The Sayings of Agur: Humility, the Word of God, Contentment, Wonder, and the Limits of Human Wisdom

Pro 30:5-6 5 Every word of Eloah is pure; A shield is He for those who hide themselves in Him. 6 Add thou not to His words, Lest He convict thee and thou becomest a liar. Although the tetrastich is an independent proverb, yet it is connected to the foregoing Neûm [utterance, Pro 30:1]. The more limited a man is in his knowledge of God - viz. in that which presents itself to him lumine naturae , - so much the more thankful must he be that God has revealed Himself in history, and so much the more firmly has he to hold fast by the pure word of the divine revelation.

In the dependent relation of Pro 30:5 to Psa 18:31 (2Sa 22:31), and of Pro 30:6 to Deu 4:2, there is no doubt the self-testimony of God given to Israel, and recorded in the book of the Tôra, is here meant. כּל־אמרת is to be judged after πᾶσα γραφή, 2Ti 3:16, not: every declaration of God, wherever promulgated, but: every declaration within the revelation lying before us.

The primary passage Psa 18:31 has not כל here, but, instead of it, לכל החסים, and instead of אמרת אלוהּ it has יהוה 'אם; his change of the name of Jahve is also not favourable to the opinion that Pro 30:5. is a part of the Neûm, viz. , that it is the answer thereto. The proverb in this contains traces of the Book of Job, with which in many respects that Neûm harmonizes; in the Book of Job, אלוהּ (with שׁדּי) is the prevailing name of God; whereas in the Book of Proverbs it occurs only in the passage before us.

Mühlau, p. 41, notes it as an Arabism. צרף (Arab. ṣaraf, to turn, to change) is the usual word for the changing process of smelting; צרוּף signifies solid, pure, i. e. , purified by separating: God’s word is, without exception, like pure, massive gold. Regarding חסה, to hide oneself, vid . , under Psa 2:12;: God is a shield for those who make Him, as revealed in His word, their refuge.

The part. חסה occurs, according to the Masora, three times written defectively, - Pro 14:32; 2Sa 22:31; Neh 1:7; in the passage before us it is to be written לחוסים; the proverbs of Agur and Lemuel have frequently the plena scriptio of the part. act . Kal , as well as of the fut . Kal , common to the Book of Job ( vid . , Mühlau, p. 65). In 6a, after Aben Ezra’s Moznajim 2b (11b of Heidenheim’s edition), and Zachoth 53a (cf.

Lipmann’s ed.) , and other witnesses ( vid . , Norzi), t sp (the ף with dagesh ) is to be written, - the Cod. Jaman . and others defect . without ו, - not tôsf; for, since תּוסף (Exo 10:28) is yet further abbreviated in this way, it necessarily loses the aspiration of the tenuis , as in ילדתּ (= ילדת). The words of God are the announcements of His holy will, measured by His wisdom; they are then to be accepted as they are, and to be recognised and obeyed.

He who adds anything to them, either by an overstraining of them or by repressing them, will not escape the righteous judgment of God: God will convict him of falsifying His word (הוכיח, Psa 50:21; only here with ב of the obj.) , and expose him as a liar - viz. by the dispensations which unmask the falsifier as such, and make manifest the falsehood of his doctrines as dangerous to souls and destructive to society.

An example of this is found in the kingdom of Israel, in the destruction of which the curse of the human institution of its state religion, set up by Jeroboam, had no little share. Also the Jewish traditional law, although in itself necessary for the carrying over of the law into the praxis of private and public life, falls under the Deuteron. prohibition - which the poet here repeats - so far as it claimed for itself the same divine authority as that of the written law, and so far as it hindered obedience to the law - by the straining-at-a-gnat policy - and was hostile to piety.

Or, to adduce an example of an addition more dogmatic than legal, what a fearful impulse was given to fleshly security by that overstraining of the promises in Gen 17, which were connected with circumcision by the tradition, “the circumcised come not into hell,” or by the overstraining of the prerogative attributed by Paul, Rom 9:4. , to his people according to the Scriptures, in the principle, “All Israelites have a part in the future world!

