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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 23:19 - 23:19
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Among the virtues which flow from the fear of God, temperance is made prominent, and the warning against excess is introduced by the general exhortation to wisdom:
19 Hear thou, my son, and become wise,
And direct thy heart straight forward on the way.
20 And be not among wine-drinkers,
And among those who devour flesh;
21 For the drunkard and glutton become poor,
And sleepiness clotheth in rags.
The אַתָּה, connected with שְׁמַע, imports that the speaker has to do with the hearer altogether by himself, and that the latter may make an exception to the many who do not hear (cf. Job 33:33; Jer 2:31). Regarding אִשֵּׁר, to make to go straight out, vid., at Pro 4:14; the Kal, Pro 9:6, and also the Piel, Pro 4:14, mean to go straight on, and, generally, to go. The way merely, is the one that is right in contrast to the many byways. Fleischer: “the way sensu eximio, as the Oriental mystics called the way to perfection merely (Arab.) âlaṭryḳ; and him who walked therein, âlsâlak, the walker or wanderer.”
(Note: Rashi reads בְדרך לבך (walk), in the way of thy heart (which has become wise), and so Heidenheim found it in an old MS; but בדרך is equivalent to בְדרך בינה, Pro 9:6.)
אַל־תְּתִי בְ, as at Pro 22:26, the “Words of the Wise,” are to be compared in point of style. The degenerate and perverse son is more clearly described, Deu 21:20, as זוֹלִל וְסֹבֵא. These two characteristics the poet distributes between 20a and 20b. סָבָא means to drink (whence סֹבֶא, drink = wine, Isa 1:22) wine or other intoxicating drinks; Arab. sabâ, vinum potandi causa emere. To the יָיִן here added, בָּשָׂר in the parallel member corresponds, which consequently is not the fleshly body of the gluttons themselves, but the prepared flesh which they consume at their luxurious banquets. The lxx incorrectly as to the word, but not contrary to the sense, “be no wine-bibber, and stretch not thyself after picknicks (συμβολαῖς), and buying in of flesh (κρεῶν τε ἀγορασμοῖς),” whereby זללי is translated in the sense of the Aram. זָֽבְנֵי (Lagarde). זָלַל denotes, intransitively, to be little valued (whence זוֹלֵל, opp. יָקָר, Jer 15:19), transitively to value little, and as such to squander, to lavish prodigally; thus: qui prodigi sunt carnis sibi; לָמוֹ is dat. commodi. Otherwise Gesenius, Fleischer, Umbreit, and Ewald: qui prodigi sunt carnis suae, who destroy their own body; but the parallelism shows that flesh is meant wherewith they feed themselves, not their own flesh (בָּשָׂר לָמוֹ, like חֲמַת־לָמוֹ, Psa 58:5), which, i.e., its health, they squander. זולל also, in phrase used in Deu 21:20 (cf. with Hitzig the formula φάγος καὶ οἰνοπότης, Mat 11:19), denotes not the dissolute person, as the sensualist, πορνοκόπος (lxx), but the συμβολοκόπος (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion), κρεωβόρος (Venet.), זָלֵל בְּסַר (Onkelos), i.e., flesh-eater, ravenous person, glutton, in which sense it is rendered here, by the Syr. and Targ., by אסוט (אסיט), i.e., ἄσωτος. Regarding the metaplastic fut. Niph. יִוָּרֵשׁ (lxx πτωχεύσει), vid., at Pro 20:13, cf. Pro 11:25. נוּמָה (after the form of בּוּשָׁה, דּוּגָה, צוּרָה) is drowsiness, lethargy, long sleeping, which necessarily follows a life of riot and revelry. Such a slothful person comes to a bit of bread (Pro 21:17); and the disinclination and unfitness for work, resulting from night revelry, brings it about that at last he must clothe himself in miserable rags. The rags are called קֶרַע and ῥάκος, from the rending (tearing), Arab. ruk'at, from the patching, mending. Lagarde, more at large, treats of this word here used for rags.