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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 10:22 - 10:22
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Three proverbs which say that good comes from above, and is as a second nature to the man of understanding:
22 Jahve's blessing - it maketh rich;
And labour addeth nothing thereto
Like 24a, הִיא limits the predicate to this and no other subject: “all depends on God's blessing.” Here is the first half of the ora et labora. The proverb is a compendium of Psa 127:1-2. 22b is to be understood, according to Psa 127:2 of this Solomonic psalm, not that God adds to His blessing no sorrow, much rather with the possession grants at the same time a joyful, peaceful mind (lxx, Targ., Syriac, Jerome, Aben-Ezra, Michaelis, and others), which would require the word עָלֶיהָ; but that trouble, labour, i.e., strenuous self-endeavours, add not (anything) to it, i.e., that it does not associate itself with the blessing (which, as the Jewish interpreters rightly remark, is, according to its nature, תוספת, as the curse is חסרון) as the causa efficiens, or if we supply quidquam, as the complement to עִמָּהּ along with it: nothing is added thereto, which goes along with that which the blessing of God grants, and completes it. Thus correctly Rashi, Luther, Ziegler, Ewald, Hitzig, Zöckler. the now current accentuation, לֹאוְ יוֹסִף עֶצֶב עִמָּהּ, is incorrect. Older editions, as Venice 1525, 1615, Basel 1618, have ולא־יוסף עצב עמה, the transformation of ולא־יוסף עצב. Besides, עצב has double Segol (vid., Kimchi's Lex.), and יוסף is written, according to the Masora, in the first syllable plene, in the last defective.