” Regarding the accentuation of the perf. consec . after פּן, vid . , at Psa 28:1. The penultima accent is always in pausa (cf. Pro 30:9 and Pro 30:10).

Pro 30:7-9 In what now follows, the key-note struck in Pro 30:1 is continued. There follows a prayer to be kept in the truth, and to be preserved in the middle state, between poverty and riches. It is a Mashal-ode, vid . , vol. i. p. 12. By the first prayer, “vanity and lies keep far from me,” it is connected with the warning of Pro 30:6. 7 Two things I entreat from Thee, Refuse them not to me before I die.

8 Vanity and lies keep far away from me Poverty and riches give me not: Cause me to eat the bread which is allotted to me, 9 Lest in satiety I deny, And say: Who is Jahve? And lest, in becoming poor, I steal, And profane the name of my God. We begin with the settlement and explanation of the traditional punctuation. A monosyllable like שׁוא receives, if Legarmeh , always Mehuppach Legarmeh , while, on the contrary, the poly-syllable אשׂבּע has Asla Legarmeh .

אל־תּתּן־לי, with double Makkeph and with Gaja in the third syllable before the tone (after the Metheg - Setzung , §28), is Ben-Asher's; whereas Ben-Naphtali prefers the punctuation אל־תּתּן לי ( vid . , Baer’s Genesis , p. 79, note 3). Also פּן־אשׂבּע has (cf. פּן־ישׁתּה, Pro 31:5) Makkeph , and on the antepenultima Gaja ( vid . , Thorath Emeth , p. 32). The perf.

consec . וכחשׁתּי has on the ult . the disjunctive Zinnor ( Sarka ), which always stands over the final letter; but that the ult . is also to be accented, is shown by the counter-tone Metheg , which is to be given to the first syllable. Also ואמרתּי has in correct Codd. , e. g. , Cod. 1294, the correct ultima toning of a perf. consec . ; Kimchi in the Michlol 6b, as well as Aben Ezra in both of his Grammars, quotes only וגנבתּי ותפשׂתּי as toned on the penult .

That וגנבתּי cannot be otherwise toned on account of the pausal accent, has been already remarked under 6b; the word, besides, belongs to the סף''פתתין בא, i. e. , to those which preserve their Pathach unlengthened by one of the greater disjunctives; the Athnach has certainly in the three so-called metrical books only the disjunctive form of the Zakeph of the prose books.

So much as to the form of the text. As to its artistic form, this prayer presents itself to us as the first of the numerical proverbs, under the “Words” of Agur, who delighted in this form of proverb. The numerical proverb is a brief discourse, having a didactic end complete in itself, which by means of numerals gives prominence to that which it seeks to bring forward.

There are two kinds of these. The more simple form places in the first place only one numeral, which is the sum of that which is to be brought forth separately: the numerical proverb of one cipher; to this class belong, keeping out of view the above prayer, which if it did not commence a series of numerical proverbs does not deserve this technical name on account of the low ciphers: Pro 30:24-28, with the cipher 4; Sir.

25:1 and 2, with the cipher 3. Similar to the above prayer are Job 13:20. , Isa 51:19; but these are not numerical proverbs, for they are not proverbs. The more artistic kind of numerical proverb has two ciphers: the two-ciphered numerical proverb we call the sharpened (pointed) proverb. Of such two-ciphered numerical proverbs the “words” of Agur contain four, and the whole Book of Proverbs, reckoning Pro 6:16-19, five - this ascending numerical character belongs to the popular saying, 2Ki 9:32; Job 33:29; Isa 16:6, and is found bearing the stamp of the artistic distich outside of the Book of Proverbs, Psa 62:12; Job 33:14; Job 40:5; Job 5:19, and particularly Amos 1:3-2:6.

According to this scheme, the introduction of Agur’s prayer should be: אחת שׁאלתּי מאתּך וּשׁתּים אל־תּמנע ממּנּי בּטרם אמוּת and it could take this form, for the prayer expresses two requests, but dwells exclusively on the second. A twofold request he presents to God, these two things he wishes to be assured of on this side of death; for of these he stands in need, so as to be able when he dies to look back on the life he has spent, without the reproaches of an accusing conscience.

