Pro 17:16 | KD | STEP | Why the ready money in the hand of the fool; To get wisdom when he has yet no heart? The question is made pointed by זה, thus not: why the ready money when...? Is it to obtain wisdom? - the whole is but one question, the reason of which is founded in לבו אין (thus to be accented with Mugrash going before). The fool, perhaps, even makes some endeavours, for he goes to the school of the wise, to follow out their admonitions, קנה חכמה ( , etc.), and it costs him something ( ), but all to no purpose, for he has no heart. By this it is not meant that knowledge, for which he pays his honorarium, remains, it may be, in his head, but goes not to his heart, and thus becomes an unfruitful theory; but the heart is equivalent to the understanding, in the sense in which the heart appears as the previous condition to the attainment of wisdom ( ), and as something to be gained before all ( ), viz., understanding, as the fitting intellectual and practical habitus to the reception, the appropriation, and realization of wisdom, the ability rightly to comprehend the fulness of the communicated knowledge, and to adopt it as an independent possession, that which the Greek called νοῦς, as in that “golden proverb” of Democrates: πολλοὶ πολυμαθέες νοῦν οὐκ ἔχουσι, or as in , where it is said that the Lord opened τὸν νοῦν of His disciples to understand the Scriptures. In the lxx a distich follows , which is made up of 19b and 20b, and contains a varied translation of these two lines.

‏ Proverbs 17:16

Pro 17:16 16 Why the ready money in the hand of the fool; To get wisdom when he has yet no heart?

The question is made pointed by זה, thus not: why the ready money when...? Is it to obtain wisdom? - the whole is but one question, the reason of which is founded in לבו אין (thus to be accented with Mugrash going before). ^{▼▼If we write ולב־ with Makkeph, then we have to accentuate לקנות חכמה with Tarcha Munach, because the Silluk word in this writing has not two syllables before the tone. This sequence of accents if found in the Codd. Ven. 1521, 1615, Basel 1619, while most editions have לקנות חכמה ולב־אין, which is false. But according to MSS we have ולב without Makkeph, and that is right according to the Makkeph rules of the metrical Accentuationssystem; vid., Torath Emeth, p. 40.}

The fool, perhaps, even makes some endeavours, for he goes to the school of the wise, to follow out their admonitions, קנה חכמה (Pro 4:5, etc.), and it costs him something (Pro 4:7), but all to no purpose, for he has no heart. By this it is not meant that knowledge, for which he pays his honorarium, remains, it may be, in his head, but goes not to his heart, and thus becomes an unfruitful theory; but the heart is equivalent to the understanding, in the sense in which the heart appears as the previous condition to the attainment of wisdom (Pro 18:15), and as something to be gained before all (Pro 15:32), viz., understanding, as the fitting intellectual and practical habitus to the reception, the appropriation, and realization of wisdom, the ability rightly to comprehend the fulness of the communicated knowledge, and to adopt it as an independent possession, that which the Greek called νοῦς, as in that “golden proverb” of Democrates: πολλοὶ πολυμαθέες νοῦν οὐκ ἔχουσι, or as in Luk 24:25, where it is said that the Lord opened τὸν νοῦν of His disciples to understand the Scriptures. In the lxx a distich follows Pro 17:16, which is made up of 19b and 20b, and contains a varied translation of these two lines.