Seeking out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays Offered to Honor Michael V. Fox on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday (review)

Hebrew Studies 47 (2006) 444 Reviews SEEKING OUT THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS: ESSAYS OFFERED TO HONOR MICHAEL V. FOX ON THE OCCASION OF HIS SIXTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. Edited by Ronald L. Troxel, Kevin G. Friebel, and Dennis R. Magary. Pp. xxviii + 507. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005. Cloth, $59.50. Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients is a fitting tribute to Michael V. Fox. He is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost authorities on wisdom literature, and his expertise in other areas of research is well established . The contributors to this volume comprise both senior scholars who are friends and colleagues of Professor Fox and junior members of the field who studied under him at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The articles in this book (thirty, in total) reflect Fox’s long standing engagement with wisdom literature but are by no means limited to this topic. One discernible pattern in the volume is that the scholarship produced by students of Fox displays a rigorous attention to linguistic and grammatical issues. Their papers provide an impression of Fox’s accomplishments as a teacher. The volume is divided into two parts. Part 1 is entitled “‘Seeking Out Wisdom and Concerned with Prophecies’ (Sirach 39:1): Studies in Biblical Texts.” It contains the following articles: Menahem Haran, “Observations on Ezekiel as a Book Prophet,” (pp. 3–19) Kelvin G. Friebel, “The Decrees of Yahweh That Are ‘Not Good’: Ezekiel 20:25–26,” (pp. 21–36) Cynthia L. Miller, “Ellipsis Involving Negation in Biblical Poetry,” (pp. 37–52) Theron Young, “Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22: Two Versions of the Same Song,” (pp. 53–69) Adele Berlin, “The Wisdom of Creation in Psalm 104,” (pp. 71–83) William P. Brown, “‘Come, O Children … I Will Teach You the Fear of the Lord’ (Psalm 34:12): Comparing Psalms and Proverbs,” (pp. 85–102) James L. Crenshaw, “A Proverb in the Mouth of a Fool,” (pp. 103–115) John A. Cook, “Genericity, Tense, and Verbal Patterns in the Sentence Literature of Proverbs,” (pp. 117–133) Robert D. Holmstedt, “Word Order in the Book of Proverbs,” (pp. 135–154) Shamir Yona, “Exegetical and Stylistic Analysis of a Number of Aphorisms in the Book of Proverbs: Mitigation of Monotony in Repetitions in Parallel Texts,” (pp. 155–165) Christine Roy Yoder, “Forming ‘Fearers of Yahweh’: Repetition and Contradiction as Pedagogy in Proverbs,” (pp. 167–183) Carole R. Fontaine, “Visual Metaphors and Proverbs 5:15–20: Some Archaeological Reflections on Gendered Iconography,” (pp. 185– 202) Hebrew Studies 47 (2006) 445 Reviews Nili Shupak, “The Instruction of Amenemope and Proverbs 22:17–24:22 from the Perspective of Contemporary Research,” (pp. 203–220) Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, “The Woman of Valor and A Woman Large of Head: Matchmaking in the Ancient Near East,” (pp. 221–234) Tova Forti, “The Fly and the Dog: Observations on Ideational Polarity in the Book of Qoheleth,” (pp. 235–255) Richard L. Schultz, “A Sense of Timing: A Neglected Aspect of Qoheleth’s Wisdom,” (pp. 257–267) J. Cheryl Exum, “The Little Sister and Solomon’s Vineyard: Song of Songs 8:8–12 as a Lovers’ Dialogue,” (pp. 269–282) Dennis R. Magary, “Answering Questions, Questioning Answers: The Rhetoric of Interrogatives in the Speeches of Job and His Friends,” (pp. 283–298). Space does not permit this review from examining every article in this book. Miller investigates ellipsis, or words that are not in the text but implicitly understood as present. She is particularly interested in the ellipsis of negative particles. Isa 23:4 illustrates this phenomenon, since from the rest of the verse it is clear that its last clause should be negated: “I have [not] brought up young women” (p. 38). Miller stipulates the grammatical circumstances in which this type of ellipsis can occur. For example, the negation must appear in initial position in the first clause of a sentence (p. 52). Young, a student of Fox, offers a detailed examination of Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22. He provides a comprehensive account of the minute differences between the two texts. He points out, for example, that the form yˆn…wbDbVs of Ps 18:6 occurs seven times in the...