The first thing he asks is that God would keep far from him vanity and lying words. שׁוא (= שׁוא, from שׁוא = שׁאה, to be waste, after the form מות) is either that which is confused, worthless, untrue, which comes to us from without ( e. g. , Job 31:5), or dissoluteness, hollowness, untruthfulness of disposition ( e. g. , Psa 26:4); it is not to be decided whether the suppliant is influenced by the conception thus from within or from without, since דבר־כּזב [a word of falsehood] may be said by himself as well as to him, a falsehood can intrude itself upon him.

It is almost more probable that by שׁוא he thought of the misleading power of God-estranged, idolatrous thought and action; and by דבר־כזב, of lying words, with which he might be brought into sympathy, and by which he might ruin himself and others. The second petition is that God would give him neither poverty (ראשׁ, vid . , Pro 10:4) nor riches, but grant him for his sustenance only the bread of the portion destined for him.

The Hiph . הטריף (from טרף, to grind, viz. , the bread with the teeth) means to give anything, as טרף, with which, 31:15, נתן חק is parallel: to present a fixed piece, a definite portion of sustenance. חק, Gen 47:22, the portion assigned as nourishment; cf. Job 23:14 חקּי, the decree determined regarding me. Accordingly, חקּי לחם does not mean the bread appropriately measured out for me (like ἄρτος ἐπιούσιος, that which is required for οὐσία, subsistence), but the bread appropriate for me, determined for me according to the divine plan.

Fleischer compares (Arab.) ratab and marsaum, which both in a similar way designate a fixed sustentation portion. And why does he wish to be neither poor nor rich? Because in both extremes lie moral dangers: in riches, the temptation to deny God (which 'כּחשׁ בּה signifies, in the later Heb. כּפר בּעקּר, to deny the fundamental truth; cf. (Arab.) kafar, unbelieving), whom one flowing in superabundance forgets, and of whom one in his self-indulgence desires to know nothing (Job 21:14-16; Job 22:16.)

; in poverty, the temptation is to steal and to blaspheme the name of God, viz. , by murmuring and disputing, or even by words of blasphemy; for one who is in despair directs the outbreaks of his anger against God (Isa 8:21), and curses Him as the cause of His misfortune (Rev 16:11, Rev 16:21). The question of godless haughtiness, מי יהוח, the lxx improperly change into מי יראה, τίς με ὁρᾶ.

Regarding נורשׁ, to grow poor, or rather, since only the fut. Niph . occurs in this sense, regarding יוּרשׁ, vid . , at Pro 20:13. That the author here, by blaspheming (grasping at) the name of God, especially thinks on that which the Tôra calls “cursing (קלּל) God,” and particularly “blaspheming the name of the Lord,” Lev 24:15-16, is to be concluded from the two following proverbs, which begin with the catchword קלל:

Pro 30:7-9 In what now follows, the key-note struck in Pro 30:1 is continued. There follows a prayer to be kept in the truth, and to be preserved in the middle state, between poverty and riches. It is a Mashal-ode, vid . , vol. i. p. 12. By the first prayer, “vanity and lies keep far from me,” it is connected with the warning of Pro 30:6. 7 Two things I entreat from Thee, Refuse them not to me before I die.

8 Vanity and lies keep far away from me Poverty and riches give me not: Cause me to eat the bread which is allotted to me, 9 Lest in satiety I deny, And say: Who is Jahve? And lest, in becoming poor, I steal, And profane the name of my God. We begin with the settlement and explanation of the traditional punctuation. A monosyllable like שׁוא receives, if Legarmeh , always Mehuppach Legarmeh , while, on the contrary, the poly-syllable אשׂבּע has Asla Legarmeh .

