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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 3:11 - 3:11
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The contrast here follows. As God should not be forgotten in days of prosperity, so one should not suffer himself to be estranged from Him by days of adversity.
11 The school of Jahve, my son, despise thou not,
Nor loathe thou His correction;
12 For Jahve correcteth him whom He loveth,
And that as a father his son whom he loveth
Vid., the original passage Job 5:17. There is not for the Book of Job a more suitable motto than this tetrastich, which expresses its fundamental thought, that there is a being chastened and tried by suffering which has as its motive the love of God, and which does not exclude sonship.
(Note: Here Procop. rightly distinguishes between παιδεία and τιμωρία.)
One may say that Pro 3:11 expresses the problem of the Book of Job, and Pro 3:12 its solution. מוּסַר, παιδεία, we have translated “school,” for יִסַּר, παιδεύειν, means in reality to take one into school. Ahndung [punishment] or Rüge [reproof] is the German word which most corresponds to the Hebr. תּוֹכֵחָה or תּוֹכַחַת. קוּץ בְ (whence here the prohibitive תָּקֹץ with אַל) means to experience loathing (disgust) at anything, or aversion (vexation) toward anything. The lxx (cited Heb 12:5.), μηδὲ ἐκλύου, nor be faint-hearted, which joins in to the general thought, that we should not be frightened away from God, or let ourselves be estranged from Him by the attitude of anger in which He appears in His determination to inflict suffering. In 12a the accentuation leaves it undefined whether יְהֹוָה as subject belongs to the relative or to the principal clause; the traditional succession of accents, certified also by Ben Bileam, is כִי אֶת אשׁר יאהב יהוה, for this passage belongs to the few in which more than three servants (viz., Mahpach, Mercha, and three Munachs) go before the Athnach.
(Note: Vid., Torath Emeth, p. 19; Accentuationssystem, vi. §6; the differences between Ben-Asher and Ben-Naphtali in the Appendixes to Biblia Rabbinica; Dachselt's Biblia Accentuata, and Pinner's Prospectus, p. 91 (Odessa, 1845).)
The further peculiarity is here to be observed, that אֶת, although without the Makkeph, retains its Segol, besides here only in Psa 47:5; Psa 60:2. 12b is to be interpreted thus (cf. Pro 9:5): “and (that) as a father the son, whom he loves.” The ו is explanatory, as 1Sa 28:3 (Gesenius, §155, 1a), and יִרְצֶה (which one may supplement by אֹתוֹ or בּוֹ) is a defining clause having the force of a clause with אשׁר. The translation et ut pater qui filio bene cupit, is syntactically (cf. Isa 40:11) and accentually (vid., 13b) not less admissible, but translating “and as a father he holds his son dear,” or with Hitzig (after Jer 31:10, a passage not quite syntactically the same), “and holds him dear, as a father his son” (which Zöckler without syntactical authority prefers on account of the 2nd modus, cf. e.g., Psa 51:18), does not seem a right parallel clause, since the giving of correction is the chief point, and the love only the accompanying consideration (Pro 13:24). According to our interpretation, יוֹכִיחַ is to be carried forward in the mind from 12a. The lxx find the parallel word in יכאב, for they translate μαστιγοῖ δὲ πάντα υἱὸν, ὃν παραδέχεται, and thus have read יְכֵאֵב or וְיַכְאִב.