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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 13:4 - 13:4
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The three proverbs (Pro 13:1-3) which refer to hearing and speaking are now following by a fourth which, like Pro 13:2 and Pro 13:3, speaks of the נפשׁ.
The soul of the sluggard desires, yet has not;
But the soul of the industrious is richly satisfied.
The view that the o in נַפְשׁוֹ עָצֵל is the cholem compaginis, Böttcher, §835, meets with the right answer that this would be the only example of a vocal casus in the whole of gnomic poetry; but when on his own part (Neue Aehrenlese, §1305) he regards נפשׁו as the accus. of the nearer definition (= בְּנפשׁו), he proceeds inadvertently on the view that the first word of the proverb is מִתְאַוֶּה, while we read מִתְאַוָּה, and נפשׁו is thus the nom. of the subject. נַפְשׁוֹ עָצֵל means “his (the sluggard's) soul” (for עצל occurs as explanatory permutative briefly for נפשׁ עצל), as סְעִיפֶיהָ פֹּרִיָּה means “its branches (i.e., of the fruitful tree),” Isa 17:6. One might, it is true, add ה to the following word here, as at Pro 14:13; but the similar expression appertaining to the syntax ornata occurs also 2Sa 22:33; Psa 71:7, and elsewhere, where this is impracticable. Meîri appropriately compares the scheme Exo 2:6, she saw him, viz., the boy. With reference to the וָאַיִן here violently (cf. Pro 28:1) introduced, Böttcher rightly remarks, that it is an adverb altogether like necquidquam, Pro 14:6; Pro 20:4, Psa 68:21, etc., thus: appetit necquidquam anima ejus, scilicet pigri. 4b shows the meaning of the desire that has not, for there תְדֻשָּׁן occurs, a favourite strong Mishle word (Pro 11:25; Pro 28:25, etc.) for abundant satisfaction (the lxx here, as at 28:25, ἐν ἐπιμελείᾳ, sc. ἔσονται, instead of which, Montfaucon supposed πιμελείᾳ, which is, however, a word not authenticated). The slothful wishes and dreams of prosperity and abundance (cf. Pro 21:25., a parallel which the Syr. has here in view), but his desire remains unsatisfied, since the object is not gained but only lost by doing nothing; the industrious gain, and that richly, what the slothful wishes for, but in vain.