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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 9:13 - 9:13
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The poet now brings before us another figure, for he personifies Folly working in opposition to Wisdom, and gives her a feminine name, as the contrast to Wisdom required, and thereby to indicate that the seduction, as the 13th proverbial discourse (chap. 7) has shown, appears especially in the form of degraded womanhood:
13 The woman Folly [Frau Thorheit] conducts herself boisterously,
Wantonness, and not knowing anything at all;
14 And hath seated herself at the door of her house,
On a seat high up in the city,
15 To call to those who walk in the way,
Who go straight on their path.
The connection of אֵשֶת כְּסִילוּת is genitival, and the genitive is not, as in אשׁת רָע, Pro 6:24, specifying, but appositional, as in בת־ציון (vid., under Isa 1:8). הוֹמִיָּה [boisterous] is pred., as Pro 7:11 : her object is sensual, and therefore her appearance excites passionately, overcoming the resistance of the mind by boisterousness. In 13b it is further said who and how she is. פְּתַיּוּת she is called as wantonness personified. This abstract פְּתִיּוּת, derived from פְּתִי, must be vocalized as אַכְזָרִיּוּת; Hitzig thinks it is written with a on account of the following u sound, but this formation always ends in ijjûth, not ajjûth. But as from חָזָה as well חִזָּיוֹן = חֶזְיוֹן as חָזוֹן is formed, so from פָּתָה as well פָּתוּת like חָזוּת or פְּתוּת like לְזוּת, רְעוּת, as פְּתָיוּת (instead of which פְּתַיּוּת is preferred) can be formed; Kimchi rightly (Michlol 181a) presents the word under the form פְּעָלוּת. With וּבַל (Pro 14:7) poetic, and stronger than לֹאוְ, the designation of the subject is continued; the words וּבַל־יָדְעָה מָּה (thus with Mercha and without Makkeph following, ידעה is to be written, after Codd. and old editions) have the value of an adjective: and not knowing anything at all (מָה = τὶ, as Num 23:3; Job 13:13, and here in the negative clause, as in prose מְאוּמָה), i.e., devoid of all knowledge. The Targ. translates explanatorily: not recognising טַבְתָּא, the good; and the lxx substitutes: she knows not shame, which, according to Hitzig, supposes the word כְּלִמָּה, approved of by him; but כלמה means always pudefactio, not pudor. To know no כלמה would be equivalent to, to let no shaming from without influence one; for shamelessness the poet would have made use of the expression ובל־ידעה בּשֶׁת. In וְיָֽשְׁבָה the declaration regarding the subject beginning with הומיה is continued: Folly also has a house in which works of folly are carried one, and has set herself down by the door (לְפֶּתַח as לְפִי, Pro 8:3) of this house; she sits there עַל־כִּסֵּא. Most interpreters here think on a throne (lxx ἐπὶ δίφρου, used especially of the sella curulis); and Zöckler, as Umbreit, Hitzig, and others, connecting genitiv. therewith מְרֹמֵי קָרֶת, changes in 14b the scene, for he removes the “high throne of the city” from the door of the house to some place elsewhere. But the sitting is in contrast to the standing and going on the part of Wisdom on the streets preaching (Evagrius well renders: in molli ignavaque sella); and if כסא and house-door are named along with each other, the former is a seat before the latter, and the accentuation rightly separates by Mugrash כסא from מרמי קרת. “According to the accents and the meaning, מרמי קרת is the acc. loci: on the high places of the city, as Pro 8:2.” (Fl.). They are the high points of the city, to which, as Wisdom, Pro 9:3, Pro 8:2, so also Folly, her rival (wherefore Ecc 10:6 does not appertain to this place), invites followers to herself. She sits before her door to call לְעֹבְרֵי דָרֶךְ (with Munach, as in Cod. 1294 and old editions, without the Makkeph), those who go along the way (genitive connection with the supposition of the accusative construction, transire viam, as Pro 2:7), to call (invite) הַֽמְיַשְּׁרִים (to be pointed with מ raphatum and Gaja going before, according to Ben-Asher's rule; vid., Methegsetz. §20), those who make straight their path, i.e., who go straight on, directly before them (cf. Isa 57:2). The participial construction (the schemes amans Dei and amans Deum), as well as that of the verb קרא (first with the dat. and then with the accus.), interchange.