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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 11:7 - 11:7
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Three proverbs regarding destruction and salvation:
7 When a godless man dies, his hope cometh to nought,
And the expectation of those who stand in fulness of strength is destroyed.
We have already remarked in the Introduction that אדם is a favourite word of the Chokma, and the terminological distinction of different classes and properties of men (vid., pp. 40, 42); we read, Pro 6:12, אָדָם בְּלִיַּעַל, and here, as also Job 20:29; Job 27:13, אָדָם רָשָׁע, cf. Pro 21:29, אִישׁ רָשָׁע, but generally only רָשָׁע is used. A godless man, to whom earthly possessions and pleasure and honour are the highest good, and to whom no means are too base, in order that he may appease this his threefold passion, rocks himself in unbounded and measureless hopes; but with his death, his hope, i.e., all that he hoped for, comes to nought. The lxx translate τελευτήσαντος ἀνδρὸς δικαίου οὐκ ὄλλυται ἐλπίς, which is the converse of that which is here said, 7a: the hope of the righteous expects its fulfilment beyond the grave. The lxx further translate, τὸ δὲ καύχημα (וּתְהִלַּת) τῶν ἀσεβῶν ὄλλυται; but the distich in the Hebr. text is not an antithetic one, and whether אוֹנִים may signify the wicked (thus also the Syr., Targ., Venet., and Luther), if we regard it as a brachyology for אַנְשֵׁי אוֹנִים, or as the plur. of an adj. אוֹן, after the form טוֹב (Elazar b. Jacob in Kimchi), or wickedness (Zöckler, with Hitzig, “the wicked expectation”), is very questionable. Yet more improbable is Malbim's (with Rashi's) rendering of this אונים, after Gen 49:3; Psa 78:51, and the Targ. on Job 18:12, of the children of the deceased; children gignuntur ex robore virili, but are not themselves the robur virile. But while אונים is nowhere the plur. of אָוֶן fo . in its ethical signification, it certainly means in Psa 78:51, as the plur. of אוֹן, manly strength, and in Isa 40:26, Isa 40:29 the fulness of strength generally, and once, in Hos 9:4, as plur. of אָוֶן in its physical signification, derived from its root-meaning anhelitus (Gen 35:18, cf. Hab 3:7), deep sorrow (a heightening of the און, Deu 26:14). This latter signification has also been adopted: Jerome, expectatio solicitorum; Bertheau, “the expectation of the sorrowing;” Ewald, ”continuance of sorrow;” but the meaning of this in this connection is so obscure, that one must question the translators what its import is. Therefore we adhere to the other rendering, “fulness of strength,” and interpret אונים as the opposite of אין אונים, Isa 40:29, for it signifies, per metonymiam abstracti pro concr., those who are full of strength; and we gain the meaning that there is a sudden end to the expectation of those who are in full strength, and build their prospects thereon. The two synonymous lines complete themselves, in so far as אונים gains by אדם רשׁע the associated idea of self-confidence, and the second strengthens the thought of the first by the transition of the expression from the fut. to the preterite (Fl.). ותוחלת has, for the most part in recent impressions, the Mugrash; the correct accentuation, according to codices and old impressions, is ותוחלת אונים (vid., Baer's Torath Emeth, p. 10, §4).