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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 19:10 - 19:10
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10 Luxury becometh not a fool;
How much less a servant to rule over princes.
Thus also with לֹא נָאוָה (3 p. Pil. non decet, cf. the adj. Pro 26:1) Pro 17:7 begins. אַף כִּי rises here, as at Pro 19:7, a minori ad majus: how much more is it unbecoming = how much less is it seemly. The contrast in the last case is, however, more rugged, and the expression harsher. “A fool cannot bear luxury: he becomes by it yet more foolish; one who was previously a humble slave, but who has attained by good fortune a place of prominence and power, from being something good, becomes at once something bad: an insolent sceleratus” (Fl.). Agur, xxx. 22f., describes such a homo novus as an unbearable calamity; and the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, written in the time of the Persian domination, speaks, Ecc 10:7, of such. The lxx translates, καὶ ἐὰν οἰκέτης ἄρξηται μεθ ̓ ὕβρεως δυναστεύειν, rendering the phrase כְּשָׂרִים by μεθ ̓ ὕβρεως, but all other translators had בְּשׂרים before them.