Commentaires bibliques

Three proverbs on knowledge, the favour of God, firmness and the means thereto.

1 He loveth correction who loveth knowledge,

And he hateth instruction who is without reason.

It is difficult in such cases to say which is the relation of the ideas that is intended. The sequence of words which lies nearest in the Semitic substantival clause is that in which the predicate is placed first; but the subject may, if it is to be made prominent, stand at the head of the sentence. Here, 1b, the placing of the subject in advance recommends itself: one who hates instruction is devoid of reason. But since we have no reason in 1a to invert the order of the words as they lie together, we take the conceptions placed first in both cases as the predicates. Thus: he who loves knowledge shows and proves that he does so by this, that he willingly puts himself in the place of a learner; and devoid of reason is he who with aversion rejects reproof, which is designed to guard him from future mistakes and false steps. Regarding the punctuation דעת אהב (with Mercha on the ante-penult. and the העמדה -sign on the penult.), vid., at Proverbs 11:26., Proverbs 1:19. In 1b the Munach in תוכחת is transformed from Mugrash ( Accentssystem, xviii. §2), as in Proverbs 15:10. בּער (cf. Proverbs 30:2) is a being who is stupid as the brute cattle ( בּעיר , from בּער , to graze, cattle of all kinds; Arab. b'ayr , the beast κατ ̓ ἐξ ., i.e., the camel); as a homo brutus is compared to a בּהמּה (Ps. 49:21), 73:22), and is called Arab. behymt , from bahym , “shut up” (spec. dabb , a bear; thwr , an ox; ḥamâr , an ass) (Fl.).

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2 A good man obtaineth favour with Jahve,

But the man of wicked devices He condemns.

He who is an אישׁ מזמּות (Proverbs 14:17, cf. Psalms 37:7) is defined in Proverbs 24:8: he is a man of devices, namely, that are wicked, one who contrives evil against his neighbour. The meaning of the subject-conception טוב is defined according to this, although in itself also it is clear, for טוב , used of God ( e.g., Psalms 73:1; Psalms 86:5) and of men (Proverbs 13:22; Proverbs 14:14), denotes the good ( bonus ) in the sense of the benevolent ( benignus ); the Scripture truths, that God is love, that love is the essence of goodness and is the fulfilling of the law, are so conformed to reason, that they stamp themselves as immediate component parts of the human consciousness. A טוב is thus a man who acts according to the ruling motive of self-sacrificing love; such an one obtains ( vid., on יפיק , educit = adipiscitur , at Proverbs 3:13) the favour of God, He is and shows Himself kind to him, while on the contrary He condemns the wicked intriguer. Hitzig translates: the former of intrigues is punishable (as the Syr.: is condemned; Targ.: his contrivance is shattered to pieces); but to become a רשׁע = reus הרשׁיע does not denote, but either to practise רשׁע , Job 34:12, or to set forth as רשׁע = to condemn, Isaiah 50:9. Taken in the former signification (Jerome, impie agit ), a declaration is made which is not needed, since the moral badness already lies in the reference of the subject: thus ירשׁיע will be used also of Jahve. In proof that the poet did not need to say ואת־אישׁ , Zöckler rightly points to Proverbs 10:6; Job 22:29.

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3 A man does not stand by wickedness,

But the root of the righteous remains unmoved.

In רשׁע there lies the idea of want of inward stay ( vid., at Psalms 1:1); in a manner of thought and of conduct which has no stay in God and His law, there can be expected no external endurance, no solidity. The righteous, on the contrary, have their root in God; nothing can tear them from the ground in which they are rooted, they are as trees which no storm outroots. The very same thought is clothed in other words in Proverbs 10:25, and another statement regarding the root of the righteous is found at Proverbs 12:12.

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We now place together Proverbs 12:4-12. One proverb concerning the house-wife forms the beginning of this group, and four regarding the management of the house and business form the conclusion.

4 A good brave wife is the crown of her husband,

But as rottenness in his bones is one that causeth shame.

As Proverbs 11:16 says of אושׁת חן , the pleasant wife ( חן = χάρις ), that she obtaineth honour, so this proverb of אושׁת חיל , the good wife ( חיל = ἀρετή , virtus ), that she raises her husband to higher honour: she is for his self-consciousness στέφανος καυχήσεως (1 Thessalonians 2:19), and is also to him such a crown of honour before the world (cf. Proverbs 31:23). On the contrary, a מבישׁה , conducting herself shamefully (cf. regarding the double meaning of this Mishle word, which only here occurs in the fem., at Proverbs 10:5), is to her husband instar cariei in ossibus . רקב ( רקב , Proverbs 10:7) denotes both the caries and the worm-hole (cf. Job 41:19, עץ רקּבון , worm-eaten wood). Like as the caries slowly but continuously increases, till at last the part of the body which the bone bears and the whole life of the man falls to ruin; so an unhappy marriage gnaws at the marrow of life, it destroys the happiness of life, disturbs the pursuit, undermines the life of the husband.

