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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 20:27 - 20:27
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With a proverb of a light that was extinguished, Pro 20:20 began the group; the proverb of God's light, which here follows, we take as the beginning of a new group.
27 A candle of Jahve is the soul of man,
Searching through all the chambers of the heart.
If the O.T. language has a separate word to denote the self-conscious personal human spirit in contradistinction to the spirit of a beast, this word, according to the usage of the language, as Reuchlin, in an appendix to Aben Ezra, remarks, is נְשָׁמָה; it is so called as the principle of life breathed immediately by God into the body (vid., at Gen 2:7; Gen 7:22). Indeed, that which is here said of the human spirit would not be said of the spirit of a beast: it is “the mystery of self-consciousness which is here figuratively represented” (Elster). The proverb intentionally does not use the word נֶפֶשׁ, for this is not the power of self-consciousness in man, but the medium of bodily life; it is related secondarily to nshmh (רוח), while נשׁמת חיים (רוח) is used, נפשׁ חיים is an expression unheard of. Hitzig is in error when he understands by נשׁמה here the soul in contradistinction to the spirit, and in support of this appeals to an expression in the Cosmography of Kazwîni: “the soul (Arab. âl-nefs) is like the lamp which moves about in the chambers of the house;” here also en-nefs is the self-conscious spirit, for the Arab. and post-bibl. Heb. terminology influenced by philosophy reverses the biblical usage, and calls the rational soul נפשׁ, and, on the contrary, the animal soul נשׁמה, רוח (Psychologie, p. 154). חֹפֵשׂ is the particip. of חִפֵּשׂ, Zep 1:12, without distinguishing the Kal and Piel. Regarding חַדְרֵי־בֶטֶן, lxx ταμιεῖα κοιλίας, vid., at Pro 18:8 : בֶּטֶן denotes the inner part of the body (R. בט, to be deepened), and generally of the personality; cf. Arab. bâtn âlrwh, the interior of the spirit, and Pro 22:18, according to which Fleischer explains: “A candle of Jahve, i.e., a means bestowed on man by God Himself to search out the secrets deeply hid in the spirit of another.” But the candle which God has kindled in man has as the nearest sphere of illumination, which goes forth from it, the condition of the man himself - the spirit comprehends all that belongs to the nature of man in the unity of self-consciousness, but yet more: it makes it the object of reflection; it penetrates, searching it through, and seeks to take it up into its knowledge, and recognises the problem proposed to it, to rule it by its power. The proverb is thus to be ethically understood: the spirit is that which penetrates that which is within, even into its many secret corners and folds, with its self-testing and self-knowing light - it is, after Mat 6:22, the inner light, the inner eye. Man becomes known to himself according to his moral as well as his natural condition in the light of the spirit; “for what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?” says Paul, 1Co 2:11. With reference to this Solomonic proverb, the seven-branched candlestick is an ancient symbol of the soul, e.g., on the Jewish sepulchral monuments of the Roman viâ Portuensis. Our texts present the phrase נֵר יְהֹוָה; but the Talm. Pesachim 7b, 8a, the Pesikta in part 8, the Midrash Othijoth de-Rabbi Akiba, under the letter נ, Alphasi (יף''ר) in Pesachim, and others, read נר אֱלֹהִים; and after this phrase the Targum translates, while the Syr. and the other old versions render by the word “Lord” (Venet. ὀντωτής), and thus had יהוה before them.