takes the host from the tree, and hands it forth to an equally greedy crowd; here it is an angel who looks on, and observes what is done, while he pronounces the words-" Behold the bread of angels, which has become the food of pilgrims (ecce panis angelorum factus cibus viatorum)."

In our own times, a modification of the legend concerning the connection of the cross with the tree of knowledge, but still in the sense of the original allegorization, has been made in favour of the tree of life, by an artist, Gustav König, who after completing most excellent drawings of Luther's life and hymns, commenced to illustrate symbolically the Psalms of David, and has given a design for the twenty-second psalm, at once simple and beautiful. In the centre appears king David, bowed under the chastening hand of the Lord, and longing for salvation. From thence the eye is led back to the cause of all wickedness in the first sin, and up to the fulfilment of desire in the redemption: namely, in the lower space on both sides there are represented the fallen human pair, who are thrust out of the sea of light of Paradise into the night of the world, and Cain, who flees from the corpse of Abel; Christ on the cross fills the upper space. Throughout the space, however, the tree of life extends its roots and branches. And, indeed, its roots extend from the clear space of Paradise into the darkness of the world: for they form the ground on which Adam and Eve stand, to whom the promise made by God of a future Redeemer is revealed; and in this ground too, rests the corpse of the righteous Abel. In the middle of its trunk, however, the tree of life begins anew to bloom; it divides itself into two arms, where it takes David up, and still rising higher, it becomes the wood of the cross, which bears that fruit of life, the partaking of which is no more prevented by the flaming cherub. For as it is said in the accompanying explanation, the obedience of Christ has made good the disobedience of Adam; the blood of Christ speaks better things than the blood of Abel; the sufferings of the Son of David are not sufferings for his own sins, but sufferings for the sins of the whole world. The background of the upper picture therefore brightens-in contrast to the night which envelops Adam, Cain, and David-into the solemn splendour of a star-lit sky.

[The translator has omitted from the foregoing, various notes and references, as well as descriptions of illustrations in the original, as it appears in the Evangelischer Kalender for 1863.-ED. J. S. L.]

? These two verses are from the Sequens of Thomas Aquinas on the Supper, which begins "Lauda Sion salvatorem." According to this, factus must be read instead of sanctus.

PROVERBS XXIII. 29–35, PHILOLOGICALLY EXAMINED, AND TRANSLATED.

MANY of the words in this passage have been variously rendered in ancient and modern versions, as may be seen in the polyglots of Walton and Bagster. The same fact is exemplified in recent translations; and flippant reviews have only increased the diversity, without at all tending to settle the meaning. And yet that meaning seems sufficiently obvious. This is not to intimate that we are going to descend deeply among the roots of the passage, without which they may be exhibited sufficiently. A very little trouble, in laying the different clauses open to view, may serve, without parade, to give a literal, easy, and consistent meaning to the whole. This will require attention to Hebrew usage, rather than the playing off of modern poetical conceits.

We shall first give the clauses as they stand in the English standard version.

Ver. 29. "Who hath woe? who hath sorrow ?"—", oi, rendered woe, is from TN, avah, to which three significations are given, to long for, to howl, and to describe. Generally, the versions in the polyglots referred to, and other versions, as Maráthi, Gujaráti, Arabic, Persian, De Sacy, Boothroyd, etc., take the word in the sense of woe. It is a sense readily suggested by the intemperate habit about to be spoken of. Yet we cannot say, with Boothroyd, that we adopt it in preference to the sense of longing given by Dathe; for the latter more truly expresses the morbid appetite produced by the habit, and better accords with the conclusion of the paragraph, "I shall seek it yet again." If the former sense be urged, not only authorities, but reasons should be adduced.

=

The word here rendered sorrow is variously represented in versions. Thus the LXX. @opvßos; Syr.=perturbation; Jerome (followed by De Sacy) = cujus patri vae? whose father has woe? This is a divergence from other translations, which, if not sustained, can at least easily be accounted for. , aboi, if pronounced, as Jerome did, without points, would be abvi= ab (father) with vi, the word in the first clause, if the syllables be read separately. Arias Montanus egestas. This, like the last, seems most naturally to refer to the intemperate appetite. The word should be derived, not from , but 7, abah, desideravit; the paul participle is the form in question,-" who has, or to whom are there-cravings?"

=

"Who hath contentions? who hath babblings?"—The word for contentions is variously rendered, in the senses of judgments, evils, loquacity, pitfalls (into which the intemperate are in danger of toppling), broils, etc. The word is in the form of the hiphil participle unpointed, and literally denotes causes or causers of contentions. "Babblings,"-more literally complaints. 30. "They that tarry long at the wine;

They that go to seek mixed wine."

Literally mixture; some philologies, we pause not here to specify.

31. "Look not on the wine, when it is red;

When it giveth his colour in the cup."

=

The verb translated look is , tere, with negative al, having, as the future or inceptive tense often has, an imperative force. This is far from being peculiar to the Hebrew. We find the idiom in Asia, and in Europe., ki, literally because, is often, as here, rendered when; but the literal sense is the most logical, "look not at the wine, because it is red," because of its redness; make not that a reason for gloating on the tempting goblet. "It is red:"ON", yithadam, is the hithpael or reflexive form, which (see Hurwitz's Heb. Gram.) often signifies mere pretension, or feigning to be, what one is not; and (Ges. Heb. Gram.) ostendere, videri, jactare. Thus the meaning is it assumes, or affects to be red. Mr. Young very properly has rendered it, "shews itself red." Throughout the passage, the wine is personified as a companion detaining the toper to a late hour, and displaying a brilliant hue to fascinate him.

