Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 21:6 - 21:6

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com

Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 21:6 - 21:6


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

6 The gaining of treasures by a lying tongue

Is a fleeting breath of such as seek death.

One may, at any rate, after the free manner of gnomic resemblances and comparisons, regard “fleeting breath” and “such as seek death” as two separated predicates: such gain is fleeting breath, so those who gain are seeking death (Caspari's Beiträge zu Jes. p. 53). But it is also syntactically admissible to interpret the words rendered “seekers of death” as gen.; for such interruptions of the st. constr., as here by נִדָּף [fleeting], frequently occur, e.g., Isa 28:1; Isa 32:13; 1Ch 9:13; and that an idea, in spite of such interruption, may be thought of as gen., is seen from the Arab.

(Note: Vid., Friedr. Philippi's Status constructus, p. 17, Anm. 3; and cf. therewith such constructions as (Arab.) mân'u faḍlah âlmanhtâji, i.e., a refuser of the needy, his beneficence = one who denies to the needy his beneficence.)

But the text is unsettled. Symmachus, Syr., Targ., the Venet., and Luther render the phrase מבקשׁי [seekers]; but the lxx and Jerome read מוֹקְשֵׁי [snares] (cf. 1Ti 6:9); this word Rashi also had before him (vid., Norzi), and Kennicott found it in several Codd. Bertheau prefers it, for he translates: ...is fleeting breath, snares of death; Ewald and Hitzig go further, for, after the lxx, they change the whole proverb into: מָוֶת (בְּמוֹקְשֵׁי) הֶבֶל רֹדֵף אֶל־מוֹקְשֵׁי, with פֹּעֵל in the first line. But διώκει of the lxx is an incorrect rendering of נדף, which the smuggling in of the ἐπὶ (παγίδας θανάτου) drew after it, without our concluding therefrom that אל־מוקשׁי, or למוקשׁי (Lagarde), lay before the translators; on the contrary, the word which (Cappellus) lay before them, מוקשׁי, certainly deserves to be preferred to מבקשׁי: the possession is first, in view of him who has gotten it, compared to a fleeting (נִדָּף, as Isa 42:2) breath (cf. e.g., smoke, Psa 68:3), and then, in view of the inheritance itself and its consequences, is compared to the snares of death (Pro 13:14; Pro 14:27); for in פֹּעַל (here equivalent to עֲשׂוֹת, acquisitio, Gen 31:1; Deu 8:17) lie together the ideas of him who procures and of the thing that is procured or effected (vid., at Pro 20:11).