Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 12:1 - 12:1

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 12:1 - 12:1


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

Three proverbs on knowledge, the favour of God, firmness and the means thereto.

1 He loveth correction who loveth knowledge,

And he hateth instruction who is without reason.

It is difficult in such cases to say which is the relation of the ideas that is intended. The sequence of words which lies nearest in the Semitic substantival clause is that in which the predicate is placed first; but the subject may, if it is to be made prominent, stand at the head of the sentence. Here, 1b, the placing of the subject in advance recommends itself: one who hates instruction is devoid of reason. But since we have no reason in 1a to invert the order of the words as they lie together, we take the conceptions placed first in both cases as the predicates. Thus: he who loves knowledge shows and proves that he does so by this, that he willingly puts himself in the place of a learner; and devoid of reason is he who with aversion rejects reproof, which is designed to guard him from future mistakes and false steps. Regarding the punctuation דעת אֹהֵב (with Mercha on the ante-penult. and the העמדה-sign on the penult.), vid., at Pro 11:26., Pro 1:19. In 1b the Munach in תוכחת is transformed from Mugrash (Accentssystem, xviii. §2), as in Pro 15:10. בַּעַר (cf. Pro 30:2) is a being who is stupid as the brute cattle (בְּעִיר, from בָּעֵר, to graze, cattle of all kinds; Arab. b'ayr, the beast κατ ̓ ἐξ., i.e., the camel); as a homo brutus is compared to a בְּהֵמָּה (Ps. 49:21), 73:22), and is called Arab. behymt, from bahym, “shut up” (spec. dabb, a bear; thwr, an ox; ḥamâr, an ass) (Fl.).