Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 15:31 - 15:31
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
31 An ear which heareth the doctrine of life
Keeps itself in the circle of the wise.
As, Pro 6:33, תוכחות מוסר means instructions aiming at discipline, so here תּוֹכַחַת חַיִּים means instructions which have life as their end, i.e., as showing how one may attain unto true life; Hitzig's חָכָם, for חיים, is a fancy. Is now the meaning this, that the ear which willingly hears and receives such doctrine of life will come to dwell among the wise, i.e., that such an one (for אֹזֶן is synecdoche partis pro persona, as Job 29:11) will have his residence among wise men, as being one of them, inter eos sedem firmam habebit iisque annumerabitur (Fl.)? By such a rendering, one is surprised at the harshness of the synecdoche, as well as at the circumstantiality of the expression (cf. Pro 13:20, יֶחְכָּם). On the contrary, this corresponds with the thought that one who willingly permits to be said to him what he must do and suffer in order that he may be a partaker of life, on this account remains most gladly in the circle of the wise, and there has his appropriate place. The “passing the night” (לִין, cogn. לַיִל, Syr. Targ. בּוּת, Arab. bât) is also frequently elsewhere the designation of prolonged stay, e.g., Isa 1:21. בְּקֶרֶב is here different in signification from that it had in Pro 14:23, where it meant “in the heart.” In the lxx this proverb is wanting. The other Greek translations have οὖς ἀκοῦον ἐλέγχους χωῆς ἐν μέσῳ σοφῶν αὐλισθήσεται. Similarly the Syr., Targ., Jerome, Venet., and Luther, admitting both renderings, but, since they render in the fut., bringing nearer the idea of prediction (Midrash: זוכה לישׁב בישׁיבת חכמים) than of description of character.