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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 10:17 - 10:17
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The group of proverbs now following bring again to view the good and bad effects of human speech. The seventeenth verse introduces the transition:
17 There is a way to life when one gives heed to correction;
And whoever disregards instruction runs into error.
Instead of אֹרַח חַיִּים (Pro 5:6), there is here ארח לְחיים; and then this proverb falls into rank with Pro 10:16, which contains the same word לחיים. The accentuation denotes אֹרַח as subst.; for אֹרַח way, road = אֹרֵחַ [a wayfarer, part. of אָרַח] would, as שֹׁסַע, Lev 11:7, נֹטַע, Psa 94:9, have the tone on the ultima. It is necessary neither to change the tone, nor, with Ewald, to interpret אֹרַח as abstr. pro concreto, like הֵלֶךְ, for the expression “wanderer to life” has no support in the Mishle. Michaelis has given the right interpretation: via ad vitam est si quis custodiat disciplinam. The syntactical contents, however, are different, as e.g., 1Sa 2:13, where the participle has the force of a hypothetical clause; for the expression: “a way to life is he who observes correction,” is equivalent to: he is on the way to life who...; a variety of the manner of expression: “the porch was twenty cubits,” 2Ch 3:4, particularly adapted to the figurative language of proverbial poetry, as if the poet said: See there one observant of correction - that (viz., the שְׁמֹר [שָׁמַר, to watch] representing itself in this שֹׁמֵר) is the way to life. מוּסָר and תּוֹכַחַת are related to each other as παιδεία and ἔλεγχος; עֹזֵב [עָזַב, to leave, forsake] is equivalent to בִּלְתִּי שֹׁמֵר. מַתְעֶה would be unsuitable as a contrast in the causative sense: who guides wrong, according to which Bertheau understands 17a, that only he who observes correction can guide others to life. We expect to hear what injuries he who thinks to raise himself above all reproach brings on himself. Hitzig, in his Commentary (1858), for this reason places the Hithpa. מִתַּעֶה (rather write מִתָּעֶה) in the place of the Hiph.; but in the Comm. on Jeremiah (1866), 42:20, he rightly remarks: “To err, not as an involuntary condition, but as an arbitrary proceeding, is suitably expressed by the Hiph.” In like manner הוֹסִיף, הִגִּיעַ (to touch), הִרְחִיק (to go to a distance), denote the active conduct of a being endowed with reason; Ewald, §122, c. Jewish interpreters gloss מתעה by supplying נַפְשׁוֹ; but it signifies only as inwardly transitive, to accomplish the action of the תְּעוֹת.