Once upon a time the trees went forth to anoint over them a king; And they said to the olive: “Rule thou over us.” And the olive said to them: “Should I give up my fatness wherewith they honour gods and men, And go and wave over the trees!” Then said the trees to the fig-tree: “Come thou, be king over us.” And the fig-tree said to them: “Should I give up my sweetness and my good fruit, And go and wave over the trees!” Then said the trees to the vine: “Come thou, be king over us.” And the vine said unto them: “Should I give up my wine that cheereth gods and men, And go and wave over the trees!” Then said all the trees to the thorn-bush: “Come thou, be king over us.” And the thorn-bush said to the trees: “If truly ye anoint me as king over you, Then come, trust to my shadow; but if not, then may fire come forth from the thorn-bush, And devour the cedars of Lebanon!” We have attempted to translate this in the poetical form of the original Hebrew; it will be seen that the thought-structure is very simple, so that the ideas conveyed would be easily apprehended by the common people to which the fable was addressed. Another fable, the only other one preserved in the Old Testament, occurs in 2 Kings xiv. 9: “The bramble that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, ‘Give thy daughter to my son to wife’; and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trod down the bramble.” But it is in the early Old Testament _parables_ that the highest form of “Wisdom” in pre-exilic Israel is reached. As in the case of fables, only two parables are preserved; they differ from fables in two important particulars: in that only men are represented as taking part and speaking, and that the content of a parable, so far as we are able to judge from the specimens preserved, is _religious_; this is a large step forward in approximation to the later Jewish conception of Wisdom. The earliest Old Testament parable occurs in 2 Samuel xii. 1-4, Nathan’s parable of the ewe-lamb; it is sufficiently well known, and need not be quoted. The other is Isaiah’s parable of the vineyard in Isaiah v. 1-4, which is written in poetry, while the former is in prose. We may add here one other form of Wisdom, found mainly in Ezekiel, namely the _allegory_; this is also called a _māshāl_, but this word is here used in an extended sense, for the allegory, though a parable in form, presents a symbolical picture the meaning of which is not, like the parable, easily grasped, but demands some thought before it can be properly understood; it is therefore sometimes called a “riddle.” It differs in another respect from the parable, for symbols take the place of persons; but, like the parable, the Old Testament allegory has a religious signification. Among the most striking allegories are: the