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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 5:21 - 5:21
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That the intercourse of the sexes out of the married relationship is the commencement of the ruin of a fool is now proved.
21 For the ways of every one are before the eyes of Jahve,
And all his paths He marketh out.
22 His own sins lay hold of him, the evil-doer,
And in the bands of his sins is he held fast.
23 He dies for the want of correction,
And in the fulness of his folly he staggers to ruin.
It is unnecessary to interpret נֹכַח as an adverbial accusative: straight before Jahve's eyes; it may be the nominative of the predicate; the ways of man (for אִישׁ is here an individual, whether man or woman) are an object (properly, fixing) of the eyes of Jahve. With this the thought would suitably connect itself: et onmes orbitas ejus ad amussim examinat; but פִּלֵּס, as the denom. of פֶּלֶס, Psa 58:3, is not connected with all the places where the verb is united with the obj. of the way, and Psa 78:50 shows that it has there the meaning to break though, to open a way (from פל, to split, cf. Talmudic מְפֻלָּשׁ, opened, accessible, from פלשׁ, Syriac pelaa, perfodere, fodiendo viam, aditum sibi aperire). The opening of the way is here not, as at Isa 26:7, conceived of as the setting aside of the hindrances in the way of him who walks, but generally as making walking in the way possible: man can take no step in any direction without God; and that not only does not exempt him from moral responsibility, but the consciousness of this is rather for the first time rightly quickened by the consciousness of being encompassed on every side by the knowledge and the power of God. The dissuasion of Pro 5:20 is thus in Pro 5:21 grounded in the fact, that man at every stage and step of his journey is observed and encompassed by God: it is impossible for him to escape from the knowledge of God or from dependence on Him. Thus opening all the paths of man, He has also appointed to the way of sin the punishment with which it corrects itself: “his sins lay hold of him, the evil-doer.” The suffix ָיו does not refer to אִישׁ of Pro 5:21, where every one without exception and without distinction is meant, but it relates to the obj. following, the evil-doer, namely, as the explanatory permutative annexed to the “him” according to the scheme, Exo 2:6; the permutative is distinguished from the apposition by this, that the latter is a forethought explanation which heightens the understanding of the subject, while the former is an explanation afterwards brought in which guards against a misunderstanding. The same construction, Pro 14:13, belonging to the syntaxis ornata in the old Hebrew, has become common in the Aramaic and in the modern Hebrew. Instead of יִלְכְּדוּהוּ (Pro 5:22), the poet uses poetically יִלְכְּדֻנוֹ; the interposed נ may belong to the emphatic ground-form יִלְכָּדוּן, but is epenthetic if one compares forms such as קָבְנוֹ (R. קֹב), Num 23:13 (cf. p. 73). The חַמָּאתוֹ governed by חַבְלֵי, laquei (חֶבְלֵי, tormina), is either gen. exeg.: bands which consist in his sin, or gen. subj.: bands which his sin unites, or better, gen. possess.: bands which his sin brings with it. By these bands he will be held fast, and so will die: he (הוּא referring to the person described) will die in insubordination (Symm. δι ̓ ἀπαιδευσίαν), or better, since אֵין and רֹב are placed in contrast: in want of correction. With the יִשְׁגֶּה (Pro 5:23), repeated purposely from Pro 5:20, there is connected the idea of the overthrow which is certain to overtake the infatuated man. In Pro 5:20 the sense of moral error began already to connect itself with this verb. אִוֶּלֶת is the right name of unrestrained lust of the flesh. אולת is connected with אוּל, the belly; אול, Arab. âl, to draw together, to condense, to thicken (Isaiah, p. 424). Dummheit (stupidity) and the Old-Norse dumba, darkness, are in their roots related to each other. Also in the Semitic the words for blackness and darkness are derived from roots meaning condensation. אויל is the mind made thick, darkened, and become like crude matter.