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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 25:6 - 25:6
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There now follows a second proverb with מלך, as the one just explained was a second with מלכים: a warning against arrogance before kings and nobles.
6 Display not thyself before the king,
And approach not to the place of the great.
7 For better than one say to thee, “Come up hither,”
Than that they humble thee before a prince,
Whom thine eyes had seen.
The גְּדֹלִים are those, like Pro 18:16, who by virtue of their descent and their office occupy a lofty place of honour in the court and in the state. נָדִיב (vid., under Pro 8:16) is the noble in disposition and the nobleman by birth, a general designation which comprehends the king and the princes. The Hithpa. הִתְהַדַּר is like the reflex forms Pro 12:9; Pro 13:7, for it signifies to conduct oneself as הָדוּר or נֶהְדָּר (vid., Pro 20:29), to play the part of one highly distinguished. עָמַד has, 6b, its nearest signification: it denotes, not like נִצּב, standing still, but approaching to, e.g., Jer 7:2. The reason given in Pro 25:7 harmonizes with the rule of wisdom, Luk 14:10.: better is the saying to thee, i.e., that one say to thee (Ewald, §304b), עֲלֵה הֵנָּה (so the Olewejored is to be placed), προσανάβηθι ἀνώτερον (thus in Luke), than that one humble thee לִפְנֵי נָדִיב, not: because of a prince (Hitzig), for לפני nowhere means either pro (Pro 17:18) or propter, but before a prince, so that thou must yield to him (cf. Pro 14:19), before him whom thine eyes had seen, so that thou art not excused if thou takest up the place appropriate to him. Most interpreters are at a loss to explain this relative. Luther: “which thine eyes must see,” and Schultens: ut videant oculi tui. Michaelis, syntactically admissible: quem videre gestiverunt oculi tui, viz., to come near to him, according to Bertheau, with the request that he receives some high office. Otherwise Fleischer: before the king by whom thou and thine are seen, so much the more felt is the humiliation when it comes upon one after he has pressed so far forward that he can be perceived by the king. But נדיב is not specially the king, but any distinguished personage whose place he who has pressed forward has taken up, and from which he must now withdraw when the right possessor of it comes and lays claim to his place. אֲשֶׁר is never used in poetry without emphasis. Elsewhere it is equivalent to נַתִנש, quippe quem, here equivalent to רפֶנש, quem quidem. Thine eyes have seen him in the company, and thou canst say to thyself, this place belongs to him, according to his rank, and not to thee - the humiliation which thou endurest is thus well deserved, because, with eyes to see, thou wert so blind. The lxx, Syr., Symmachus (who reads 8a, לָרֹב, εις πλῆθος), and Jerome, refer the words “whom thine eyes had seen” to the proverb following; but אשר does not appropriately belong to the beginning of a proverb, and on the supposition that the word לָרִב is generally adopted, except by Symmachus, they are also heterogeneous to the following proverb: