Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 30:10 - 30:10

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 30:10 - 30:10


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

10 Calumniate not a servant with his master,

Lest he curse thee, and thou must atone for it.

Incorrectly Ewald: entice not a servant to slander against his master; and Hitzig: “Make not a servant tattle regarding his master.” It is true that the Poel לוֹשֵׁן (to pierce with the tongue, linguâ petere) occurs twice in the sense of to calumniate; but that הִלְשִׁין means nothing else, is attested by the post-bibl. Hebrew; the proverb regarding schismatics (בִּרְכַּת הַמִּינִים) in the Jewish Schemone-Esre (prayer of the eighteen benedictions) began with ולמלשינים, “and to the calumniators” (delatoribus). Also in the Arab. âlsana signifies pertulit verba alicujus ad alterum, to make a babbler, rapporteur (Fleischer). That the word also here is not to be otherwise interpreted, is to be concluded from אֶל with the causative rendering. Rightly Symmachus, μὴ διαβάλῃς; Theodotion, μὴ καταλαλήσῃς; and according to the sense also, Jerome, ne accuses; the Venet. μὴ καταμηνύσῃς (give not him); on the contrary, Luther, verrate nicht [betray not], renders הלשׁין with the lxx, Syr. in the sense of the Aram. אַשְׁלֵם and the Arab. âslam (tradere, prodere). One should not secretly accuse (Psa 101:5) a servant with his master, and in that lies the character of slander (לְשׁוֹן הָרָע) when one puts suspicion upon him, or exaggerates the actual facts, and generally makes the person suspected - one thereby makes a man, whose lot in itself is not a happy one, at length and perhaps for ever unhappy, and thereby he brings a curse on himself. But it is no matter of indifference to be the object of the curse of a man whom one has unrighteously and unjustly overwhelmed in misery: such a curse is not without its influence, for it does not fruitlessly invoke the righteous retribution of God, and thus one has sorrowfully to atone for the wanton sins of the tongue (veaschāmta, for ve-aschamtá as it is would be without pause).