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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 25:17 - 25:17
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This proverb is of a kindred character to the foregoing. “If thy comrade eats honey,” says an Arabic proverb quoted by Hitzig, “do not lick it all up.” But the emblem of honey is not continued in this verse:
Make rare thy foot in thy neighbour's house,
Lest he be satiated with thee, and hate thee.
To make one's foot rare or dear from a neighbour's house is equivalent to: to enter it seldom, and not too frequently; הוֹקַר includes in itself the idea of keeping at a distance (Targ. כְּלֵה רִגְלָךְ; Symmachus, ὑπόστειλον; and another: φίμωσον πόδα σου), and מִן has the sense of the Arab. 'an, and is not the comparative, as at Isa 13:12 : regard thy visit dearer than the house of a neighbour (Heidenheim). The proverb also is significant as to the relation of friend to friend, whose reciprocal love may be turned into hatred by too much intercourse and too great fondness. But רֵעֶךָ is including a friend, any one with whom we stand in any kind of intercourse. “Let him who seeks to be of esteem,” says a German proverb, “come seldom;” and that may be said with reference to him whom his heart draws to another, and also to him who would be of use to another by drawing him out of the false way and guiding on the right path - a showing of esteem, a confirming of love by visiting, should not degenerate into forwardness which appears as burdensome servility, as indiscreet self-enjoyment; nor into a restless impetuosity, which seeks at once to gain by force that which one should allow gradually to ripen.