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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 27:15 - 27:15
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This proverb passes from the complimentarius to its opposite, a shrewish wife:
A continual dropping in a rainy day
And a contentious woman are alike.
Thus we have already translated (vol. i. p. 9), where, when treating of the manifold forms of parabolic proverbs, we began with this least poetic, but at the same time remarked that Pro 27:15 and Pro 27:16 are connected, forming a tetrastich, which is certainly the case according to the text here lying before us. In Pro 27:15, Pro 19:13 is expanded into a distich, and made a complete verse. Regarding דֶּלֶף טוֹרִד, vid., the explanation there given. The noun סַגְרִיר, which the Syr. translates by magyaa', but the Targumist retains, because it is in common use in the post-bibl. Heb. (Bereschith rabba, c. 1) and the Jewish Aramaic, signifies violent rain, after the Jewish interpreters, because then the people remain shut up in their houses; more correctly, perhaps, from the unbroken continuousness and thickness (cf. the Arab. insajara, to go behind each other in close column) with which the rain pours down. Regarding מְדוֹנִים, Kerı̂ מִדְיָנִים, vid., Pro 6:14; the genit. connection of 'אֵושׁת מ we have already at Pro 21:9. The form נִשְׁתָּוָה is doubtful. If accented, with Löwenstein and others, as Milra, then we would have a Nithkatal before us, as at Num 1:47, or a Hothkatal - a passive form of the Kal, the existence of which, however, is not fully established. Rather this word is to be regarded as נִשְׁתַּוָּֽה (Nithpa. as Deu 21:8; Eze 23:48) without the dagesh, and lengthened; the form of the word נִשְׁתַּוָֽה, as found in the Cod. Jaman., aims at this. But the form נִשְׁתָּוָה is better established, e.g., by Cod. 1294, as Milel. Kimchi, Michlol 131a (cf. Ewald, §132c), regards it as a form without the dagesh, made up the Niph. and Hithpa., leaving the penultima toning unexplained. Bertheau regards it as a voluntative: let us compare (as נִשְׁתָּֽעָה, Isa 41:23); but as he himself says, the reflexive form does not accord with this sense. Hitzig has adopted the right explanation (cf. Olshausen, §275, and Böttcher, §1072, who, however, registers it at random as an Ephraimitism). נִשְׁתָּוָה is a Niphal, with a transposition of consonants for נִשְׁוָֽתָה, since נִשְׁוְתָה passes over into נִשְׁתְּוָה. Such is now the genus in the arrangement; the Milra form would be as masc. syntactically inaccurate. “The finite following the subjects is regulated by the gender and number of that which is next before it, as at 2Sa 3:22; 2Sa 20:20; Psa 55:6; Job 19:15” (Hitzig).