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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 27:5 - 27:5
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The third pair of proverbs passes over from this special love between husband and wife to that subsisting between friends:
5 Better is open accusation
Than secret love.
An integral distich; meeאַהֲבָה has Munach, and instead of the second Metheg Tarcha, after Thorath Emeth, p. 11. Zöckler, with Hitzig, incorrectly: better than love which, from false indulgence, keeps concealed from his neighbour his faults, when he ought to tell him of them. That would require the phrase אהבה מַסְתֶּרֶת, not מְסֻתֶּרֶת. Dächsel, in order to accommodate the text to this meaning, remarks: concealed censure is concealed love; but it is much rather the neglected duty of love - love without mutual discipline is weak, faint-hearted, and, if it is not too blind to remark in a friend what is worthy of blame, is altogether too forbearing, and essentially without conscience; but it is not “hidden and concealed love.” The meaning of the proverb is different: it is better to be courageously and sternly corrected - on account of some fault committed - by any one, whether he be a foe or a friend, than to be the object of a love which may exist indeed in the heart, but which fails to make itself manifest in outward act. There are men who continually assure us of the reality and depth of their friendship; but when it is necessary for them to prove their love to be self-denying and generous, they are like a torrent which is dry when one expects to drink water from it (Job 6:15). Such “secret” love, or, since the word is not נִסְתָּֽרֶת, but מְסֻתָּֽרֶת, love confined to the heart alone, is like a fire which, when it burns secretly, neither lightens nor warms; and before such a friend, any one who frankly and freely tells the truth has by far the preference, for although he may pain us, yet he does us good; while the former deceives us, for he leaves us in the lurch when it is necessary to love us, not merely in word and with the tongue, but in deed and in truth (1Jo 3:18). Rightly Fleischer: Praestat correptio aperta amicitiae tectae, i.e., nulla re probatae.