אל־תּתּן־לי, with double Makkeph and with Gaja in the third syllable before the tone (after the Metheg - Setzung , §28), is Ben-Asher's; whereas Ben-Naphtali prefers the punctuation אל־תּתּן לי ( vid . , Baer’s Genesis , p. 79, note 3). Also פּן־אשׂבּע has (cf. פּן־ישׁתּה, Pro 31:5) Makkeph , and on the antepenultima Gaja ( vid . , Thorath Emeth , p. 32). The perf.

consec . וכחשׁתּי has on the ult . the disjunctive Zinnor ( Sarka ), which always stands over the final letter; but that the ult . is also to be accented, is shown by the counter-tone Metheg , which is to be given to the first syllable. Also ואמרתּי has in correct Codd. , e. g. , Cod. 1294, the correct ultima toning of a perf. consec . ; Kimchi in the Michlol 6b, as well as Aben Ezra in both of his Grammars, quotes only וגנבתּי ותפשׂתּי as toned on the penult .

That וגנבתּי cannot be otherwise toned on account of the pausal accent, has been already remarked under 6b; the word, besides, belongs to the סף''פתתין בא, i. e. , to those which preserve their Pathach unlengthened by one of the greater disjunctives; the Athnach has certainly in the three so-called metrical books only the disjunctive form of the Zakeph of the prose books.

So much as to the form of the text. As to its artistic form, this prayer presents itself to us as the first of the numerical proverbs, under the “Words” of Agur, who delighted in this form of proverb. The numerical proverb is a brief discourse, having a didactic end complete in itself, which by means of numerals gives prominence to that which it seeks to bring forward.

There are two kinds of these. The more simple form places in the first place only one numeral, which is the sum of that which is to be brought forth separately: the numerical proverb of one cipher; to this class belong, keeping out of view the above prayer, which if it did not commence a series of numerical proverbs does not deserve this technical name on account of the low ciphers: Pro 30:24-28, with the cipher 4; Sir.

25:1 and 2, with the cipher 3. Similar to the above prayer are Job 13:20. , Isa 51:19; but these are not numerical proverbs, for they are not proverbs. The more artistic kind of numerical proverb has two ciphers: the two-ciphered numerical proverb we call the sharpened (pointed) proverb. Of such two-ciphered numerical proverbs the “words” of Agur contain four, and the whole Book of Proverbs, reckoning Pro 6:16-19, five - this ascending numerical character belongs to the popular saying, 2Ki 9:32; Job 33:29; Isa 16:6, and is found bearing the stamp of the artistic distich outside of the Book of Proverbs, Psa 62:12; Job 33:14; Job 40:5; Job 5:19, and particularly Amos 1:3-2:6.

According to this scheme, the introduction of Agur’s prayer should be: אחת שׁאלתּי מאתּך וּשׁתּים אל־תּמנע ממּנּי בּטרם אמוּת and it could take this form, for the prayer expresses two requests, but dwells exclusively on the second. A twofold request he presents to God, these two things he wishes to be assured of on this side of death; for of these he stands in need, so as to be able when he dies to look back on the life he has spent, without the reproaches of an accusing conscience.

The first thing he asks is that God would keep far from him vanity and lying words. שׁוא (= שׁוא, from שׁוא = שׁאה, to be waste, after the form מות) is either that which is confused, worthless, untrue, which comes to us from without ( e. g. , Job 31:5), or dissoluteness, hollowness, untruthfulness of disposition ( e. g. , Psa 26:4); it is not to be decided whether the suppliant is influenced by the conception thus from within or from without, since דבר־כּזב [a word of falsehood] may be said by himself as well as to him, a falsehood can intrude itself upon him.

It is almost more probable that by שׁוא he thought of the misleading power of God-estranged, idolatrous thought and action; and by דבר־כזב, of lying words, with which he might be brought into sympathy, and by which he might ruin himself and others. The second petition is that God would give him neither poverty (ראשׁ, vid . , Pro 10:4) nor riches, but grant him for his sustenance only the bread of the portion destined for him.

