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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 7:19 - 7:19
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The adulteress now deprives the youth of all fear; the circumstances under which her invitation is given are as favourable as possible.
19 “For the man is not at home,
He has gone on a long journey.
20 He has taken the purse with him:
He will not return home till the day of the full moon.”
It is true that the article stands in הָאִישׁ, Arab. alm'ar-fat, i.e., serves to define the word: the man, to whom here κατ ̓ ̓ξοχήν and alone reference can be made, viz., the husband of the adulteress (Fl.); but on the other side it is characteristic that she does not say אִישִׁי (as e.g., Gen 29:32), but ignores the relation of love and duty in which she is placed to him, and speaks of him as one standing at a distance from her (Aben-Ezra). Erroneously Vogel reads בַּבַּיִת after the Targ. instead of בְּבֵיתוֹ. We say in Hebr. אינו בביתו, il n'est pas chez soi, as we say לָקַח בְּיָדוֹ, il a pris avec soi (cf. Jer 38:10). מֵרָחוֹק Hitzig seeks to connect with the verb, which, after Isa 17:13; Isa 22:3, is possible; for the Hebr. מרחוק (מִמֶּרְחָק), far off, has frequently the meaning from afar, for the measure of length is determined not from the point of departure outward, but from the end, as e.g., Homer, Il. ii. 456; ἕκαθεν δέ τε φαίνεται αὐγή, from afar the gleam is seen, i.e., shines hither from the distance. Similarly we say in French, il vient du coté du nord, he comes from the north, as well as il va du coté du nord, he goes northwards. But as we do not say: he has gone on a journey far off, but: on a distant journey, so here מרחוק is virtually an adj. (vid., under Isa 5:26) equivalent to רְחוֹקָה (Num 9:10): a journey which is distant = such as from it he has a long way back. Michaelis has well remarked here: ut timorem ei penitus adimat, veluti per gradus incedit. He has undertaken a journey to a remote point, but yet more: he has taken money with him, has thus business to detain him; and still further: he has even determined the distant time of his return. צְרֽוֹר־הַכֶּסֶף .nruter (thus to be written after Ben-Asher, vid., Baer's Torath Emeth, p. 41) is the purse (from צָרַר, to bind together), not one of many, but that which is his own. The terminus precedes 20b to emphasize the lateness; vid., on כֶּסֶא under Psa 81:4. Graec. Venet. τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ καιροῦ, after Kimchi and others, who derive כסא (כסה) from the root כס, to reckon, and regard it as denoting only a definite time. But the two passages require a special idea; and the Syr. ḳêso, which in 1Ki 12:32; 2Ch 7:10, designates the time from the 15th day of the month, shows that the word denotes not, according to the Talmud, the new moon (or the new year's day), when the moon's disk begins to cover itself, i.e., to fill (יתכסה), but the full moon, when it is covered, i.e., filled; so that thus the time of the night-scene here described is not that of the last quarter of the moon (Ewald), in which it rises at midnight, but that of the new moon (Hitzig), when the night is without moonlight. Since the derivation of the word from כסא (כסה), to cover, gives the satisfactory idea of the covering or filling of the moon's disk, we do not seek after any other; Dietrich fixes on the root-idea of roundness, and Hitzig of vision (כסא = סכה, שׂכה, vid., on the contrary, under Psa 143:9). The ל is that of time at which, in which, about which, anything is done; it is more indefinite than בְּ would be. He will not return for some fourteen days.