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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 4:23 - 4:23
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
After this general preface the exhortation now becomes special:
23 Above all other things that are to be guarded, keep thy heart,
For out from it life has its issues.
24 Put away from thee perverseness of mouth,
And waywardness of lips put far from thee.
25 Thine eyes should look straight forward,
And thine eyelids look straight to the end before thee.
26 Make even the path of thy feet,
And let all thy ways be correct.
27 Turn not aside to the right and to the left;
Remove thy foot from evil.
Although מִשְׁמָר in itself and in this connection may mean the object to be watchfully avoided (cavendi) (vid., under Pro 2:20): thus the usage of the language lying before us applies it, yet only as denoting the place of watching or the object observandi; so that it is not to be thus explained, with Raschi and others: before all from which one has to protect himself (ab omni re cavenda), guard thine heart; but: before all that one has to guard (prae omni re custodienda), guard it as the most precious of possessions committed to thy trust. The heart, which according to its etymon denotes that which is substantial (Kernhafte) in man (cf. Arab. lubb, the kernel of the nut or almond), comes here into view not as the physical, but as the intellectual, and specially the ethical centrum.
Pro 4:24
The תּוֹצָאוֹת are the point of a thing, e.g., of a boundary, from which it goes forth, and the linear course proceeding from thence. If thus the author says that the תּוֹצְאוֹת חַיִּים go out from the heart,
(Note: The correct form here is כִּי־מִמֶּנּוּ, with the Makkeph to כי.)
he therewith implies that the life has not only its fountain in the heart, but also that the direction which it takes is determined by the heart. Physically considered, the heart is the receptacle for the blood, in which the soul lives and rules; the pitcher at the blood-fountain which draws it and pours it forth; the chief vessel of the physically self-subsisting blood-life from which it goes forth, and into which it disembogues (Syst. der bib. Psychol. p. 232). What is said of the heart in the lower sense of corporeal vitality, is true in the higher sense of the intellectual soul-life. The Scripture names the heart also as the intellectual soul-centre of man, in its concrete, central unity, its dynamic activity, and its ethical determination on all sides. All the radiations of corporeal and of soul life concentrate there, and again unfold themselves from thence; all that is implied in the Hellenic and Hellenistic words νοῦς, λόγος, συνείδησις, θυμός, lies in the word καρδία; and all whereby בָּשָׂר (the body) and נֶפֶשׁ (the spirit, anima) are affected comes in לֵב into the light of consciousness (Id. p. 251). The heart is the instrument of the thinking, willing, perceiving life of the spirit; it is the seat of the knowledge of self, of the knowledge of God, of the knowledge of our relation to God, and also of the law of God impressed on our moral nature; it is the workshop of our individual spiritual and ethical form of life brought about by self-activity - the life in its higher and in its lower sense goes out from it, and receives from it the impulse of the direction which it takes; and how earnestly, therefore, must we feel ourselves admonished, how sacredly bound to preserve the heart in purity (Psa 73:1), so that from this spring of life may go forth not mere seeming life and a caricature of life, but a true life well-pleasing to God! How we have to carry into execution this careful guarding of the heart, is shown in Pro 4:24 and the golden rules which follow. Mouth and lips are meant (Pro 4:24) as instruments of speech, and not of its utterance, but of the speech going forth from them. עִקְּשׁוּת, distorsio, refers to the mouth (Pro 6:12), when what it speaks is disfiguring and deforming, thus falsehood as the contrast of truth and love (Pro 2:12); and to the lips לָזוּת, when that which they speak turns aside from the true and the right to side-ways and by-ways. Since the Kametz of such abstracta, as well of verbs 'ו'ע like לְזוּת, Eze 32:5, as of verbs 'ה'ל like גָּלוּת, Isa 45:13, חָזוּת, Isa 28:18, is elsewhere treated as unalterable, there lies in this לְזוּת either an inconsistency of punctuation, or it is presupposed that the form לְזוּת was vocalized like שְׁבוּת = שְׁבִית, Num 21:29.