The Hiph . הטריף (from טרף, to grind, viz. , the bread with the teeth) means to give anything, as טרף, with which, 31:15, נתן חק is parallel: to present a fixed piece, a definite portion of sustenance. חק, Gen 47:22, the portion assigned as nourishment; cf. Job 23:14 חקּי, the decree determined regarding me. Accordingly, חקּי לחם does not mean the bread appropriately measured out for me (like ἄρτος ἐπιούσιος, that which is required for οὐσία, subsistence), but the bread appropriate for me, determined for me according to the divine plan.

Fleischer compares (Arab.) ratab and marsaum, which both in a similar way designate a fixed sustentation portion. And why does he wish to be neither poor nor rich? Because in both extremes lie moral dangers: in riches, the temptation to deny God (which 'כּחשׁ בּה signifies, in the later Heb. כּפר בּעקּר, to deny the fundamental truth; cf. (Arab.) kafar, unbelieving), whom one flowing in superabundance forgets, and of whom one in his self-indulgence desires to know nothing (Job 21:14-16; Job 22:16.)

; in poverty, the temptation is to steal and to blaspheme the name of God, viz. , by murmuring and disputing, or even by words of blasphemy; for one who is in despair directs the outbreaks of his anger against God (Isa 8:21), and curses Him as the cause of His misfortune (Rev 16:11, Rev 16:21). The question of godless haughtiness, מי יהוח, the lxx improperly change into מי יראה, τίς με ὁρᾶ.

Regarding נורשׁ, to grow poor, or rather, since only the fut. Niph . occurs in this sense, regarding יוּרשׁ, vid . , at Pro 20:13. That the author here, by blaspheming (grasping at) the name of God, especially thinks on that which the Tôra calls “cursing (קלּל) God,” and particularly “blaspheming the name of the Lord,” Lev 24:15-16, is to be concluded from the two following proverbs, which begin with the catchword קלל:

Pro 30:7-9 In what now follows, the key-note struck in Pro 30:1 is continued. There follows a prayer to be kept in the truth, and to be preserved in the middle state, between poverty and riches. It is a Mashal-ode, vid . , vol. i. p. 12. By the first prayer, “vanity and lies keep far from me,” it is connected with the warning of Pro 30:6. 7 Two things I entreat from Thee, Refuse them not to me before I die.

8 Vanity and lies keep far away from me Poverty and riches give me not: Cause me to eat the bread which is allotted to me, 9 Lest in satiety I deny, And say: Who is Jahve? And lest, in becoming poor, I steal, And profane the name of my God. We begin with the settlement and explanation of the traditional punctuation. A monosyllable like שׁוא receives, if Legarmeh , always Mehuppach Legarmeh , while, on the contrary, the poly-syllable אשׂבּע has Asla Legarmeh .

אל־תּתּן־לי, with double Makkeph and with Gaja in the third syllable before the tone (after the Metheg - Setzung , §28), is Ben-Asher's; whereas Ben-Naphtali prefers the punctuation אל־תּתּן לי ( vid . , Baer’s Genesis , p. 79, note 3). Also פּן־אשׂבּע has (cf. פּן־ישׁתּה, Pro 31:5) Makkeph , and on the antepenultima Gaja ( vid . , Thorath Emeth , p. 32). The perf.

consec . וכחשׁתּי has on the ult . the disjunctive Zinnor ( Sarka ), which always stands over the final letter; but that the ult . is also to be accented, is shown by the counter-tone Metheg , which is to be given to the first syllable. Also ואמרתּי has in correct Codd. , e. g. , Cod. 1294, the correct ultima toning of a perf. consec . ; Kimchi in the Michlol 6b, as well as Aben Ezra in both of his Grammars, quotes only וגנבתּי ותפשׂתּי as toned on the penult .

That וגנבתּי cannot be otherwise toned on account of the pausal accent, has been already remarked under 6b; the word, besides, belongs to the סף''פתתין בא, i. e. , to those which preserve their Pathach unlengthened by one of the greater disjunctives; the Athnach has certainly in the three so-called metrical books only the disjunctive form of the Zakeph of the prose books.

