Pro 5:10-6:1 | KD | STEP | The eighth discourse springs out of the conclusion of the seventh, and connects itself by its reflective מעליה so closely with it that it appears as its continuation; but the new beginning and its contents included in it, referring only to social life, secures its relative independence. The poet derives the warning against intercourse with the adulteress from the preceding discourse, and grounds it on the destructive consequences. 7 And now, ye sons, hearken unto me, And depart not from the words of my mouth. 8 Hold thy path far from her neighbourhood, And come not to the door of her house! 9 That thou mayest not give the freshness of thy youth to another, Nor thy years to the cruel one; 10 That strangers may not sate themselves with thy possessions, And the fruit of thy toils come into the house of a stranger, 11 And thou groanest at the end, When thy flesh and thy body are consumed. Neither here nor in the further stages of this discourse is there any reference to the criminal punishment inflicted on the adulterer, which, according to , consisted in death, according to , cf. John. , in stoning, and according to a later traditional law, in strangulation (חנק). Ewald finds in a play on this punishment of adultery prescribed by law, and reads from Pro 5:9. that the adulterer who is caught by the injured husband was reduced to the state of a slave, and was usually deprived of his manhood. But that any one should find pleasure in making the destroyer of his wife his slave is a far-fetched idea, and neither the law nor the history of Israel contains any evidence for this punishment by slavery or the mutilation of the adulterer, for which Ewald refers to Grimm’s Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer . The figure which is here sketched by the poet is very different. He who goes into the net of the wanton woman loses his health and his goods. She stands not alone, but has her party with her, who wholly plunder the simpleton who goes into her trap. Nowhere is there any reference to the husband of the adulteress. The poet does not at all think on a married woman. And the word chosen directs our attention rather to a foreigner than to an Israelitish woman, although the author may look upon harlotry as such as heathenish rather than Israelitish, and designate it accordingly. The party of those who make prostitutes of themselves consists of their relations and their older favourites, the companions of their gain, who being in league with her exhaust the life-strength and the resources of the befooled youth (Fl.). This discourse begins with ועתּה, for it is connected by this concluding application (cf. ) with the preceding.

‏ Proverbs 5:10-23

The eighth discourse springs out of the conclusion of the seventh, and connects itself by its reflective מעליה so closely with it that it appears as its continuation; but the new beginning and its contents included in it, referring only to social life, secures its relative independence. The poet derives the warning against intercourse with the adulteress from the preceding discourse, and grounds it on the destructive consequences. 7 And now, ye sons, hearken unto me, And depart not from the words of my mouth. 8 Hold thy path far from her neighbourhood, And come not to the door of her house! 9 That thou mayest not give the freshness of thy youth to another, Nor thy years to the cruel one; 10 That strangers may not sate themselves with thy possessions, And the fruit of thy toils come into the house of a stranger, 11 And thou groanest at the end, When thy flesh and thy body are consumed.

Neither here nor in the further stages of this discourse is there any reference to the criminal punishment inflicted on the adulterer, which, according to Lev 20:10, consisted in death, according to Eze 16:40, cf. John. Pro 8:5, in stoning, and according to a later traditional law, in strangulation (חנק). Ewald finds in Pro 5:14 a play on this punishment of adultery prescribed by law, and reads from Pro 5:9. that the adulterer who is caught by the injured husband was reduced to the state of a slave, and was usually deprived of his manhood. But that any one should find pleasure in making the destroyer of his wife his slave is a far-fetched idea, and neither the law nor the history of Israel contains any evidence for this punishment by slavery or the mutilation of the adulterer, for which Ewald refers to Grimm’s Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer. The figure which is here sketched by the poet is very different. He who goes into the net of the wanton woman loses his health and his goods. She stands not alone, but has her party with her, who wholly plunder the simpleton who goes into her trap. Nowhere is there any reference to the husband of the adulteress. The poet does not at all think on a married woman. And the word chosen directs our attention rather to a foreigner than to an Israelitish woman, although the author may look upon harlotry as such as heathenish rather than Israelitish, and designate it accordingly. The party of those who make prostitutes of themselves consists of their relations and their older favourites, the companions of their gain, who being in league with her exhaust the life-strength and the resources of the befooled youth (Fl.). This discourse begins with ועתּה, for it is connected by this concluding application (cf. Pro 7:24) with the preceding. Pro 5:12-14

The poet now tells those whom he warns to hear how the voluptuary, looking back on his life-course, passes sentence against himself. 12 And thou sayest, “Why have I then hated correction, And my heart despised instruction! 13 And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, Nor lent mine ear to my instructors? 14 I had almost fallen into every vice In the midst of the assembly and the congregation!”

