Isa. xxxii. 6). 'As is the mother, so is the daughter' (Ezek. xvi. 44) is also an induction from common experience. 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge' (Jer. xxii. 29, Ezek. xviii. 2), words applied no doubt, as Lowth says, profanely, but not originally meant so, is a figurative way of saying that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. We have one specimen of the riddle (strictly so called)—that well-known one of Samson's,
From the eater came forth food,
and from the strong one came forth sweetness (Judges xiv. 14).
The parable, too, was doubtless called mashal, and of this we have three Old Testament examples, which will at once occur to the reader (2 Sam, xii. 1-6, xiv. 4-9, 1 Kings xx. 39, 40); but it is more important to draw the reader's attention to the rare specimens of the fable. Some may think it bold to refer in this connection to a portion of a narrative which seems at first sight to be historical (Num. xxi. 22-35). The strange episode of the speaking ass is, however, most difficult to understand, except as a sportive quasi-historical version of a popular mashal or fable (compare the four Babylonian animal-fables discovered among the fragments of King Assurbanipal's library).[1] The passage being evidently distinct from the rest of the story of Balaam, in passing this judgment upon it, we are not committed as a matter of course to a denial of all historical character to the rest of the narrative. The fables of Jotham (Judg. ix. 8-15) and Joash (2 Kings xiv. 9), in which the trees are introduced speaking, have also their parallels in Babylonian literature. One of them indeed has a claim to be called a mashal on a second account; the tree-fable of Joash is a taunt of the keenest edge, and one of the secondary meanings of mashal is 'taunting speech' (see Isa. xiv. 4, A.V.). It is true the 'taunting speeches' expressly
- ↑ See Smith and Sayce's Chaldæan Genesis, pp. 140-154. For the Egyptian animal-fables, which may be the originals of those of Æsop, see Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Anc. Hist., p. 390; for the Indian, see the apologues of the Panchatantra by Benfey or Lancereau, and the Buddhist Birth-Stories—'the oldest, most complete, and most important collection of folk-lore extant'—translated by Rhys Davids, vol. i.
