Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 3:19 - 3:19
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
This place of a mediatrix - the speaker here now continues - she had from the beginning. God's world-creating work was mediated by her:
19 Jahve hath by wisdom founded the earth,
Established the heavens by understanding.
20 By His knowledge the water-floods broke forth,
And the sky dropped down dew.
That wisdom is meant by which God planned the world-idea, and now also wrought it out; the wisdom in which God conceived the world ere it was framed, and by which also He gave external realization to His thoughts; the wisdom which is indeed an attribute of God and a characteristic of His actions, since she is a property of His nature, and His nature attests itself in her, but not less, as appears, not from this group of tetrastichs, but from all that has hitherto been said, and form the personal testimony, Pro 8:22., of which it is the praeludium, she goes forth as a divine power to which God has given to have life in herself. Considered apart from the connection of these discourses, this group of verses, as little as Jer 10:2; Psa 104:24, determines regarding the attributive interpretation; the Jerusalem Targum, I, when it translates, Gen 1:1, בראשׁית by בְּחוּכְמָא (בְּחוּכְמְתָא), combines Pro 8:22 with such passages as this before us. יָסַד (here with the tone thrown back) properly signifies, like the Arab. wasad, to lay fast, to found, for one gives to a fact the firm basis of its existence. The parallel Pil. of כּוּן (Arab. kân, cogn. כהן, see on Isaiah, p. 691) signifies to set up, to restore; here equivalent to, to give existence.
Pro 3:20
It is incorrect to understand 20a, with the Targ., of division, i.e., separating the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament; נִבְקַע is spoken of water, especially of its breaking forth, Gen 7:11; Exo 14:21, cf. Psa 74:15, properly dividing itself out, i.e., welling forth from the bowels of the earth; it means, without distinguishing the primordial waters and the later water-floods confined within their banks (cf. Job 38:8., Psa 104:6-8), the overflowing of the earth for the purpose of its processes of cultivation and the irrigation of the land. תְּהוֹמוֹת (from הוּם = הָמָה, to groan, to roar) are chiefly the internal water stores of the earth, Gen 49:25; Psa 33:7. But while 20a is to be understood of the waters under the firmament, 20b is to be interpreted of those above. שְׁחָקִים (from שָׁחַק, Arab. sḥaḳ, comminuere, attenuare) properly designates the uppermost stratum of air thinly and finely stretching itself far and wide, and then poetically the clouds of heaven (vid., under Psa 77:18). Another name, עֲרִיפִים, comes from עָרַף, which is transposed from רָעַף (here used in 20b), Arab. r'af, to drop, to run. The טָל added on the object accusative represents synecdochically all the waters coming down from heaven and fructifying the earth. This watering proceeds from above (ורעפו); on the contrary, the endowing of the surface of the earth with great and small rivers is a fundamental fact in creation (נבקעו).