The question 12a (here more an exclamation than a question) is the combination of two: How has it become possible for me? How could it ever come to it that.... Thus also one says in Arab.: Kyf f'alat hadhâ (Fl.). The regimen of איך in 12b is becoming faint, and in 13b has disappeared. The Kal נאץ (as Pro 1:30; Pro 15:5) signifies to despise; the Piel intensively, to contemn and reject (R. נץ, pungere). Pro 5:15-17

The commendation of true conjugal love in the form of an invitation to a participation in it, is now presented along with the warning against non-conjugal intercourse, heightened by a reference to its evil consequences. 15 Drink water from thine own cistern, And flowing streams from thine own fountain. 16 Shall thy streams flow abroad, The water-brooks in the streets! 17 Let them belong to thyself alone, And not to strangers with thee.

One drinks water to quench his thirst; here drinking is a figure of the satisfaction of conjugal love, of which Paul says, 1Co 7:9, κρεῖσσόν ἐστι γαμῆσαι ἢ πυροῦσθαι, and this comes into view here, in conformity with the prevailing character of the O.T., only as a created inborn natural impulse, without reference to the poisoning of it by sin, which also within the sphere of married life makes government, moderation, and restraint a duty. Warning against this degeneracy of the natural impulse to the πάθος ἐπιθυμίας authorized within divinely prescribed limits, the apostle calls the wife of any one τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος (cf. 1Pe 3:7). So here the wife, who is his by covenant (Pro 2:17), is called “cistern” (בור) ^{▼▼The lxx translate ἀπὸ σῶν ἀγγείων, i.e., מכּוריך (vid., Lagarde).} and “fountain” (בּאר) of the husband to whom she is married. The figure corresponds to the sexual nature of the wife, the expression for which is נקבה; but Isa 51:1 holds to the natural side of the figure, for according to it the wife is a pit, and the children are brought out of it into the light of day. Aben-Ezra on Lev 11:36 rightly distinguishes between בור and באר: the former catches the rain, the latter wells out from within. In the former, as Rashi in Erubin ii. 4 remarks, there are מים מכונסים, in the latter חיים מים. The post-biblical Hebrew observes this distinction less closely (vid., Kimchi’s Book of Roots), but the biblical throughout; so far the Kerı̂, Jer 6:7, rightly changes בור into the form בּיר, corresponding to the Arab. byar. Therefore בור is the cistern, for the making of which חצב, Jer 2:13, and באר the well, for the formation of which חפר, Gen 21:30, and כרה, Gen 26:25, are the respective words usually employed (vid., Malbim, Sifra 117b). The poet shows that he also is aware of this distinction, for he calls the water which one drinks from the בור by the name מים, but on the other hand that out of the באר by the name נוזלים, running waters, fluenta; by this we are at once reminded of Sol 4:15, cf. 12. The בור offers only stagnant water (according to the Sohar, the בור has no water of its own, but only that which is received into it), although coming down into it from above; but the באר has living water, which wells up out of its interior (מתּוך, 15b, intentionally for the mere מן), and is fresh as the streams from Lebanon (נזל, properly labi, to run down, cf. אזל, placide ire, and generally ire; Arab. zâl, loco cedere, desinere; Arab. zll, IV, to cause to glide back, deglutire, of the gourmand). What a valuable possession a well of water is for nomads the history of the patriarchs makes evident, and a cistern is one of the most valuable possessions belonging to every well-furnished house. The figure of the cistern is here surpassed by that of the fountain, but both refer to the seeking and finding satisfaction (cf. the opposite passage, Pro 23:27) with the wife, and that, as the expressive possessive suffixes denote, with his legitimate wife. Pro 5:18-20

With Pro 5:18 is introduced anew the praise of conjugal love. These three verses, Pro 5:18-21, have the same course of thought as Pro 5:15-17. 18 Let thy fountain be blessed, And rejoice in the wife of thy youth. 19 The lovely hind and the graceful gazelle - May her bosom always charm thee; In her love mayest thou delight thyself evermore. 20 But why wilt thou be fascinated with a stranger, And embrace the bosom of a foreign woman?

