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                                                        THE BOOK OF PROVERBS

It is Sunday, and in this Church of the Left Wing Scourges, we should all turn our prayer books to:

The Psalms are supposed to be written by David.  There is a lament, for older times at Psalm 13:

How long, O Lord? Will you utterly forget me?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long shall I harbor sorrow in my soul

Grief in my heart day after day?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look, answer me, O Lord, my God.

This is a key verse for some scholars such as Julian Jaynes. It signifies a time just after the voices stopped. Jaynes and others believe that in earlier times, we prayed and heard the voices of the gods. And one day, those voices disappeared. This signified an important step in the Origins of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind; A step even further than the steps to consciousness found in the Odyssey.

There are what I feel amount to meditations throughout the Psalms; recitations that calm the savage beast; that may provide a respite from periods of stress. It is certainly not just a book demonstrating forlornness. Psalms to me mean songs.

This makes a nice, chronological, logical, developmental analysis of ancient writings to me.  I cannot do a twenty five page or fifty page summary here, but man kind of begins hearing and seeing the gods who give him direction in life; primarily during times of stress. Then, the sight begins to leave him (Moses can only witness a burning bush while Adam would walk and talk with Our Lord God) and only his auditory sensations remained. Then the voices stopped.

Supposedly, visitors or worshippers would go to the Stele of Hammurabi (1790 BCE) and hear the words written there. There was no give and take. The same with the laws of Moses. I mean if Fred stole a lamb, the laws of Hannurabi and the laws of Moses told you what to do with Fred. The laws of Moses vary depending upon which book you are reading, but there is the sense of a code of conduct as well as mandated penalties. You stone harlots. You do not really inquire as to why Fred stole the lamb or why the lady became a harlot.

Talk about stone cold.

Then, as in the Psalms, a forlornness becomes apparent. The stone laws are not enough to satisfy this new soul of man. He asks for direction in his life, and there are no answers to his prayers.

And yet, you will find in the Psalms and Ecclesiastes some measure of peace.

Proverbs (although you find similar provisions in the Psalms and Ecclesiastes) is different. Proverbs are the words of a father giving advice to his son.

Now watch Polonius in Hamlet saying good by to his son Laertes just before Laertes embarks on his sea voyage:

Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,(60)
And you are stay'd for. There, my blessing with thee.
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.(65)
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,(70)
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;(75)
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,(80)
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee

http://www.enotes.com/hamlet-text/act-i-scene-iii

I could comment upon the part that says: But do not dull thy palm with entertainment , but I will refrain from doing so since we are in church and this is Sunday and all.

This is the type of fatherly advice in Proverbs. Dad understands that some strict code would really be too long and too confusing to communicate. And Dad does not believe in the strict code anyway. The best dad can do is to render unto the son general guidelines to follow that may improve the kid's odds in a dangerous and unpredictable world.

Proverbs, parts supposedly written by Solomon and edited along with the writings of other authors sometime in the fifth century BCE, seems to be a book of guidelines to live by. Chapter 7 warns one to stay away from harlots and begins:

1My son, (A)keep my words
         And treasure my commandments within you.
    2(B)Keep my commandments and live,
         And my teaching (C)as the apple of your eye.
    3(D)Bind them on your fingers;
         (E)Write them on the tablet of your heart.
    4Say to wisdom, "You are my sister,"
         And call understanding your intimate friend;
    5That they may keep you from an adulteress,
         From the foreigner who flatters with her words

 

In other words: Son, keep your foot off of the old gas pedal  and keep the brakes on until the time is right. Okie dokie. Chapter 27  deals with ego and tact and maneuvering with other people:

 1 Do not boast about tomorrow,
       for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

 2 Let another praise you, and not your own mouth;
       someone else, and not your own lips.

Chapter 29 sounds positively political in nature:

7 The righteous care about justice for the poor,
       but the wicked have no such concern.

1 The wicked man flees though no one pursues,
       but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

 2 When a country is rebellious, it has many rulers,
       but a man of understanding and knowledge maintains order.

 3 A ruler [a] who oppresses the poor
       is like a driving rain that leaves no crops.

 4 Those who forsake the law praise the wicked,
       but those who keep the law resist them.

 5 Evil men do not understand justice,
       but those who seek the LORD understand it fully.

I must refer to another warning in Chapter 27:

15 A quarrelsome wife is like
       a constant dripping on a rainy day;

There is a reason for this post. My nice neat universe crumbled when I witnessed an epiphany while sitting in the bathroom and reading one of my old Egyptian tomes. I assume many have heard of the writings I am about to discuss, but I either did not or simply  ignored them:

The Prisse Papyrus, dating from the twelfth dynasty Egyptian Middle Kingdom[1] was obtained by the French orientalist Achille Constant Théodore Émile Prisse d'Avennes at Thebes in 1856 and is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.

The papyrus document contains the last two pages of the Instructions of Kagemni, who purportedly served under the 4th Dynasty king Snofru, and is a compilation of moral maxims and admonitions on the practice of virtue. The conclusion of the Instructions of Kagemni is followed by the only complete surviving copy of the Instruction of Ptahhotep.

Look at how this 4600 year old script begins:

Beginning of the arrangement of the good sayings, spoken by the noble lord, the divine father, beloved of Ptah, the son of the king, the first-born of his race, the prefect and feudal lord Ptah-hotep, so as to instruct the ignorant in the knowledge of the arguments of the good sayings. It is profitable for him who hears them, it is a loss to him who shall transgress them. He says to his son:

(Proverbs says several times things like this:  8 Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.)

Be not arrogant because of that which you know; deal with the ignorant as with the learned; for the barriers of art are not closed, no artist being in possession of the perfection to which he should aspire. But good words are more difficult to find than the emerald, for it is by slaves that that is discovered among the rocks of pegmatite. 

(Proverbs says things like: Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.2 Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips.)

If you are among the persons seated at meat in the house of a greater man than yourself, take that which he gives you, bowing to the ground. Regard that which is placed before you, but point not at it; regard it not frequently; he is a blameworthy person who departs from this rule. Speak not to the great man more than he requires, for one knows not what may be displeasing to him. Speak when he invites you and your worth will be pleasing. As for the great man who has plenty of means of existence, his conduct is as he himself wishes. He does that which pleases him; if he desires to repose, he realizes his intention. The great man stretching forth his hand does that to which other men do not attain. But as the means of existence are under the will of Ptah, one can not rebel against it.

(Proverbs would say:23: 1 When you sit to dine with a ruler,  note well what [a] is before you, 2 and put a knife to your throat  if you are given to gluttony. 3 Do not crave his delicacies,   for that food is deceptive.)

Now this Egyptian book is a good read:   http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/ptahhotep.html

I just find a consciousness here, a paternalistic love here and  an  underlying understanding of the vicissitudes of life. All this much earlier than I had originally thought. 

Matthew 2-13:13When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." 14So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

You see, this is why Matthew had to send the Christ first into Egypt. 

Amen