Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 10:24 - 10:24

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 10:24 - 10:24


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

24 That of which the godless is afraid cometh upon him,

And what the righteous desires is granted to him.

The formation of the clause 24a is like the similar proverb, Pro 11:27; the subject-idea has there its expression in the genitival annexum, of which Gen 9:6 furnishes the first example; in this passage before us it stands at the beginning, and is, as in Pro 10:22, emphatically repeated with הִיא. מְגוֹרָה, properly the turning oneself away, hence shrinking back in terror; here, as Isa 66:4, of the object of fear, parallel to תַּאֲוָה, wishing, of the object of the wish. In 24b Ewald renders יִתֵּן as adj. from יָתַן (whence אֵיתָן ecne), after the form פִּקֵּחַ, and translates: yet to the righteous desire is always green. But whether יִתֵּן is probably formed from יתן, and not from נתן, is a question in Pro 12:12, but not here, where wishing and giving (fulfilling) are naturally correlata. Hitzig corrects יֻתָּן, and certainly the supplying of 'ה is as little appropriate here as at Pro 13:21. Also a “one gives” is scarcely intended (according to which the Targ., Syr., and Jerome translate passively), in which case the Jewish interpreters are wont to explain יתן, scil. הנותן; for if the poet thought of יתן fo with a personal subject, why did he not rescue it from the dimness of such vague generality? Thus, then, יתן is, with Böttcher, to be interpreted as impersonal, like Pro 13:10; Job 37:10, and perhaps also Gen 38:28 (Ewald, §295a): what the righteous wish, that there is, i.e., it becomes actual, is fulfilled. In this we have not directly and exclusively to think of the destiny at which the godless are afraid (Heb 10:27), and toward which the desire of the righteous goes forth; but the clause has also truth which is realized in this world: just that which they greatly fear, e.g., sickness, bankruptcy, the loss of reputation, comes upon the godless; on the contrary that which the righteous wish realizes itself, because their wish, in its intention, and kind, and content, stands in harmony with the order of the moral world.