Like בור and באר, מקור is also a figure of the wife; the root-word is קוּר, from קר, כר, the meanings of which, to dig and make round, come together in the primary conception of the round digging out or boring out, not קוּר = קרר, the Hiph. of which means (Jer 6:7) to well out cold (water). It is the fountain of the birth that is meant (cf. מקור of the female ערוה, e.g., Lev 20:18), not the procreation (lxx, ἡ σὴ φλέψ, viz., φλὲψ γονίμη); the blessing wished for by him is the blessing of children, which בּרוּך so much the more distinctly denotes if בּרך, Arab. barak, means to spread out, and בּרך thus to cause a spreading out. The מן, 18b, explains itself from the idea of drawing (water), given with the figure of a fountain; the word בּאשׁת found in certain codices is, on the contrary, prosaic (Fl.). Whilst שׂמח מן is found elsewhere (Ecc 2:20; 2Ch 20:27) as meaning almost the same as שׂמח בּ; the former means rejoicing from some place, the latter in something. In the genitive connection, “wife of thy youth” (cf. Pro 2:17), both of these significations lie: thy youthful wife, and she who was chosen by thee in thy youth, according as we refer the suffix to the whole idea or only to the second member of the chain of words. Pro 5:21-23

That the intercourse of the sexes out of the married relationship is the commencement of the ruin of a fool is now proved. 21 For the ways of every one are before the eyes of Jahve, And all his paths He marketh out. 22 His own sins lay hold of him, the evil-doer, And in the bands of his sins is he held fast. 23 He dies for the want of correction, And in the fulness of his folly he staggers to ruin.

It is unnecessary to interpret נכח as an adverbial accusative: straight before Jahve’s eyes; it may be the nominative of the predicate; the ways of man (for אישׁ is here an individual, whether man or woman) are an object (properly, fixing) of the eyes of Jahve. With this the thought would suitably connect itself: et onmes orbitas ejus ad amussim examinat; but פּלּס, as the denom. of פּלס, Psa 58:3, is not connected with all the places where the verb is united with the obj. of the way, and Psa 78:50 shows that it has there the meaning to break though, to open a way (from פל, to split, cf. Talmudic מפלּשׁ, opened, accessible, from פלשׁ, Syriac pelaa, perfodere, fodiendo viam, aditum sibi aperire). The opening of the way is here not, as at Isa 26:7, conceived of as the setting aside of the hindrances in the way of him who walks, but generally as making walking in the way possible: man can take no step in any direction without God; and that not only does not exempt him from moral responsibility, but the consciousness of this is rather for the first time rightly quickened by the consciousness of being encompassed on every side by the knowledge and the power of God. The dissuasion of Pro 5:20 is thus in Pro 5:21 grounded in the fact, that man at every stage and step of his journey is observed and encompassed by God: it is impossible for him to escape from the knowledge of God or from dependence on Him. Thus opening all the paths of man, He has also appointed to the way of sin the punishment with which it corrects itself: “his sins lay hold of him, the evil-doer.” The suffix יו does not refer to אישׁ of Pro 5:21, where every one without exception and without distinction is meant, but it relates to the obj. following, the evil-doer, namely, as the explanatory permutative annexed to the “him” according to the scheme, Exo 2:6; the permutative is distinguished from the apposition by this, that the latter is a forethought explanation which heightens the understanding of the subject, while the former is an explanation afterwards brought in which guards against a misunderstanding. The same construction, Pro 14:13, belonging to the syntaxis ornata in the old Hebrew, has become common in the Aramaic and in the modern Hebrew. Instead of ילכּדוּהוּ (Pro 5:22), the poet uses poetically ילכּדנו; the interposed נ may belong to the emphatic ground-form ילכּדוּן, but is epenthetic if one compares forms such as קבנו (R. קב), Num 23:13 (cf. p. 73). The חמּאתו governed by חבלי, laquei (חבלי, tormina), is either gen. exeg.: bands which consist in his sin, or gen. subj.: bands which his sin unites, or better, gen. possess.: bands which his sin brings with it. By these bands he will be held fast, and so will die: he (הוּא referring to the person described) will die in insubordination (Symm. δι ̓ ἀπαιδευσίαν), or better, since אין and רב are placed in contrast: in want of correction. With the ישׁגּה (Pro 5:23), repeated purposely from Pro 5:20, there is connected the idea of the overthrow which is certain to overtake the infatuated man. In Pro 5:20 the sense of moral error began already to connect itself with this verb. אוּלת is the right name of unrestrained lust of the flesh. אולת is connected with אוּל, the belly; אול, Arab. âl, to draw together, to condense, to thicken (Isaiah, p. 424). Dummheit (stupidity) and the Old-Norse dumba, darkness, are in their roots related to each other. Also in the Semitic the words for blackness and darkness are derived from roots meaning condensation. אויל is the mind made thick, darkened, and become like crude matter.

