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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 11:15 - 11:15
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
There follow now two proverbs regarding kindness which brings injury and which brings honour:
It fares ill, nothing but ill, with one who is surety for another;
But he who hateth suretyship remaineth in quietness.
More closely to the original: It goes ill with him; for the proverb is composed as if the writer had before his eyes a definite person, whom one assails when he for whom he became security has not kept within the limits of the performance that was due. Regarding עָרַב with the accus. of the person: to represent one as a surety for him, and זָר as denoting the other (the stranger), vid., at Pro 6:1. The meaning of רַע יֵרוֹעַ is seen from Pro 20:16. יֵרוֹעַ is, like Pro 13:20, the fut. Niph. of רָעַע, or of רוּעַ = רָעַע, after the forms יִמּוֹל, יֵעוֹר (Olsh. §265e). The added רָעַע has, like עֶרְיָה, Hab 3:9, the same function as the inf. absol. (intensivus); but as the infin. form רַע could only be inf. constru. after the form שַׁךְ, Jer 5:26, the infinitive absol. must be רוֹעַ: Thus רַע is an accus., or what is the same, an adverbial adj.: he is badly treated (maltreated) in a bad way, for one holds him to his words and, when he cannot or will not accomplish that which is due in the room of him for whom he is bail, arrests him. He, on the contrary, who hates תוֹקְעִים has good rest. The persons of such as become surety by striking the hands cannot be meant, but perhaps people thus becoming surety by a hand-stroke - such sureties, and thus such suretyship, he cannot suffer; תוקעים approaches an abstract “striking hands,” instead of “those who strike hands” in connection with this שׂנֵא, expressing only a strong impossibility, as חֹבְלִים, Zec 2:7, 14, means uniting together in the sense of combination.