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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Proverbs 9:18 - 9:18
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He goes within:
18 And he knows not that the dead are there;
In the depths of Hades, her guests.
How near to one another the house of the adulteress and Hades are, so that a man passes through the one into the other, is already stated in Pro 2:18; Pro 7:27. Here, in the concluding words of the introduction to the Book of Proverbs, addressed to youth, and for the most part containing warning against sinful pleasure, these two further declarations are advanced: the company assembled in the house of lewdness consists of רְפָאִים, i.e., (cf. p. 83) the old, worn-out, who are only in appearance living, who have gone down to the seeming life of the shadowy existence of the kingdom of the dead; her (כסילות) invited ones (cf. Pro 7:26, her slaughtered ones) are in the depths of Hades (not in the valleys, as Umbreit, Löwenstein, and Ewald translate, but in the depths, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, ἐπὶ τοῖς βαθέσι; for עִמְקֵי is not only plur. to עֵמֶק, but also per metaplasmum to עֹמֶק, Pro 25:3, as אִמְרֵי to אֹמֶר), thus in שְׁאוֹל תַּחְתִּית (Deu 32:22); they have forsaken the fellowship of the life and of the love of God, and have sunk into the deepest destruction. The house of infamy into which Folly allures does not only lead to hell, it is hell itself; and they who permit themselves to be thus befooled are like wandering corpses, and already on this side of death are in the realm of wrath and of the curse.
(Note: The lxx has considerable additions introduced after Pro 9:18, as also after Pro 9:12, of which we shall elsewhere speak.)