1. From Detachment to Continuity:
Until it reached its classic perfection of phrasing, say during the time from Solomon to Hezekiah, the formal development of the proverb was concentrative; the single utterance disposed of its whole subject, as in a capsule. But the development of the mashal form from the antithetic to the synonymous couplet gave rise to a proverb in which the explanatory member did not fully close the case; the subject craved further elucidation, and so a group of several couplets was sometimes necessary to present a case (compare e.g. about the sluggard, Pr 26:13-16). From this group of proverbs the transition was easy to a continuous passage, in which the snappy parallelism of the proverb yields to the flow of poetry; see e.g. Pr 27:23-27. This is due evidently to a more penetrative and analytic mode of thinking, which can no longer satisfy its statement of truth in a single illustration or maxim.
2. The Conception of Wisdom:
As the store of detached utterances on various phases of practical life accumulated and the task of collecting them was undertaken, it was seen that they had a common suffusion and bearing, that in fact they constituted a distinctive strain of literature. The field of this literature was broad, and recognized (see Pr 1:1-5) as promotive of many intellectual virtues; but the inclusive name under which it was gathered was Wisdom (chokhmah). Wisdom, deduced thus from a fund of maxims and analogies, became the Hebrew equivalent for philosophy. With the further history of it this article is not concerned, except to note that the mashal or proverb form held itself free to expand into a continuous and extended discourse, or to hold itself in to the couplet form. As to illustrative quality, too, its scope was liberal enough to include a fully developed parable; see for instance Eze 17:1-10, where the prophet is bidden to "put forth a riddle, and speak a parable (literally, mashal a mashal) unto the house of Israel."
3. In Later Time:
The existence of so considerable a body of proverbs is a testimony to the Hebrew genius for sententious and weighty expression, a virtue of speech which was held in special esteem. From the uses of practical wisdom the mashal form was borrowed by the later scribes and doctors of the law; we see it for instance in loose and artificial use in such books as Pirqe 'Abhoth, which gives the impression that the utterance so grandly represented in the Solomonic proverbs had become decadent. It is in another direction rather that the virtues of the mashal reach their culmination. In the phrasal felicity and illustrative lucidity of our Lord's discourses, and not less in His parables, employed that the multitude "may see and yet not see" (Mr 4:12), we have the values of the ancient mashal in their perfection, in a literary form so true to its object that we do not think of its artistry at all.
See also GAMES, I, 6.
John Franklin Genung