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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 14:16 - 14:16
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
16 The wise feareth and departeth from evil;
But the fool loseth his wits and is regardless.
Our editions have יָרֵא with Munach, as if חָכָם יָרֵא were a substantive with its adjective; but Cod. 1294 has חָכָם with Rebia, and thus it must be: חכם is the subject, and what follows is its complex predicate. Most interpreters translate 16b: the fool is over-confident (Zöckler), or the fool rushes on (Hitzig), as also Luther: but a fool rushes wildly through, i.e., in a daring, presumptuous manner. But הִתְעַבֵּר denotes everywhere nothing else than to fall into extreme anger, to become heated beyond measure, Pro 26:17 (cf. Pro 20:2), Deu 3:26, etc. Thus 16a and 16b are fully contrasted. What is said of the wise will be judged after Job 1:1, cf. Psa 34:15; Psa 37:27 : the wise man has fear, viz., fear of God, or rather, since האלהים is not directly to be supplied, that careful, thoughtful, self-mistrusting reserve which flows from the reverential awe of God; the fool, on the contrary, can neither rule nor bridle his affections, and without any just occasion falls into passionate excitement. But on the other side he is self-confident, regardless, secure; while the wise man avoids the evil, i.e., carefully goes out of its way, and in N.T. phraseology “works out his own salvation with fear and trembling.”