The proverb was the most characteristic literary form in which the sages treasured and imparted their teachings. Poetical in structure, terse, often figurative or epigrammatic, the proverb was well calculated to arouse individual thought and make a deep impression on the mind. Transmitted from mouth to mouth for many generations, like the popular tradition or law, it lost by attrition all its unnecessary elements, so that, 'like an arrow,' it shot straight to the mark. Based on common human experience, it found a ready response in the heart of man. In this way crystallized experience was transmitted, gathering effectiveness and volume in each succeeding generation. Job viii. 8-10 speaks of this accumulated wisdom handed down from _the former age, that which the fathers have searched out. They shall teach man and inform him, and utter words out of their heart_. Job xv. 18 also refers to that _which wise men have told from their fathers and have not hid it_. A proverb thus orally transmitted not only gains in beauty of form but also in authority, for it is constantly being tested in the laboratory of real life and receives the silent attestation of thousands of men and of many different generations. [Sidenote: _Expansion of the proverb_] When the sages desired to treat a many-sided subject, as, for example, intemperance, they still used proverbs, but combined them into brief gnomic essays (_e. g_., xxiii. 29-85, xxvi. 1-17). Sometimes, to fix the attention of their hearers, they combined two proverbs, so as to produce a paradox, as in Proverbs xxvi. 4, 5: Answer not a fool according to his folly, Lest them also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own conceit. Later they developed the simple gnomic essay into a philosophical drama, of which Job is the classic example, or into a homily, like Ecclesiastes. [Sidenote: _Use of fables and riddles_] Side by side with the proverb, the sages appear from the earliest times to have used the fable also; this is illustrated by the fable of Jotham in Judges ix. 6-21. Of the riddle a famous examples is that of Samson in Judges xiv. 14, 18, which combines rhythm of sound with rhythm of thought and well illustrates the form of the earliest popular Hebrew poetry: Out of the eater came something to eat, And out of the strong came something sweet, And its answer: If with my heifer you did not plow, You had not solved my riddle now. Proverbs xxx. 15-31 contains a collection of numerical riddles, combined with their answers. [Sidenote: _Traces of proverbs and the work of sages in the Hebrew history_]