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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 17:16 - 17:16
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We take Pro 17:16-21 together. This group beings with a proverb of the heartless, and ends with one of the perverse-hearted; and between these there are not wanting noticeable points of contact between the proverbs that follow one another.
Pro 17:16
16 Why the ready money in the hand of the fool;
To get wisdom when he has yet no heart?
The question is made pointed by זֶה, thus not: why the ready money when...? Is it to obtain wisdom? - the whole is but one question, the reason of which is founded in לֵבוְ אָיִן (thus to be accented with Mugrash going before).
(Note: If we write וְלֶב־ with Makkeph, then we have to accentuate לקנות חכמה with Tarcha Munach, because the Silluk word in this writing has not two syllables before the tone. This sequence of accents if found in the Codd. Ven. 1521, 1615, Basel 1619, while most editions have לקנות חכמה ולב־אין, which is false. But according to MSS we have ולב without Makkeph, and that is right according to the Makkeph rules of the metrical Accentuationssystem; vid., Torath Emeth, p. 40.)
The fool, perhaps, even makes some endeavours, for he goes to the school of the wise, to follow out their admonitions, קְנֵה חָכְמָה (Pro 4:5, etc.), and it costs him something (Pro 4:7), but all to no purpose, for he has no heart. By this it is not meant that knowledge, for which he pays his honorarium, remains, it may be, in his head, but goes not to his heart, and thus becomes an unfruitful theory; but the heart is equivalent to the understanding, in the sense in which the heart appears as the previous condition to the attainment of wisdom (Pro 18:15), and as something to be gained before all (Pro 15:32), viz., understanding, as the fitting intellectual and practical habitus to the reception, the appropriation, and realization of wisdom, the ability rightly to comprehend the fulness of the communicated knowledge, and to adopt it as an independent possession, that which the Greek called νοῦς, as in that “golden proverb” of Democrates: πολλοὶ πολυμαθέες νοῦν οὐκ ἔχουσι, or as in Luk 24:25, where it is said that the Lord opened τὸν νοῦν of His disciples to understand the Scriptures. In the lxx a distich follows Pro 17:16, which is made up of 19b and 20b, and contains a varied translation of these two lines.
Pro 17:17
17 At all times the right friend shows himself loving;
And as a brother is he born for adversity.
Brother is more than friend, he stands to one nearer than a friend does, Psa 35:14; but the relation of a friend may deepen itself into a spiritual, moral brotherhood, Psa 18:24, and there is no name of friend that sounds dearer than אָחִי, 2Sa 1:26. 17a and 17b are, according to this, related to each other climactically. The friend meant in 17a is a true friend. Of no other is it said that he loves בְּכָל־עֵת, i.e., makes his love manifest; and also the article in הָרֵעַ not only here gives to the word more body, but stamps it as an ideal-word: the friend who corresponds to the idea of such an one.
(Note: The Arab. grammarians say that the article in this case stands, l'astfrâgh khsânas âljnas, as an exhaustive expression of all essential properties of the genus, i.e., to express the full ideal realization of the idea in that which is named.)
The inf. of the Hiph., in the sense “to associate” (Ewald), cannot therefore be הָרֵעַ, because רֵעַ is not derived from רָעַע, but from רָעָה. Thus there exists no contrast between 17a and 17b, so that the love of a friend is thought of, in contradistinction to that of a brother, as without permanency (Fl.); but 17b means that the true friend shows himself in the time of need, and that thus the friendship becomes closer, like that between brothers. The statements do not refer to two kinds of friends; this is seen from the circumstance that אָח has not the article, as הָרֵע has. It is not the subj. but pred., as אדם, Job 11:12 : sooner is a wild ass born or born again as a man. The meaning of הִוָּלֵד there, as at Psa 87:5., borders on the notion of regenerari; here the idea is not essentially much less, for by the saying that the friend is born in the time of need, as a brother, is meant that he then for the first time shows himself as a friend, he receives the right status or baptism of such an one, and is, as it were, born into personal brotherly relationship to the sorely-tried friend. The translation comprobatur (Jerome) and erfunden [is found out] (Luther) obliterates the peculiar and thus intentional expression, for נוֹלַד is not at all a metaphor used for passing into the light - the two passages in Proverbs and in Job have not their parallel. לְצָרָה is not equivalent to בְּצָרָה (cf. Psa 9:10; Psa 10:1), for the interchange of the prep. in 17a and 17b would then be without any apparent reason. But Hitzig's translation also: as a brother he is born of adversity, is impossible, for לְ after נודל and יֻלַּד always designates that for which the birth is an advantage, not that from which it proceeds. Thus לְ will be that of the purpose: for the purpose of the need, - not indeed to suffer (Job 5:7) on account of it, but to bear it in sympathy, and to help to bear it. Rightly Fleischer: frater autem ad aerumnam (sc. levandam et removendam) nascitur. The lxx gives this sense to the ל: ἀδελφοὶ δὲ ἐν ἀνάγκαις χρήσιμοι ἔστωσαν, τοῦτο γὰρ χάριν γεννῶνται.
Pro 17:18
18 A man void of understanding is he who striketh hands,
Who becometh surety with his neighbour.
