Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 9:1 - 9:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The preceding discourse pronounces those happy who, having taken their stand at the portal of Wisdom, wait for her appearance and her invitation. There is thus a house of Wisdom as there is a house of God, Psa 84:11; and if now the discourse is of a house of Wisdom, and of an invitation to a banquet therein (like that in the parable, Matt 22, of the invitation to the marriage feast of the king's son), it is not given without preparation:
1 Wisdom hath builded for herself an house,
Hewn out her seven pillars;
2 Hath slaughtered her beasts, mingled her wine;
Hath also spread her table;
3 Hath sent out her maidens; she waiteth
On the highest points of the city.
Pro 9:1
Regarding חָכְמוֹת, vid., at Pro 1:20. It is a plur. excellentiae, which is a variety of the plur. extensivus. Because it is the expression of a plural unity, it stands connected (as for the most part also אלהים, Deus) with the sing. of the predicate. The perfects enumerate all that Wisdom has done to prepare for her invitation. If we had a parable before us, the perf. would have run into the historical וַתִּשְׁלַח; but it is, as the תִקְרָא shows, an allegorical picture of the arrangement and carrying out of a present reality. Instead of בָּֽנְתָה לָּהּ בַּיִת there is בָּֽנְתָה בֵּיתָהּ, for the house is already in its origin represented as hers, and 1b is to be translated: she has hewn out her seven pillars (Hitzig); more correctly: her pillars, viz., seven (after the scheme דִבָּתָם רָעָה, Gen 37:2); but the construction is closer. שׁבעה is, altogether like Exo 25:37, the accusative of the second object, or of the predicate after the species of verba, with the idea: to make something, turn into something, which take to themselves a double accusative, Gesen. §139, 2: excidit columnas suas ita ut septem essent. Since the figure is allegorical, we may not dispense with the interpretation of the number seven by the remark, “No emphasis lies in the number” (Bertheau). First, we must contemplate architecturally the house with seven pillars: “They are,” as Hitzig rightly remarks, “the pillars of the מִסְדְּרוֹן (porch) [vid. Bachmann under Jdg 3:23, and Wetstein under Psa 144:12, where חָטַב is used of the cutting out and hewing of wood, as חָצַב of the cutting out and hewing of stone] in the inner court, which bore up the gallery of the first (and second) floors: four of these in the corners and three in the middle of three sides; through the midst of these the way led into the court of the house-floor the area.” But we cannot agree with Hitzig in maintaining that, with the seven pillars of chap. 8 and 9, the author looks back to the first seven chapters (Arab. âbwab, gates) of this book; we think otherwise of the component members of this Introduction to the Book of Proverbs; and to call the sections of a book “gates, שׁערים,” is a late Arabico-Jewish custom, of which there is found no trace whatever in the O.T. To regard them also, with Heidenheim (cf. Dante's Prose Writings, translated by Streckfuss, p. 77), as representing the seven liberal arts (שׁבע חכמות) is impracticable; for this division of the artes liberales into seven, consisting of the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectics) and Quadrivium (Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy), is not to be looked for within the old Israelitish territory, and besides, these were the sciences of this world which were so divided; but wisdom, to which the discourse here refers, is wholly a religious-moral subject. The Midrash thinks of the seven heavens (שׁבעה רקיעים), or the seven climates or parts of the earth (שׁבעה ארצות), as represented by them; but both references require artificial combinations, and have, as also the reference to the seven church-eras (Vitringa and Chr. Ben. Michaelis), this against them, that they are rendered probable neither from these introductory proverbial discourses, nor generally from the O.T. writings. The patristic and middle-age reference to the seven sacraments of the church passes sentence against itself; but the old interpretation is on the right path, when it suggests that the seven pillars are the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. The seven-foldness of the manifestation of the Spirit, already brought near by the seven lamps of the sacred candelabra (the מְנוֹרָה), is established by Isa 11:2 (vid., l.c.); and that Wisdom is the possessor and dispenser of the Spirit she herself testifies, Pro 1:23. Her Spirit is the “Spirit of wisdom;” but at the same time, since, born of God, she is mediatrix between God and the world, also the “Spirit of Jahve,” He is the “spirit of understanding,” the “spirit of counsel,” and the “spirit of might” (Isa 11:2); for she says, Pro 8:14, “Counsel is mine, and reflection; I am understanding, I have strength.” He is also the “spirit of knowledge,” and the “spirit of the fear of the Lord” (Isa 11:2); for fear and the knowledge of Jahve are, according to Pro 9:14, the beginning of wisdom, and essentially wisdom itself.
Pro 9:2
If thus the house of Wisdom is the place of her fellowship with those who honour her, the system of arrangements made by her, so as to disclose and communicate to her disciples the fulness of her strength and her gifts, then it is appropriate to understand by the seven pillars the seven virtues of her nature communicating themselves (apocalyptically expressed, the ἑπτὰ πνεύματα), which bear up and adorn the dwelling which she establishes among men. Flesh and wine are figures of the nourishment for the mind and the heart which is found with wisdom, and, without asking what the flesh and the wine specially mean, are figures of the manifold enjoyment which makes at once strong and happy. The segolate n. verbale טֶבַח, which Pro 7:22 denoted the slaughtering or the being slaughtered, signifies here, in the concrete sense, the slaughtered ox; Michaelis rightly remarks that טבח, in contradistinction to זבח, is the usual word for mactatio extrasacrificialis. Regarding מָסַךְ יַיִן, vid., under Isa 5:22; it is not meant of the mingling of wine with sweet scents and spices, but with water (warm or cold), and signifies simply to make the wine palatable (as κεραννύναι, temperare); the lxx ἐκέρασεν εἰς κρατῆρα, κρατήρ is the name of the vessel in which the mixing takes place; they drank not ἄκρατον, but κεκερασμένον ἄκρατον, Rev 14:10. The frequently occurring phrase עָרַךְ שֻׁלְחָן signifies to prepare the table (from שֻׁלַּח, properly the unrolled and outspread leather cover), viz., by the placing out of the dishes (vid., regarding עָרַךְ, under Gen 22:9).
Pro 9:3
The verb קָרָא, when a feast is spoken of, means to invite; קְרֻאִים, Pro 9:18 (cf. 1Sa 9:13, etc.), are the guests. נַעֲרוֹתֶיהָ the lxx translates τοὺς ἑαυτῆς δούλους, but certainly here the disciples are meant who already are in the service of Wisdom; but that those who are invited to Wisdom are thought of as feminine, arises from the tasteful execution of the picture. The invitation goes forth to be known to all far and wide, so that in her servants Wisdom takes her stand in the high places of the city. Instead of בְּראֹשׁ, Pro 8:2; Pro 1:21, there is used here the expression עַל־גַּפֵּי. We must distinguish the Semitic גַּף (= ganf), wings, from גנף = כנף, to cover, and גַּף (= gaff or ganf), the bark, which is derived either from גָּפַף or גָּנַף, Arab. jnf, convexus, incurvus et extrinsecus gibber fuit, hence originally any surface bent outwards or become crooked (cf. the roots cap, caf, קב כף גף גב, etc.), here the summit of a height (Fl.); thus not super alis (after the analogy of πτερύγιον, after Suidas = ἀκρωτήριον), but super dorsis (as in Lat. we say δορσυμ μοντις, and also viae).