Pro 4:25
Another rule commends gathering together (concentration) in opposition to dissipation. It is also even externally regarded worthy of consideration, as Ben-Sira, Pro 9:5, expresses it: μὴ περιβλέπου ἐν ῥύμαις πόλεως - purposeless, curious staring about operates upon the soul, always decentralizing and easily defiling it. But the rule does not exhaust itself in this meaning with reference to external self-discipline; it counsels also straight-forward, unswerving directness toward a fixed goal (and what else can this be in such a connection than that which wisdom places before man?), without the turning aside of the eye toward that which is profitless and forbidden, and in this inward sense it falls in with the demand for a single, not squinting eye, Mat 6:22, where Bengel explains ἁπλοῦς by simplex et bonus, intentus in caelum, in Deum, unice. נֹכַח (R. נך) means properly fixing, or holding fast with the look, and נֶגֶד (as the Arab. najad, to be clear, to be in sight, shows) the rising up which makes the object stand conspicuous before the eyes; both denote here that which lies straight before us, and presents itself to the eye looking straight out. The naming of the עַפְעַפִּים (from עִפְעֵף, to flutter, to move tremblingly), which belongs not to the seeing apparatus of the eye but to its protection, is introduced by the poetical parallelism; for the eyelids, including in this word the twinkling, in their movement follow the direction of the seeing eye. On the form יַיְשִׁרוּ (fut. Hiph. of יָשַׁר, to be straight), defective according to the Masora, with the Jod audible, cf. Hos 7:12; 1Ch 12:2, and under Gen 8:17; the softened form הֵישִׁיר does not occur, we find only הִיְשִׁיר or הוֹשִׁיר.
Pro 4:26
The understanding of this rule is dependent on the right interpretation of פַּלֵּס, which means neither “weigh off” (Ewald) nor “measure off” (Hitzig, Zöckler). פִּלֵּס has once, Psa 58:3, the meaning to weigh out, as the denom. of פֶּלֶס, a level, a steelyard;
(Note: The Arabic word teflı̂s, said to be of the same signification (a balance), and which is given in the most recent editions of Gesenius' Lexicon, has been already shown under Job 37:16 to be a word devoid of all evidence.)
everywhere else it means to make even, to make level, to open a road: vid., under Isa 26:7; Isa 40:12. The admonition thus refers not to the careful consideration which measures the way leading to the goal which one wishes to reach, but to the preparation of the way by the removal of that which prevents unhindered progress and makes the way insecure. The same meaning appears if פִּלֵּס, of cognate meaning with תִּכֵּן, denoted first to level, and then to make straight with the level (Fleischer). We must remove all that can become a moral hindrance or a dangerous obstacle, in our life-course, in order that we may make right steps with our feet, as the lxx (Heb 12:13) translate. 26b is only another expression for this thought. הָכִין דַּרְכּוֹ (2Ch 27:6) means to give a direction to his way; a right way, which keeps in and facilitates the keeping in the straight direction, is accordingly called דֶּרֶךְ נָכוֹן; and “let all thy ways be right” (cf. Psa 119:5, lxx κατευθυνθείησαν) will thus mean: see to it that all the ways which thou goest lead straight to the end.
Pro 4:27
In closest connection with the preceding, 27a cautions against by-ways and indirect courses, and 27b continues it in the briefest moral expression, which is here הָסֵר רַגְלְךָ מֵרָע instead of סוּר מֵרָע, Pro 3:7, for the figure is derived from the way. The lxx has other four lines after this verse (27), which we have endeavoured to retranslate into the Hebrew (Introd. p. 47). They are by no means genuine; for while in 27a right and left are equivalent to by-ways, here the right and left side are distinguished as that of truth and its contrary; and while there [in lxx] the ὀρθὰς τροχιὰς ποιεῖν is required of man, here it is promised as the operation of God, which is no contradiction, but in this similarity of expression betrays poverty of style. Hitzig disputes also the genuineness of the Hebrew Pro 4:27. But it continues explanatorily Pro 4:26, and is related to it, yet not as a gloss, and in the general relation of 26 and 27a there comes a word, certainly not unwelcome, such as 27b, which impresses the moral stamp on these thoughts. That with Pro 4:27 the admonition of his father, which the poet, placing himself back into the period of his youth, reproduces, is not yet concluded, the resumption of the address בְּנִי, Pro 5:1, makes evident; while on the other hand the address בָּנִים in Pro 5:7 shows that at that point there is advance made from the recollections of his father's house to conclusions therefrom, for the circle of young men by whom the poet conceives himself to be surrounded. That in Pro 5:7. a subject of the warning with which the seventh address closes is retained and further prosecuted, does not in the connection of all these addresses contradict the opinion that with Pro 5:7 a new address begins. But the opinion that the warning against adultery does not agree (Zöckler) with the designation רַךְ, Pro 4:3, given to him to whom it is addressed, is refuted by 1Ch 22:5; 2Ch 13:7.