is now presented to us, in the familiar dialect of poetry, as the firstborn Child of the Creator. There is but one Wisdom; though her forms are many, in her origin she is one. The Wisdom who presided over the 'birth' of nature is the same who by her messengers (the 'wise men') calls mankind to turn aside from evil (ix. 3). There can therefore be no real disharmony between nature and morality; the picture leaves no room for an Ahriman, in this and other respects resembling the Cosmogony in Gen. i. and portions of
