Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 2:17 - 2:17

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 2:17 - 2:17


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

17 Who forsakes the companion of her youth,

And forgets the covenant of her God;

18 For she sinks down to death together with her house,

And to the shadow of Hades her paths -

19 All they who go to her return not again,

And reach not the paths of life

אַלּוּף, as here used, has nothing to do with the phylarch-name, similar in sound, which is a denom. of אֶלֶף; but it comes immediately from אָלַף, to accustom oneself to a person or cause, to be familiar therewith (while the Aram. אֲלַף, יְלִף, to learn, Pa. to teach), and thus means, as the synon. of רֵעַ, the companion or familiar associate (vid., Schultens). Parallels such as Jer 3:4 suggested to the old interpreters the allegorical explanation of the adulteress as the personification of the apostasy or of heresy. Pro 2:18 the lxx translate: ἔθετο γὰρ παρὰ τῷ θανάτῳ τὸν οἶκον αὐτῆς: she (the dissolute wife) has placed her house beside death (the abyss of death). This שָׁחָה [ἔθετο] is perhaps the original, for the text as it lies before us is doubtful, though, rightly understood, admissible. The accentuation marks בֵּיתָהּ as the subject, but בַּיִת is elsewhere always masc., and does not, like the rarer אֹרַח, Pro 2:15, admit in usage a double gender; also, if the fem. usage were here introduced (Bertheau, Hitzig), then the predicate, even though ביתה were regarded as fem., might be, in conformity with rule, שַׁח, as e.g., Isa 2:17. שָׁחָה is, as in Psa 44:26, 3rd pr. of שׁוּחַ, Arab. sâkh, to go down, to sink; the emendation שָׁחָה (Joseph Kimchi) does not recommend itself on this account, that שָׁחָה and שָׁחַח mean, according to usage, to stoop or to bend down; and to interpret (Ralbag, השׁפילה) שָׁחָה transitively is inadmissible. For that reason Aben Ezra interprets ביתה as in apposition: to death, to its house; but then the poet in that case should say אֶל־שְׁאוֹל, for death is not a house. On the other hand, we cannot perceive in ביתה an accus. of the nearer definition (J. H. Michaelis, Fl.); the expression would here, as 15a, be refined without purpose. Böttcher has recognised ביתה as permutative, the personal subject: for she sinks down to death, her house, i.e., she herself, together with all that belongs to her; cf. the permutative of the subject, Job 29:3; Isa 29:23 (vid., comm. l.c.), and the more particularly statement of the object, Exo 2:6, etc. Regarding רְפָאִים, shadows of the under-world (from רָפָה, synon. חָלָה, weakened, or to become powerless), a word common to the Solomonic writings, vid., Comment. on Isaiah, p. 206. What Pro 2:18 says of the person of the adulteress, Pro 2:19 says of those who live with her ביתה, her house-companions. בָּאֶיהָ, “those entering in to her,” is equivalent to בָּאִים אֵלֶיהָ; the participle of verbs eundi et veniendi takes the accusative object of the finite as gen. in st. constr., as e.g., Pro 1:12; Pro 2:7; Gen 23:18; Gen 9:10 (cf. Jer 10:20). The יְשׁוּבוּן, with the tone on the ult., is a protestation: there is no return for those who practise fornication,

(Note: One is here reminded of the expression in the Aeneid, vi. 127-129:

Revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,

Hoc opes, hoc labor est.

See also an impure but dreadful Talmudic story about a dissolute Rabbi, b. Aboda zara, 17a.)

and they do not reach the paths of life from which they have so widely strayed.

(Note: In correct texts ולא־ישיגו has the Makkeph. Vid., Torath Emeth, p. 41; Accentuationssystem, xx. §2.)