So much as to the form of the text. As to its artistic form, this prayer presents itself to us as the first of the numerical proverbs, under the “Words” of Agur, who delighted in this form of proverb. The numerical proverb is a brief discourse, having a didactic end complete in itself, which by means of numerals gives prominence to that which it seeks to bring forward.

There are two kinds of these. The more simple form places in the first place only one numeral, which is the sum of that which is to be brought forth separately: the numerical proverb of one cipher; to this class belong, keeping out of view the above prayer, which if it did not commence a series of numerical proverbs does not deserve this technical name on account of the low ciphers: Pro 30:24-28, with the cipher 4; Sir.

25:1 and 2, with the cipher 3. Similar to the above prayer are Job 13:20. , Isa 51:19; but these are not numerical proverbs, for they are not proverbs. The more artistic kind of numerical proverb has two ciphers: the two-ciphered numerical proverb we call the sharpened (pointed) proverb. Of such two-ciphered numerical proverbs the “words” of Agur contain four, and the whole Book of Proverbs, reckoning Pro 6:16-19, five - this ascending numerical character belongs to the popular saying, 2Ki 9:32; Job 33:29; Isa 16:6, and is found bearing the stamp of the artistic distich outside of the Book of Proverbs, Psa 62:12; Job 33:14; Job 40:5; Job 5:19, and particularly Amos 1:3-2:6.

According to this scheme, the introduction of Agur’s prayer should be: אחת שׁאלתּי מאתּך וּשׁתּים אל־תּמנע ממּנּי בּטרם אמוּת and it could take this form, for the prayer expresses two requests, but dwells exclusively on the second. A twofold request he presents to God, these two things he wishes to be assured of on this side of death; for of these he stands in need, so as to be able when he dies to look back on the life he has spent, without the reproaches of an accusing conscience.

The first thing he asks is that God would keep far from him vanity and lying words. שׁוא (= שׁוא, from שׁוא = שׁאה, to be waste, after the form מות) is either that which is confused, worthless, untrue, which comes to us from without ( e. g. , Job 31:5), or dissoluteness, hollowness, untruthfulness of disposition ( e. g. , Psa 26:4); it is not to be decided whether the suppliant is influenced by the conception thus from within or from without, since דבר־כּזב [a word of falsehood] may be said by himself as well as to him, a falsehood can intrude itself upon him.

It is almost more probable that by שׁוא he thought of the misleading power of God-estranged, idolatrous thought and action; and by דבר־כזב, of lying words, with which he might be brought into sympathy, and by which he might ruin himself and others. The second petition is that God would give him neither poverty (ראשׁ, vid . , Pro 10:4) nor riches, but grant him for his sustenance only the bread of the portion destined for him.

The Hiph . הטריף (from טרף, to grind, viz. , the bread with the teeth) means to give anything, as טרף, with which, 31:15, נתן חק is parallel: to present a fixed piece, a definite portion of sustenance. חק, Gen 47:22, the portion assigned as nourishment; cf. Job 23:14 חקּי, the decree determined regarding me. Accordingly, חקּי לחם does not mean the bread appropriately measured out for me (like ἄρτος ἐπιούσιος, that which is required for οὐσία, subsistence), but the bread appropriate for me, determined for me according to the divine plan.

Fleischer compares (Arab.) ratab and marsaum, which both in a similar way designate a fixed sustentation portion. And why does he wish to be neither poor nor rich? Because in both extremes lie moral dangers: in riches, the temptation to deny God (which 'כּחשׁ בּה signifies, in the later Heb. כּפר בּעקּר, to deny the fundamental truth; cf. (Arab.) kafar, unbelieving), whom one flowing in superabundance forgets, and of whom one in his self-indulgence desires to know nothing (Job 21:14-16; Job 22:16.)

; in poverty, the temptation is to steal and to blaspheme the name of God, viz. , by murmuring and disputing, or even by words of blasphemy; for one who is in despair directs the outbreaks of his anger against God (Isa 8:21), and curses Him as the cause of His misfortune (Rev 16:11, Rev 16:21). The question of godless haughtiness, מי יהוח, the lxx improperly change into מי יראה, τίς με ὁρᾶ.