Cf. Pro 6:1-5, where the warning against suretyship is given at large, and the reasons for it are adduced. It is incorrect to translate (Gesen., Hitzig, and others) לִפְנֵי רֵעֵהוּ, with the lxx, Jerome, the Syr., Targ., and Luther, “for his neighbour;” to become surety for any one is עָרַב לְ, Pro 6:1, or, with the object. accus. Pro 11:15, another suitable prep. is בְּעַד; but לפני never means pro (ὑπέρ), for at 1Sa 1:16 it means “to the person,” and 2Sa 3:31, “before Abner's corpse (bier).” רֵעֵהוּ is thus here the person with whom the suretyship is entered into; he can be called the רֵע of him who gives bail, so much the more as the reception of the bail supposes that both are well known to each other. Here also Fleischer rightly translates: apud alterum (sc. creditorem pro debitore).
Pro 17:19
19 He loveth sin who loveth strife;
He who maketh high his doors seeketh destruction.
A synthetic distich. Böttcher finds the reason of the pairing of these two lines in the relationship between a mouth and a door (cf. Mic 7:6, פִּתְחֵי פִיךָ). Hitzig goes further, and supposes that 19b figuratively expresses what boastfulness brings upon itself. Against Geier, Schultens, and others, who understand פִּתְחוֹ directly of the mouth, he rightly remarks that הִגְדִּיל פה is not heard of, and that הִגְדִּיל פה taht dn would be used instead. But the two lines harmonize, without this interchangeable reference of os and ostium. Zanksucht [quarrelsomeness] and Prunksucht [ostentation] are related as the symptoms of selfishness. But both bear their sentence in themselves. He who has pleasure in quarrelling has pleasure in evil, for he commits himself to the way of great sinning, and draws others along with him; and he who cannot have the door of his house high enough and splendid enough, prepares thereby for himself, against his will, the destruction of his house. An old Hebrew proverb says, כל העוסק בבנין יתמסכן, aedificandi nimis studiosus ad mendicitatem redigitur. Both parts of this verse refer to one and the same individual, for the insanum aedificandi studium goes only too often hand in hand with unjust and heartless litigation.
Pro 17:20
20 He that is of a false heart findeth no good;
And he that goeth astray with his tongue falleth into evil.
Regarding עִקֶּשׁ־לֵב, vid., Pro 11:20. In the parallel member, נֶהְפָּךְ בִּלְשׁוֹנוֹ is he who twists or winds (vid., at Pro 2:12) with his tongue, going about concealing and falsifying the truth. The phrase ונהפַּךְ (the connecting form before a word with a prep.) is syntactically possible, but the Masora designates the word, in contradistinction to ונהפַּךְ, pointed with Pathach, Lev 13:16, with לית as unicum, thus requires ונהפָּךְ, as is also found in Codd. The contrast of רָעָה is here טוב, also neut., as Pro 13:21, cf. Pro 16:20, and רָע, Pro 13:17.
Pro 17:21
The first three parts of the old Solomonic Book of Proverbs ((1) Prov 10-12; (2) 13:1-15:19; (3) 15:20-17:20) are now followed by the fourth part. We recognise it as striking the same keynote as Pro 10:1. In Pro 17:21 it resounds once more, here commencing a part; there, Pro 10:1, beginning the second group of proverbs. The first closes, as it begins, with a proverb of the fool.
21 He that begetteth a fool, it is to his sorrow;
And the father of a fool hath no joy.
It is admissible to supply יְלָדוֹ, developing itself from יֹלֵד, before לְתוּגָה לוֹ (vid., regarding this passive formation, at Pro 10:1, cf. Pro 14:13), as at Isa 66:3, מַֽעֲלֵה (Fl.: in maerorem sibi genuit h. e. ideo videtur genuisse ut sibi maerorem crearet); but not less admissible is it to interpret לתוגה לו as a noun-clause corresponding to the וְלֹֽא־יִשְׂמַח (thus to be written with Makkeph): it brings grief to him. According as one understands this as an expectation, or as a consequence, ילד, as at Pro 23:24, is rendered either qui gignit or qui genuit. With נָבָל, seldom occurring in the Book of Proverbs (only here and at Pro 17:7), כְּסִיל, occurring not unfrequently, is interchanged. Schultens rightly defines the latter etymologically: marcidus h. e. qui ad virtutem, pietatem, vigorem omnem vitae spiritualis medullitus emarcuit; and the former: elumbis et mollitie segnitieve fractus, the intellectually heavy and sluggish (cf. Arab. kasal, laziness; kaslân, the lazy).
(Note: Nöldeke's assertion (Art. Orion in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon) that the Arab. kasal corresponds to the Hebr. כָּשַׁל proceeds from the twofold supposition, that the meaning to be lazy underlies the meaning to totter (vid., also Dietrich in Gesenius' Heb. Wörterbuch), and that the Hebr. ס must correspond with the Arab. š. The former supposition is untenable, the latter is far removed (cf. e.g., כִּסֵּא and kursı̂, סֵפֶר and sifr, מִסְכֵּן and miskı̂n). The verb כָּשַׁל, Aram. תְּקל, is unknown in the Arab.)