Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 11:19 - 11:19
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
19 Genuine righteousness reaches to life,
And he who pursues evil does it to his death.
The lxx translate υἱὸς δίκαιος, and the Syrian follows this unwarrantable quid pro quo; the Bible uses the phrase בן־עולה and the like, but not בן־צְדָקָה. The Graec. Venet. (translating οὕτω) deprives the distich of its supposed independence. The Targ. renders כֵּן with the following ו as correlates, sic ... uti; but כן in comparative proverbs stands naturally in the second, and not in the first place (vid., p. 10). Without doubt כן is here a noun. It appears to have a personal sense, according to the parallel וּמְרַדֵּף, on which account Elster explains it: he who is firm, stedfast in righteousness, and Zöckler: he who holds fast to righteousness; but כן cannot mean “holding fast,” nor does מְכוֹנֵן; - “fast” does not at all agree with the meaning of the word, it means upright, and in the ethical sense genuine; thus Ewald better: “he who is of genuine righteousness,” but “genuine in (of) righteousness” is a tautological connection of ideas. Therefore we must regard כן as a substantival neuter, but neither the rectum of Cocceius nor the firmum of Schultens furnishes a naturally expressed suitable thought. Or is כֵּן a substantive in the sense of 2 Kings 7:31? The word denotes the pedestal, the pillar, the standing-place; but what can the basis refer to here (Euchel)? Rather read “aim” (Oetinger) or “direction” (Löwenstein); but כן does not take its meaning from the Hiph. הֵכִין. One might almost assume that the Chokma-language makes כֵּן, taliter, a substantive, and has begun to use it in the sense of qualitas (like the post-bibl. אֵיכוּת), so that it is to be explained: the quality of righteousness tendeth to life. But must we lose ourselves in conjectures or in modifications of the text (Hitzig, כַּנֵּס, as a banner), in order to gain a meaning from the word, which already has a meaning? We say דַּבֵּר כֵּן, to speak right (Num 27:7), and עֲשׂוֹת כֵּן, to do right (Ecc 8:10); in both cases כֵּן means standing = consisting, stedfast, right, recte. The contrast is לֹא־כֵן, 2Ki 7:9, which is also once used as a substantive, Isa 16:6 : the unrighteousness of his words. So here כן is used as a substantive connected in the genitive, but not so that it denotes the right holding, retaining of righteousness, but its right quality - שׁל־צְדָקָה אֲמִתָּה, as Rashi explains it, i.e., as we understand it: genuineness, or genuine showing of righteousness, which is not mere appearance without reality. That כֵּנִים denotes such people as seek to appear not otherwise than what they truly are, is in favour of this interpretation. Such genuine righteousness as follows the impulse of the heart, and out of the fulness of the heart does good, has life as its result (Pro 19:23), an inwardly happy and externally a prosperous life; on the other hand, he who wilfully pursues evil, and finds in it satisfaction, brings death upon himself: he does it to his death, or if we make (which is also possible) רַדֵּף the subject: it tends to his death. Thus in other words: Love is life; hatred destroys life.