Regarding נורשׁ, to grow poor, or rather, since only the fut. Niph . occurs in this sense, regarding יוּרשׁ, vid . , at Pro 20:13. That the author here, by blaspheming (grasping at) the name of God, especially thinks on that which the Tôra calls “cursing (קלּל) God,” and particularly “blaspheming the name of the Lord,” Lev 24:15-16, is to be concluded from the two following proverbs, which begin with the catchword קלל:

Pro 30:10 10 Calumniate not a servant with his master, Lest he curse thee, and thou must atone for it. Incorrectly Ewald: entice not a servant to slander against his master; and Hitzig: “Make not a servant tattle regarding his master. ” It is true that the Poel לושׁן (to pierce with the tongue, linguâ petere ) occurs twice in the sense of to calumniate; but that הלשׁין means nothing else, is attested by the post-bibl.

Hebrew; the proverb regarding schismatics (בּרכּת המּינים) in the Jewish Schemone-Esre (prayer of the eighteen benedictions) began with ולמלשינים, “and to the calumniators” ( delatoribus ). Also in the Arab. âlsana signifies pertulit verba alicujus ad alterum , to make a babbler, rapporteur (Fleischer). That the word also here is not to be otherwise interpreted, is to be concluded from אל with the causative rendering.

Rightly Symmachus, μὴ διαβάλῃς; Theodotion, μὴ καταλαλήσῃς; and according to the sense also, Jerome, ne accuses ; the Venet . μὴ καταμηνύσῃς (give not him); on the contrary, Luther, verrate nicht [betray not], renders הלשׁין with the lxx, Syr. in the sense of the Aram. אשׁלם and the Arab. âslam ( tradere, prodere ). One should not secretly accuse (Psa 101:5) a servant with his master, and in that lies the character of slander (לשׁון הרע) when one puts suspicion upon him, or exaggerates the actual facts, and generally makes the person suspected - one thereby makes a man, whose lot in itself is not a happy one, at length and perhaps for ever unhappy, and thereby he brings a curse on himself.

But it is no matter of indifference to be the object of the curse of a man whom one has unrighteously and unjustly overwhelmed in misery: such a curse is not without its influence, for it does not fruitlessly invoke the righteous retribution of God, and thus one has sorrowfully to atone for the wanton sins of the tongue (veaschāmta, for ve-aschamtá as it is would be without pause).

Pro 30:11-14 There now follows a Priamel , the first line of which is, by יקלל, connected with the יקללך of the preceding distich: 11 A generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother; 12 A generation pure in their own eyes, And yet not washed from their filthiness; 13 A generation - how haughty their eyes, And their eyelids lift themselves up; 14 A generation whose teeth are swords and their jaw teeth knives To devour the poor from the earth and the needy from the midst of men. Ewald translates: O generation!

but that would have required the word, 13a, הדּור (Jer 2:31), and one would have expected to have found something mentioned which the generation addressed were to take heed to; but it is not so. But if “O generation! ” should be equivalent to “O regarding the generation! ” then הוי ought to have introduced the sentence. And if we translate, with Luther: There is a generation, etc.

, then ישׁ is supplied, which might drop out, but could not be omitted. The lxx inserts after ἔκγονον the word κακόν, and then renders what follows as pred. - a simple expedient, but worthless. The Venet . does not need this expedient, for it renders γενεὰ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ βλασφημέσει; but then the order of the words in 11a would have been דור יקלל אביו; and in 12a, after the manner of a subst.

clause, דור טהור בעיניו הוא, one sees distinctly, from Pro 30:13 and Pro 30:14, that what follows דור is to be understood, not as a pred. , but as an attributive clause. As little can we interpret Pro 30:14, with Löwenstein, as pred. of the three subj. , “it is a generation whose teeth are swords;” that would at least have required the words דור הוא; but Pro 30:14 is not at all a judgment valid for all the three subjects.

