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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 8:1 - 8:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The author has now almost exhausted the ethical material; for in this introduction to the Solomonic Book of Proverbs he works it into a memorial for youth, so that it is time to think of concluding the circle by bending back the end to the beginning. For as in the beginning, Pro 1:20., so also here in the end, he introduces Wisdom herself as speaking. There, her own testimony is delivered in contrast to the alluring voice of the deceiver; here, the daughter of Heaven in the highways inviting to come to her, is the contrast to the adulteress lurking in the streets, who is indeed not a personification, but a woman of flesh and blood, but yet at the same time as the incarnate ἀπάτη of worldly lust. He places opposite to her Wisdom, whose person is indeed not so sensibly perceptible, but who is nevertheless as real, coming near to men in a human way, and seeking to win them by her gifts.
1 Doth not Wisdom discourse,
And Understanding cause her voice to be heard?
2 On the top of the high places in the way,
In the midst of the way, she has placed herself.
3 By the side of the gates, at the exit of the city,
At the entrance to the doors, she calleth aloud.
As הִנֵּה points to that which is matter of fact, so הֲלֹא calls to a consideration of it (cf. Pro 14:22); the question before the reader is doubly justified with reference to Pro 1:20. With חכמה, תבונה is interchanged, as e.g., Pro 2:1-6; such names of wisdom are related to its principal name almost as אלהים, עליון, and the like, to יהוה. In describing the scene, the author, as usual, heaps up synonyms which touch one another without coming together.
Pro 8:2
By מְרֹמִים Hitzig understands the summit of a mountain, and therefore regards this verse as an interpolation; but the “high places” are to be understood of the high-lying parts of the city. There, on the way which leads up and down, she takes her stand. עֲלֵי = Arab. 'ly, old and poetic for עַל, signifies here “hard by, close to,” properly, so that something stands forward over the edge of a thing, or, as it were, passes over its borders (Fl.). The בֵּית, Hitzig, as Bertheau, with lxx, Targ., Jerome, interpret prepositionally as a strengthening of בֵּין (in the midst); but where it once, Eze 1:27, occurs in this sense, it is fully written בֵּית לְ. Here it is the accus. loci of the substantive; “house of the ascent” (Syr. bêth urchotho) is the place where several ways meet, the uniting point, as אֵם הדרך (Eze 21:26), the point of departure, exit; the former the crossway, as the latter the separating way. Thus Immanuel: the place of the frequented streets; Meîri: the place of the ramification (more correctly, the concentration) of the ways. נִצּבָה signifies more than קָמָה (she raises herself) and עָֽמְדָה (she goes thither); it means that she plants herself there.
Pro 8:3
In this verse Bertheau finds, not inappropriately, the designations of place: on this side, on that side, and within the gate. לְיַד, at the hand, is equivalent to at the side, as Psa 140:6. לְפִי, of the town, is the same as לְפֶּתַח, Pro 9:14, of the house: at the mouth, i.e., at the entrance of the city, thus where they go out and in. There are several of these ways for leaving and entering a city, and on this account מְבּוֹא פְתָחִים are connected: generally where one goes out and in through one of the gates (doors). מָבוֹא, fully represented by the French avenue, the space or way which leads to anything (Fl.). There she raises her voice, which sounds out far and wide; vid., concerning תָּרֹנָּה (Graec. Venet. incorrectly, after Rashi, ἀλαλάξουσι), at Pro 1:20.