WISDOM BOOKS. — In the division of the Old Testament writings into historical, prophetic, and wisdom books, the latter category includes Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, and Sirach.
At present, however, they are more commonly referred to as "poetic books," in reference to their literary form, or as "didactic books," insofar as they aim to teach an ideal of social and religious life. The latter designation is not strictly accurate, since the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and in part Job are eminently lyrical. It is therefore better, as leading scholars do, to retain the term "wisdom books" for Proverbs, Sirach, Wisdom, and Ecclesiastes, to which the Song of Songs is added only on account of extrinsic analogies.
The subject of the wisdom books is "wisdom," understood in the broad sense it has in the Old Testament. This refers to the first of the virtues, or rather their compendium (= subjective wisdom, conceived as a quality of the perfect man), or else the doctrine of wisdom itself (= objective wisdom). In this kind of ethical philosophy of the ancient Israelites, divine wisdom is contemplated, along with its excellences, accompanied by numerous practical observations.
These books also contain passages in prose, but for the most part they are composed in poetry, which reproduces and often develops the ancient Hebrew *maššal* ("gnomic saying"), consisting of two members or cola, often in antithesis to each other in meaning (= antithetic parallelism) or with the repetition of the same idea in different form (= synonymous parallelism).