Proverbs 31:1

The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy&c. Like Agur (Proverbs 30:1) Lemuel is some unknown king, whose oracle or prophecyis here preserved for us among the "words of the Wise."

The rendering of R.V. marg. King of Massa, is arrived at by neglecting the accents, and taking the word massa, oracle, as a proper name.

Professor Sayce (The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, pp. 478 80), who adopts this rendering, calls attention to the fact that Massa is "mentioned in Genesis 25:14 among the sons of Ishmael, and is there associated with the Nabathæans, the Kedarites, and the people of Dumah andTeman"; and that "in Genesis 10:23 Mash is along with Uz one of the four sons of Aram." The country of Massa "corresponded roughly," he says, "with the Arabia Petræa of the geographers," and the Nabathæan and other inscriptions found on the rocks and tombs of Northern Arabia show that the early language of the country was Aramaic, as it continued to be not only in O.T. but in N.T. times "till the sword and the language of Islâm" changed it to "Arabic" as we now call it.

"That the proverbs of a king of Massa should be included in the literature of the O.T. is of interest from several points of view. On the one hand it makes it clear that the books with which the library of Jerusalem was stored were not confined to the works of Jewish or Israelitish authors. On the other hand it indicates that the language spoken in Massa was not very dissimilar from that spoken in Palestine."