to any investigation of the phenomena is to begin with the presupposition that the material contains no ‘isolated’ proverbs: that it must be forced, willy-nilly, into some kind of group. It must also be recognized that there may be groups of more than one kind. It is clear that, with few exceptions, these chapters do not contain closely knit, structured poems like those found in chs. 1–9 and 31:1–31. Whatever groups are to be found here are necessarily of a looser kind, since they are literary constructions