Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 20:16 - 20:16

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 20:16 - 20:16


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

16 Take from him the garment, for he hath become surety for another;

And for strangers take him as a pledge.

The same proverb Pro 27:13, where קַח, with the usual aphaeresis, here interchanges with it the fuller form לְקַח, which is also found at Eze 37:16. To this imperative חַבְלֵהוּ is parallel: take him as a pledge (Theodotion, Jerome, the Venet. and Luther); it is not a substantive: his pledge (Targ.), which would require the word חֲבֹלָתוֹ (חֲבֹלוֹ); nor is it to be read with the Syr. חֲבָלֻהוּ, one pledges him; but it is imperative, not however of the Piel, which would be חַבְלֵהוּ, and would mean “destroy him;” but, as Aben Ezra rightly, the imperative of Kal of חָבַל, to take as a pledge, Exo 22:25, for חָבְלֵהוּ without any example indeed except חַנְנֵנִי, Psa 9:14; cf. Psa 80:16. The first line is clear: take his garment, for he has become good for another (cf. Pro 11:15), who has left him in the lurch, so that he must now become wise by experience. The second line also is intelligible if we read, according to the Chethı̂b, נָכְרִים (Jerome, the Venet.), not נָכְרִיִּם, as Schultens incorrectly points it, and if we interpret this plur. like בנים, Gen 21:7, with Hitzig following Luther, as plur. of the category: take him as a pledge, hold fast by his person, so as not to suffer injury from strange people for whom he has become surety. But the Kerı̂ requires נָכְרִיָּה (according to which Theodotion and the Syr., and, more distinctly still than these, the Targ. translates), and thus, indeed, it stands written, Pro 27:13, without the Kerı̂, thus Bathra 173b reads and writes also here. Either נָכְרִיָּה is a strange woman, a prostitute, a maitresse for whom the unwise has made himself surety, or it is neut. for aliena res (lxx Pro 27:13, τὰ ἀλλότρια), a matter not properly belonging to this unwise person. We regard נכרים in this passage as original. בעד coincides with Pro 6:26 : it does not mean ἀντὶ, but ὑπέρ; “for strange people” is here equivalent to for the sake of, on account of strange people” is here equivalent to for the sake of, on account of strange people (χάριν τῶν ἀλλοτρίων, as the Venet. translates it).