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5 The thoughts of the righteous are justice,

The counsels of the godless are deceit.

They are so, that is, in their contents and their aim. To the righteous are ascribed מחשׁבות , namely, simple and clear; to the godless, תּחבּות , carefully thought out, prudently thought through schemes and measures, but on that very account not simple, because with a tendency; for the righteous have an objective rule, namely, that which is right in the sight of God and of men, but the godless have only a selfish purpose, which they seek to attain by deceiving, and at the cost of, their neighbour.

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6 The word of the godless is to lie in wait for the blood of others,

But the mouth of the upright delivereth them.

Our editions have דברי רשׁעים , but the right sequence of the accents (in Cod. 1294 and elsewhere) is דברי רשׁעים ; the logical relation in this transformation, which is only rhythmically conditioned, remains the same. The vocalization wavers between ארב־ , which would be imper., and ארב־ , which is infin., like אמר־ , Proverbs 25:7, ענשׁ־ , Proverbs 21:11, אכל־ , Genesis 3:11. However one punctuates it, the infin. is intended in any case, in which the expression always remains sketchy enough: the words of the godless are lying in wait for blood, i.e., they are calculated to bring others to this, into the danger of their lives, e.g., before the tribunal by false charges and false witness. דּם is the accus. of the object; for instead of ארב לדם (Proverbs 1:11), to lurk for blood, a shorter expression, ארב דּם , is used (Ewald, §282a). The suffix of יצּילם

(Note: Elias Levita, in his note to the root פה in Kimchi's Wörterbuch, reads תּצּילם , and so also do 6 codd. in Kennicot. But פּה is masculine.)

might appear, after Proverbs 11:6, to refer back to the ישׁרים ; but the thought that their mouth saves the upright, that they thus know to speak themselves out of the danger, is by far less appropriate ( vid., on the contrary, בדעת , Proverbs 11:9) than the thought that the mouth of the upright delivereth from danger those whose lives are threatened by the godless, as is rightly explained by Ewald, Bertheau, Elster. The personal subject or object is in the Mashal style often to be evolved from the connection, e.g., Proverbs 14:26; Proverbs 19:23.

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7 The godless are overturned and are no more,

But the house of the righteous stands.

Bertheau and Zצckler explain: The wicked turn about, then are they no more; i.e., as we say: it is over with them “in the turning of a hand.” The noun in the inf. absol. may certainly be the subject, like Proverbs 17:12, as well as the object (Ewald, §328c), and הפך may be used of the turning about of oneself, Psalms 78:9; 2 Kings 5:26; 2 Chronicles 9:12. That explanation also may claim for itself that הפך nowhere occurs with a personal object, if we except one questionable passage, Isaiah 1:7. But here the interpretation of the רשׁעים as the object lies near the contrast of בית , and moreover the interpretation of the הפך , not in the sense of στρέφεσθαι (lxx), but of καταστρέφειν (Syr., Targ., Jerome, Graec. Venet., Luther), lies near the contrast of יעמד . The inf. absol. thus leaves the power from which the catastrophe proceeds indefinite, as the pass. יהפפכוּ would also leave it, and the act designedly presented in a vague manner to connect with ו the certain consequences therewith, as Proverbs 25:4., as if to say: there comes only from some quarter an unparalleled overthrow which overwhelms the godless; thus no rising up again is to be thought on, it is all over with them; while, on the contrary, the house of the righteous withstands the storm which sweeps away the godless.

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8 According to the measure of his intelligence is a man praised,

And whoever is of a perverse mind is despised.

Everywhere in the Mishle שׂכל has no other meaning than intellectus . The praise which is given to a man measures itself לפי שׂכלו (punctuate לפי־שׂכלו , according to Torath Emeth, p. 41, Accentssystem, xx. §1), i.e., according to the measure (so לפי is used in the oldest form of the language) of his intelligence, or as we may also say, of his culture; for in these proverbs, which make the fear of God the highest principle, שׂכל means also understanding of moral excellence, not merely the intellectual superiority of natural gifts. הלּל is here a relative conception of manifold gradations, but it does not mean renown in general, but good renown. Parallel with שׂכלו , לב refers to the understanding ( νοῦς ); the rendering of Löwenstein, “who is of false heart,” is defective. נעוה (synon. of נפתּל and עקּשׁ , but nowhere else interchanging with it) means here a vero et recto detortus et aversus (Fl.). Such a man who has not a good understanding, nor any certain rule of judgment, falls under contempt ( Graec. Venet. τῷ ὀντωτῇ εἰς μυσαγμόν , after the false reading of יהוה instead of יהיה ), i.e., he defames himself by his crooked judgment of men, of things and their relations, and is on this account in no position rightly to make use of them.

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