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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 14:34 - 14:34
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Two proverbs follow regarding the state and its ruler:
34 Righteousness exalteth a nation,
And sin is a disgrace to the people.
The Hebr. language is richer in synonyms of “the people” than the German. גּוֹי (formed like the non-bibl. מוֹי, water, and נוֹי, corporealness, from גָּוָה, to extend itself from within outward; cf. Pro 9:3, גַּפֵּי, Pro 10:13, גֵּו) is, according to the usus loq., like natio the people, as a mass swollen up from a common origin, and עָם, 28a (from עָמַם, to bind), the people as a confederation held together by a common law; לְאֹם (from לָאַם, to unite, bind together) is the mass (multitude) of the people, and is interchanged sometimes with גוי, Gen 25:23, and sometimes with עם, Pro 14:28. In this proverb, לְאֻמִּים stands indeed intentionally in the plur., but not גוי, with the plur. of which גּוֹיִם, the idea of the non-Israelitish nations, too easily connects itself. The proverb means all nations without distinction, even Israel (cf. under Isa 1:4) not excluded. History everywhere confirms the principle, that not the numerical, nor the warlike, nor the political, nor yet the intellectual and the so-called civilized greatness, is the true greatness of a nation, and determines the condition of its future as one of progress; but this is its true greatness, that in its private, public, and international life, צְדָקָה, i.e., conduct directed by the will of God, according to the norm of moral rectitude, rules and prevails. Righteousness, good manners, and piety are the things which secure to a nation a place of honour, while, on the contrary, חַטָּאת, sin, viz., prevailing, and more favoured and fostered than contended against in the consciousness of the moral problem of the state, is a disgrace to the people, i.e., it lowers them before God, and also before men who do not judge superficially or perversely, and also actually brings them down. רוֹמֵם, to raise up, is to be understood after Isa 1:2, cf. Pro 23:4, and is to be punctuated תְּרוֹמֵם, with Munach of the penult., and the העמדה-sign with the Tsere of the last syllable. Ben-Naphtali punctuates thus: תְּרוֹמֵם. In 34b all the artifices of interpretation (from Nachmani to Schultens) are to be rejected, which interpret חֶסֶד as the Venet. (ἔλεος δὲ λαῶν ἁμαρτία) in its predominant Hebrew signification. It has here, as at Lev 20:17 (but not Job 6:14), the signification of the Syr. chesdho, opprobrium; the Targ. חִסְדָּא, or more frequently חִסּוּדָא, as among Jewish interpreters, is recognised by Chanan'el and Rashbam. That this חֶסֶד is not foreign to the Mishle style, is seen from the fact that חִסֵּד, Pro 25:10, is used in the sense of the Syr. chasedh. The synon. Syr. chasam, invidere, obtrectare, shows that these verbal stems are formed from the R. הס, stringere, to strike. Already it is in some measure perceived how חָסַד, Syr. chasadh, Arab. hasada, may acquire the meaning of violent love, and by the mediation of the jealousy which is connected with violent love, the signification of grudging, and thus of reproach and of envy; yet this is more manifest if one thinks of the root-signification stringere, in the meaning of loving, as referred to the subject, in the meanings of disgrace and envy, as from the subject directed to others. Ewald (§51c) compares חָסַל and חָסַר, Ethiop. chasra, in the sense of carpere, and on the other side חָסָה in the sense of “to join;” but חסה does not mean to join (vid., Psa 2:12) and instead of carpere, the idea more closely connected with the root is that of stringere, cf. stringere folia ex arboribus (Caesar), and stringere (to diminish, to squander, strip) rem ingluvie (Horace, Sat. i. 2. 8). The lxx has here read חֶסֶר (Pro 28:22), diminution, decay, instead of חֶסֶד (shame); the quid pro quo is not bad, the Syr. accepts it, and the miseros facit of Jerome, and Luther's verderben (destruction) corresponds with this phrase better than with the common traditional reading which Symmachus rightly renders by ὄνειδος.