Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 19:28 - 19:28

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 19:28 - 19:28


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

28 A worthless witness scoffeth at right;

And the mouth of the godless swalloweth up mischief.

The Mosaic law does not know the oath of witnesses; but the adjuring of witnesses to speak the truth, Lev 4:1, places a false statement almost in the rank of perjury. The מִשְׁפָּט, which legally and morally binds witnesses, is just their duty to state the matter in accordance with truth, and without deceitful and malicious reservation; but a worthless witness (vid., regarding בְּלִיַּעַל, Pro 6:12) despiseth what is right (יָלִיץ with accus.-obj. like Pro 14:9), i.e., scornfully disregards this duty. Under 28b Hitzig remarks that בלע only in Kal means to devour, but in Piel, on the contrary, to absorb = annihilate; therefore he reads with the lxx and Syr. דִּין justice instead of אָוֶן mischief: the mouth of the wicked murders that which is right, properly, swallows down his feeling of right. But בִּלַּע interchanges with בָּלַע in the sense of swallowing only, without the connected idea of annihilation; cf. כְּבַלַּע for the continuance [duration] of a gulp = for a moment, Num 4:20 with Job 7:29; and one can thus understand 28b without any alteration of the text after Job 15:16; cf. Pro 20:12-15, as well as with the text altered after Isa 3:12, by no means so that one makes און the subject: mischief swallows up, i.e., destroys, the mouth of the wicked (Rashi); for when “mouth” and “to swallow” stand connected, the mouth is naturally that which swallows, not that which is swallowed (cf. Ecc 10:12 : the mouth of the fool swallows, i.e., destroys, him). Thus 28b means that wickedness, i.e., that which is morally perverse, is a delicious morsel for the mouth of the godless, which he eagerly devours; to practise evil is for him, as we say, “ein wahrer Genuss” [a true enjoyment].