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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 4:13 - 4:13
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The exhortations attracting by means of promises, now become warnings fitted to alarm:
13 Hold fast to instruction, let her not go;
Keep her, for she is thy life.
14 Into the path of the wicked enter not,
And walk not in the way of the evil
15 Avoid it, enter not into it;
Turn from it and pass away.
16 For they cannot sleep unless they do evil,
And they are deprived of sleep unless they bring others to ruin.
17 For they eat the bread of wickedness,
And they drink the wine of violence.
Elsewhere מוּסָר means also self-discipline, or moral religious education, Pro 1:3; here discipline, i.e., parental educative counsel. תֶּרֶף is the segolated fut. apoc. Hiph. (indic. תַּרְפֶּה) from tarp, cf. the imper. Hiph. הֶרֶף from harp. נִצְּרֶהָ is the imper. Kal (not Piel, as Aben Ezra thinks) with Dagesh dirimens; cf. the verbal substantive נִצְּרָה Psa 141:3, with similar Dagesh, after the form יִקְּהָה, Gen 49:10. מוּסָר (elsewhere always masc.) is here used in the fem. as the synonym of the name of wisdom: keep her (instruction), for she is thy life,
(Note: Punctuate כִּי הִיא; the Zinnorith represents the place of the Makkeph, vid., Torath Emeth, p. 9.)
i.e., the life of thy life. In Pro 4:14 the godless (vid., on the root-idea of רָשָׁע under Psa 1:1) and the habitually wicked, i.e., the vicious, stand in parallelism; בּוֹא and אִשֵּׁר are related as entering and going on, ingressus and progressus. The verb אָשַׁר signifies, like יָשַׁר, to be straight, even, fortunate, whence אֶשֶׁר = Arab. yusâr, happiness, and to step straight out, Pro 9:6, of which meanings אִשֵּׁר is partly the intensive, as here, partly the causative, Pro 23:19 (elsewhere causative of the meaning, to be happy, Gen 30:13). The meaning progredi is not mediated by a supplementary צְעָדָיו; the derivative אֲשׁוּר (אַשּׁוּר), a step, shows that it is derived immediately from the root-idea of a movement in a straight line. Still less justifiable is the rendering by Schultens, ne vestigia imprimas in via malorum; for the Arab. âththr is denom. of ithr, אֲתַר, the primitive verb roots of which, athr, אתר = אָשַׁר, are lost.
Pro 4:15
On פְּרָעֵהוּ, avoid it (the way), (opp. אָחַז, Job 17:9; תָּמַךְ, Psa 17:5), see under Pro 1:25. שָׂטָה, elsewhere (as the Arab. shatt, to be without measure, insolent) used in malam partem, has here its fundamental meaning, to go aside. מֵעָלָיו (expressed in French by de dessus, in Ital. by di sopra) denotes: so that thou comest not to stand on it. עָבַר means in both cases transire, but the second instance, “to go beyond (farther)” (cf. 2Sa 15:22, and under Hab 1:11), coincides with “to escape, evadere.”
Pro 4:16
In the reason here given the perf. may stand in the conditional clauses as well as in Virgil's Et si non aliqua nocuisses, mortuus esses; but the fut., as in Ecc 5:11, denotes that they (the רָעִים and the רְשָׁעִים) cannot sleep, and are deprived of their sleep, unless they are continually doing evil and bringing others into misery; the interruption of this course of conduct, which has become to them like a second nature, would be as the interruption of their diet, which makes them ill. For the Kal יִכְשׁוֹלוּ, which here must have the meaning of the person sinning (cf. Pro 4:19), and would be feeble if used of the confirmed transgressors, the Kerı̂ rightly substitutes the Hiphil יַכְשִׁילוּ, which occurs also 2Ch 25:8, there without an object, in the meaning to cause to fall, as the contrast of עָזַר (to help).
Pro 4:17
The second כִּי introduces the reason of their bodily welfare being conditioned by evil-doing. If the poet meant: they live on bread which consists in wickedness, i.e., on wickedness as their bread, then in the parallel sentence he should have used the word חָמָס; the genitives are meant of the means of acquisition: they live on unrighteous gain, on bread and wine which they procure by wickedness and by all manner of violence or injustice. On the etymon of חָמָס (Arab. ḥamas, durum, asperum, vehementem esse), vid., Schultens; the plur. חֲמָסִים belongs to a more recent epoch (vid., under 2Sa 22:49 and Psa 18:49). The change in the tense represents the idea that they having eaten such bread, set forth such wine, and therewith wash it down.