Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver: An Interpretation of Proverbial Clusters in Proverbs 10:1-22:16 (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 44 (2003) 267 Reviews Ismel, which gave rise to respective songs. Are we able to state more concretely the celebrations, motives, or moods of our biblical forbears when they took to feasting and singing psalms? Do we know about their religious rituals, small or large, which gave expression to common exuberance? And how do our opportunities in real life as well as in liturgical context to render thanks, give offerings, and jubilate in the presence of the Lord differ and coincide with the psalmist's situations? If we start out with such an admirably contextual and cotextual model of interpretation I would expect in each treatise, short as it may be, some indication of possible avenues towards the concrete analogous flesh-and-bone-realities of our world. Nevertheless, the author has taken some first steps in that desirable direction. He has accumulated a great wealth of infonnation along that line, how initially poet and orall1e, redactor and community worked together to mold, use and transmit that unfathomable treasure of the biblical Psalter. Konrad Schaefer is to be credited with many valuable insights and rich liturgical experiences in psalm adaptation. He leaves it, as we may say, to the modem reader, meditator, and supplicant to concretize his own encounters with the World and God and synthesize into the old poems his or her own daily experience. Erhard S. Gerstenberger University ofMarbllrg D-35394 Giessell, Germany gerster/z@sta!f.uni-marbllrg.de LIKE GRAPES OF GOLD SET IN SILVER: AN INTERPRETATION OF PROVERBIAL CLUSTERS IN PROVERBS 10:1-22:16. By Knut Martin Heim. BZAW 273. Pp. xiv + 378. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. Cloth, $108.90. Heim seeks to show that the proverbs in Prov 10:1-22: 16 are organized in groupings he calls "clusters," and further, that these provide the context for understanding of the individual proverbs in their collected fonn. He makes the following claims "with contidence" (p. 315): I. The position of (most) sayings in their present sequence is the result of conscious arrangements. 2. This deliberate design was created in order to combine successive sayings into groups. 3. Although links between consecutive unite; are significant, such clusters should be kept distinct from one another. Hebrew Studies 44 (2003) 268 Reviews 4. The (small) units are the contextual backdrop against which the individual sayings should be understood. 5. Taken together, these units mean more than the sum of the individual parts. The book begins with a valuable survey of scholarly ideas about the organization of sayings in the proverb collections. Heim divides these views into two categories, "Denial of Coherent Groupings" (chap. I) and "Affinnation of Coherent Groupings" (chap. 3). Heim seeks to explain the Denial on the grounds that its advocates were "generally guided by particular interests in tension with an appreciation of the literary shape of Proverbs 10: 1-22:16" (p. 6), in particular concern for literary history and oral use. This assumes what is to be proven, that there is a "literary shape" that one should appreciate, so that any "denial" of this truth calls for an explanation. Anyway, it turns out that Wm. McKane (Proverbs rOTL; London: SCM, 1970]) and C. Westennann (Fonngeschichte ZJlr Weisheitsliteratur 1950-1990 [Stuttgart: Calwer, 1991] and other works) did not deny editorial groupings so much as "neglect" them (pp. 10, 14). (In discussing the latter, Heim makes the important observation that African proverbs cannot be assumed to exemplify the way biblical proverbs were used before incorporation in collections because "most comparisons of biblical and modem •pre-literate' material so far have been based on proverbs in the writtell fonn of the collections by modem anthropologists" [po 15]). Coming to the Affmners, Heim does not search for motives to explain their ideas but evaluates them as theories in their own right. His critiques are insightful. Particularly valuable is his lengthy assessment of R. Scoralick's E;flzelspruch ulld Sammlung: Komposition ;m Buch der Sprichwiirter Kapitel 10-15 (BZAW 232; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995) (Heim, pp. 51-59). Heim points out problems common to many attempts to fmd organized proverbial structures. Quite to the point is his observation that "[c]orespondences between individual sayings, due...