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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 31:27 - 31:27
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27 צ She looketh well to the ways of her house,
And eateth not the bread of idleness.
Although there exists an inner relation between 27a and Pro 31:26, yet 27a is scarcely to be thought of (Hitzig) as appos. to the suffix in לְשׁוֹנָהּ. Participles with or without determination occur in descriptions frequently as predicates of the subject standing in the discourse of the same force as abstr. present declarations, e.g., Isa 40:22., Psa 104:13. צוֹפִיָּה is connected with the accus. of the object of the intended warning, like Pro 15:3, and is compared according to the form with הֹמִיָּה, Pro 7:11. הֲלִיבָה signifies elsewhere things necessary for a journey, Job 6:19, and in the plur. magnificus it denotes show (pompa), Hab 3:6 : but originally the walk, conduct, Nah 2:6; and here in the plur. walks = comings and goings, but not these separately, but in general, the modi procedendi (lxx διατριβαι). The Chethı̂b has הילכות, probably an error in writing, but possibly also the plur. of הֲלָכָה, thus found in the post-bibl. Heb. (after the form צִדְקוֹת), custom, viz., appointed traditional law, but also like the Aram. הִלְכָא (emph. הִלְכְתָא), usage, manner, common practice. Hitzig estimates this Chethı̂b, understood Talmudically, as removing the section into a late period; but this Talmudical signification is not at all appropriate (Hitzig translates, with an incorrect rendering of צופיה, “for she sees after the ordering of the house”), and besides the Aram. הִלְכָא, e.g., Targ. Pro 16:9, in the first line, signifies only the walk or the manner and way of going, and this gives with the Kerı̂ essentially the same signification. Luther well: Sie schawet wie es in jrem Hause zugeht [= she looks how it goes in her house]. Her eyes are turned everywhere; she is at one time here, at another there, to look after all with her own eyes; she does not suffer the day's work, according to the instructions given, to be left undone, while she folds her own hands on her bosom; but she works, keeping an oversight on all sides, and does not eat the bread of idleness (עַצְלוּת = עַצְלָה, Pro 19:15), but bread well deserved, for εἴ τις οὐ θέλει ἐργάζεσθαι, μηδὲ ἐσθιέτω, 2Th 3:10.