‏ Proverbs 6:1

Pro 6:1-5

The author warns against suretyship; or rather, he advises that if one has made himself surety, he should as quickly as possible withdraw from the snare. 1 My son, if thou hast become surety for thy neighbour, Hast given thy hand for another: 2 Thou art entangled in the words of thy mouth, Ensnared in the words of thy mouth. 3 Do this then, my son, and free thyself - For thou hast come under the power of thy neighbour - Go, instantly entreat and importune thy neighbour. 4 Give no sleep to thine eyes, And no slumber to thine eyelids; 5 Tear thyself free like a gazelle from his hand, And as a bird from the hand of the fowler.

The chief question here is, whether ל after ערב introduces him for whom or with whom one becomes surety. Elsewhere ערב (R. רב, whence also ארב, nectere, to twist close and compact) with the accusative of the person means to become surety for any one, to represent him as a surety, Pro 11:15; Pro 20:16 (Pro 27:13), Gen 43:9; Gen 44:33 (as with the accusative of the matter, to pledge anything, to deposit it as a pledge, Jer 30:21; Neh 5:3, = שׂים, Arab. waḍ'a, Job 17:3); and to become surety with any one is expressed, Gen 17:18, by ערב לפני. The phrase ערב ל is not elsewhere met with, and is thus questionable. If we look to Pro 6:3, the רע (רעה) mentioned there cannot possibly be the creditor with whom one has become surety, for so impetuous and urgent an application to him would be both purposeless and unbecoming. But if he is meant for whom one has become surety, then certainly לרעך is also to be understood of the same person, and ל is thus dat. commodi; similar to this is the Targumic ערבוּתא על, suretyship for any one, Pro 17:18; Pro 22:26. But is the זר, 1b, distinguished from רעך, the stranger with whom one has become surety? The parallels Pro 11:15; Pro 20:16, where זר denotes the person whom one represents, show that in both lines one and the same person is meant; זר is in the Proverbs equivalent to אחר, each different from the person in the discourse, Pro 5:17; Pro 27:2 - thus, like רעך, denotes not the friend, but generally him to whom one stands in any kind of relation, even a very external one, in a word, the fellow-creatures or neighbours, Pro 24:28 (cf. the Arab. sahbk and ḳarynk, which are used as vaguely and superficially). It is further a question, whether we have to explain 1b: if thou hast given thine hand to another, or for another. Here also we are without evidence from the usage of the language; for the phrase תּקע כּף, or merely תּקע, appears to be used of striking the hand in suretyship where it elsewhere occurs without any further addition, Pro 17:18; Pro 22:26; Pro 11:15; however, Job 17:3, נתקע ליד appears the same: to strike into the hand of any one, i.e., to give to him the hand-stroke. From this passage Hitzig concludes that the surety gave the hand-stroke, without doubt in the presence of witnesses, first of all of the creditor, to the debtor, as a sign that he stood for him. But this idea is unnatural, and the “without doubt” melts into air. He on whose hand the stroke falls is always the person to whom one gives suretyship, and confirms it by the hand-stroke. Job also, l.c., means to say: who else but Thou, O Lord, could give to me a pledge, viz., of my innocence? If now the זר, v. 1b, is, as we have shown, not the creditor, ^{▼▼A translation by R. Joseph Joel of Fulda, 1787, whose autograph MS Baer possesses, renders the passage not badly thus: - “My son, if thou hast become surety for thy friend, and hast given the hand to another, then thou art bound by thy word, held by thy promise. Yet do what I say to thee, my son: Be at pains as soon as thou canst to get free, otherwise thou art in the power of thy friend; shun no trouble, be urgent with thy friend.”} but the debtor, then is the ל the dat. commodi, as 1a, and the two lines perfectly correspond. תּקע properly means to drive, to strike with a resounding noise, cogn. with the Arab. wak'a, which may be regarded as its intrans. (Fl.); then particularly to strike the hand or with the hand. He to whom this hand-pledge is given for another remains here undesignated. A new question arises, whether in Pro 6:6, where נוקשׁ (illaqueari) and נלכּד (comprehendi) follow each other as Isa 8:15, cf. Jer 50:24, the hypothetical antecedent is continued or not. We agree with Schultens, Ziegler, and Fleischer against the continuance of the אם. The repetition of the בּאמרי פיך (cf. Pro 2:14) serves rightly to strengthen the representation of the thought: thou, thou thyself and no other, hast then ensnared thyself in the net; but this strengthening of the expression would greatly lose in force by placing Pro 6:2 in the antecedent, while if Pro 6:2 is regarded as the conclusion, and thus as the principal proposition, it appears in its full strength.