,עיז

"When it giveth his colour in the cup."—Colour is= Heb.,

, ain, eye. The LXX. have="thy eyes;" and apply the phrase to the person, not to the wine. Jerome has colour; the Syr. eye; as have the Targum, Ostervald, De Sacy, and Arias Montanus. We censure not a certain critic for differing from these authorities; but few readers will defend his introduction of the word "bubbles," -a word nowhere represented in the Hebrew Bible, and which therefore cannot with propriety appear in any translation. In versions, ancient or modern, we find no trace of such word; nor in lexicons do we find any such sense attached to the word for eye. If any lexicographer did give such quasi sense, we should be obliged to reject it from want of Hebrew usage. This critical bubble may be left to burst.

In the English version the word ain is several times rendered by fountain or well; a few times by face (of the earth); several times colour; and once resemblance. In the ordinary sense of eye it occurs very frequently. Lexicographers are not at one

=

about its derivation: some, as Gesenius and Castellus, deducing it from the Arabic, aan manavit (flowed); others, as Young, and the Hebrew Concordance, from the Heb. , un= to eye, or survey; and others again, as Newman and Davidson, making the word itself a root. Its usage, however, is obvious. Applied to physical phenomena, it expresses a fountain, and is in a few instances rendered face (=surface) of the land; but in these cases landscape would more literally and idiomatically represent it. Applied to the human visual organ, it is, according to the one derivation, the fountain of tears; and according to the others, simply that organ. On the basis of any of the derivations, its glancing lustre makes it a word for colour: but this is of course metaphorical, and the Hebrew cannot be said to have other any express word for colour." Hue is in such cases the most direct rendering. The meaning of the clause is, "It giveth its hue in the cup."

We might indeed adhere more closely to the personification by the use in each instance of the personal pronoun he.

"When it moveth itself aright."-The word "when" is inserted by the translators. To the clause thus rendered we can attach no idea; nor do other versions render much, if any aid : e. g., the LXX., "Afterward thou shalt go more naked than a pestle." The Syr., "converse ye with just men," is plain in meaning, but remote from the original. Nor is Jerome's "walketh blandly" any better. A shade closer is that of the Targum,—“ walketh rightly." A recent translation has, “It goeth up and down through the upright;" the sense of which an aspirant to the office of reviewing "does not think it polite to mention." Execrable is the pruriency that invented, not discovered, in the words such idea. And here is his proposal: goes down straight." If this be not more open to the same objection," where ignorance is bliss," This also ignores

the hithpael or reflexive form, yithhalek, or else clumsily attempts to express it by "down." It is true the English in one or two cases of the same form has " up and down," but it has in other instances "to and fro." Both cannot be correct. But the verb expresses neither "up" nor "down," but simply progression or motion. Nor can we overlook the fact, that this "corrector" ludicrously assigns a "straight straight" passage to the

"Were the comparative philology closely traced, a resemblance would be found to the English hue, which Webster derives from the Saxon hiewe, hiwian, which again seems not remote from the Sans. nayan, and the Gr. oupa. But as a suspicion often rests on etymologies as fanciful, we waive any application of

wine, from the cup to the stomach of the toper. Now to educe a plain sense,—the sense,- -we have only, as before, to follow grammar and idiom. As from the beginning the wine is personified, giving out its (or his) hue, so here it affects to move,and among whom, or what?-those persons, or rather things, that are right., mesharim, is sometimes explained as an abstract,-equity; but in some places, as Psalm xvii. 2; Prov. viii. 6, it is more literally rendered, "equal or right things." It is thus said of the beverage personified :—

"It affecteth to walk among right things," or just persons. It aspires to be classed among the good things provided of God for human enjoyment. But while it seeks such association, its true character is depicted in the sequel.

32. "At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." -Here 8, akharitho, is a noun with a pronominal affix; and it means, not "at the last," but "its end." This is the nominative to the verb: "its end, like a serpent, biteth."

:

y, tsiphaoni, the word here rendered adder, is defined viper and asp by the LXX. rendered Baσiliokos and Kepaστns; by Jer., regulus; in the Eng., Is. ii. 8, "cockatrice." All these words refer to a serpent, real or fabulous. It is considered the same as the Indian nag, called through the Portuguese cobra; Latin, coluber. The special characteristic of this snake, besides its poison-fangs, is its power of indicating its resentment, by distending the loose skin of its head in the manner of a hood, and on this account it is appropriately called the hooded snake. This the Hebrew strikingly expresses. It is impossible that "stingeth" can be the meaning, unless we suppose Solomon, with all his renown for physical science, to have made a great mistake in zoology, by ascribing the serpent's poison to a sting instead of the fangs. But he made no such mistake. The word is, parash, rendered in the English, show, scatter, etc., and defined by Gesenius, separavit, distendit, etc.: "and like a hooded snake, distendeth."

33. "Thine eyes shall behold strange women."-We pretend to no depth in the philosophy of drunkenness, but we are mistaken if the head swimming in the fumes of alcohol is occupied with thoughts of "strange women." The text has not a word for "women," but only the feminine plural, zaroth. This is the neuter plural in Greek and Latin, as stated by Gesenius in Heb Inst., sec. 105, the Hebrew having no neuter. meaning is, "strange things,"-phantoms floating before the eyes dazzled by intoxication. This is supported by the Targum,

The