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Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:
Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain!
(Proverbs xxx. 7, 8, 9.)
The habit of reading the more exciting denunciations of the prophets is apt to conceal from us the amount of detached, middle-class common sense which also contributed to the religious tradition of the Jews. There is a keen appreciation of actual fact, even when the moral is not over-clear. For example:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
(Ecclesiastes ix. 11.)
