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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 6:6 - 6:6
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As Elihu (Job 35:11) says that God has set the beasts as our teachers, so he sends the sluggard to the school of the ant (Ameise), so named (in Germ.) from its industry (Emsigkeit):
6 Go to the ant, sluggard;
Consider her ways, and be wise!
7 She that hath no judge,
Director, and ruler:
8 She prepareth in summer her food,
Has gathered in harvest her store.
The Dechî written mostly under the לֵךְ separates the inseparable. The thought, Go to the ant, sluggard! permits no other distinction than in the vocative; but the Dechî of לֵךְ אֶל־נמלה is changed into Munach
(Note: Cod. 1294 accentuates לֵך אל־נמלָה; and that, according to Ben-Asher's rule, is correct.)
on account of the nature of the Athnach-word, which consists of only two syllables without the counter-tone. The ant has for its Hebrew-Arabic name נְמָלָה, from the R. נם (Isaiah, p. 687), which is first used of the sound, which expresses the idea of the low, dull, secret - thus of its active and yet unperceived motion; its Aramaic name in the Peshîto, ûmenaa', and in the Targ. שׁוּמְשְׁמָנָא (also Arab. sumsum, simsim, of little red ants), designates it after its quick activity, its busy running hither and thither (vid., Fleischer in Levy's Chald. Wörterb. ii. 578). She is a model of unwearied and well-planned labour. From the plur. דְּרָכֶיהָ it is to be concluded that the author observed their art in gathering in and laying up in store, carrying burdens, building their houses, and the like (vid., the passages in the Talmud and Midrash in the Hamburg Real-Encyclopädie für Bibel und Talmud, 1868, p. 83f.). To the ant the sluggard (עָצֵל, Aram. and Arab. עטל, with the fundamental idea of weight and dulness) is sent, to learn from her to be ashamed, and to be taught wisdom.
Pro 6:7
This relative clause describes the subject of Pro 6:8 more fully: it is like a clause with גַּם כִּי, quamquam.
(Note: Pro 6:7 is commonly halved by Rebia; but for the correct accentuation, vid., Torath Emeth, p. 48, §3.)
The community of ants exhibits a peculiar class of workers; but it is not, like that of bees, composed of grades germinating in the queen-bee as the head. The three offices here named represent the highest judiciary, police, and executive powers; for קָצִין (from קָצָה, to distinguish, with the ending in, vid., Jesurun, p. 215 s.) is the judge; שֹׁטֵר (from שׁטר, Arab. saṭr, to draw lines, to write) is the overseer (in war the director, controller), or, as Saalschütz indicates the province of the schotrim both in cities and in the camp, the office of police; מֹשֵׁל (vid., Isaiah, p. 691), the governors of the whole state organism subordinated to the schoftim and the schotrim. The Syr., and the Targ. slavishly following it, translate קצין by חַצדָּא (harvest), for they interchange this word with קציר.
Pro 6:8
In this verse the change of the time cannot be occasioned by this, that קָיִץ and קָצִיר are distinguished as the earlier and the later period of the year; for קַיִץ (= Arab. ḳayt, from ḳât, to be glowing hot, cf. Arab. kghyyṭ of the glow of the mid-day heat) is the late summer, when the heat rises to the highest degree; but the son of the Shunammite succumbed to the sun-stroke in the time of harvest (2Ki 4:18.). Löwenstein judiciously remarks that תָּכִין refers to immediate want, אָֽנְרָה to that which is future; or, better, the former shows them engaged in persevering industry during the summer glow, the latter as at the end of the harvest, and engaged in the bringing home of the winter stores. The words of the procuring of food in summer are again used by Agur, Pro 30:25; and the Aramaic fable of the ant and the grasshopper,
(Note: Vid., Goldberg's Chofes Matmonim, Berlin 1845; and Landsberger's Berlin Graduation Thesis, Fabulae aliquot Aramaeae, 1846, p. 28.)
which is also found among those of Aesop and of Syntipas, serves as an illustration of this whole verse. The lxx has, after the “Go to the ant,” a proverb of five lines, ἢ πορεύθητι πρὸς τὴν μέλισσαν. Hitzig regards it as of Greek origin; and certainly, as Lagarde has shown, it contains idiomatic Greek expressions which would not occur to a translator from the Hebrew. In any case, however, it is an interpolation which disfigures the Hebrew text by overlading it.