The Targ. and Jerome translate correctly, as we above; but by this rendering there are four subjects in the preamble, and the whole appears, since the common pred. is wanting, as a mutilated Priamel. Perhaps the author meant to say: it is such a generation that encompasses us; or: such is an abomination to Jahve; for דור is a Gesamtheit = totality, generation of men who are bound together by contemporary existence, or homogeneity, or by both, but always a totality; so that these Pro 30:11-14, might describe quatuor detestabilia genera hominum (C.

B. Michaelis), and yet one generatio , which divide among themselves these four vices, of blackest ingratitude, loathsome self-righteousness, arrogant presumption, and unmerciful covetousness. Similar is the description given in the Mishna Sota ix. 14, of the character of the age in which the Messiah appeared. “The appearance of this age,” thus it concludes, “is like the appearance of a dog; a son is not ashamed before his father; to whom will we then look for help?

To our Father in heaven! ” The undutifulness of a child is here placed first. To curse one’s parents is, after Exo 21:17, cf. Pro 20:10, a crime worthy of death; “not to bless,” is here, per litoten , of the same force as קלּל to curse. The second characteristic, Pro 30:12, is wicked blindness as to one’s judgment of himself. The lxx coarsely, but not bad: τὴν δ ̓ ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἀπένιψεν.

Of such darkness one says: sordes suas putat olere cinnama . רחץ is not the abbreviated part. (Stuart), as e. g. , Exo 3:2, but the finite, as e. g. , Hos 1:6. In 13a the attributive clause forms itself, so as to express the astonishing height of arrogance, into an exclamation: a generation, how lofty are their eyes (cf. e. g. , Pro 6:17, עינים רמות)! to which, as usual, it is simply added: and his eyelids ( palpebrae ) lift themselves up; in Lat.

, the lifting up of the eyebrow as an expression of haughtiness is described by elatum ( superbum ) supercilium . The fourth characteristic is insatiable covetousness, which does not spare even the poor, and preys upon them, the helpless and the defenceless: they devour them as one eats bread, Psa 14:4. The teeth, as the instruments of eating, are compared to swords and knives, as at Psa 57:4 to spears and arrows.

With שׁנּיו there is interchanged, as at Job 29:17; Jon 1:6, מתלּעתיו (not 'מת, as Norzi writes, contrary to Metheg - Setzung , §37, according to which Gaja , with the servant going before, is inadmissible), transposed from מלתּעתיו, Psa 58:7, from לתע, to strike, pierce, bite. The designation of place, מארץ, “from the earth” (which also, in pausa , is not modified into מארץ), and מאדם, “from the midst of men,” do not belong to the obj.

: those who belong to the earth, to mankind ( vid . , Psa 10:18), for thus interpreted they would be useless; but to the word of action: from the earth, out from the midst of men away, so that they disappear from thence (Amo 8:4). By means of fine but cobweb combinations, Hitzig finds Amalek in this fourfold proverb. But it is a portrait of the times, like Psa 14:1-7, and certainly without any national stamp.

Pro 30:11-14 There now follows a Priamel , the first line of which is, by יקלל, connected with the יקללך of the preceding distich: 11 A generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother; 12 A generation pure in their own eyes, And yet not washed from their filthiness; 13 A generation - how haughty their eyes, And their eyelids lift themselves up; 14 A generation whose teeth are swords and their jaw teeth knives To devour the poor from the earth and the needy from the midst of men. Ewald translates: O generation!

but that would have required the word, 13a, הדּור (Jer 2:31), and one would have expected to have found something mentioned which the generation addressed were to take heed to; but it is not so. But if “O generation! ” should be equivalent to “O regarding the generation! ” then הוי ought to have introduced the sentence. And if we translate, with Luther: There is a generation, etc.

, then ישׁ is supplied, which might drop out, but could not be omitted. The lxx inserts after ἔκγονον the word κακόν, and then renders what follows as pred. - a simple expedient, but worthless. The Venet . does not need this expedient, for it renders γενεὰ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ βλασφημέσει; but then the order of the words in 11a would have been דור יקלל אביו; and in 12a, after the manner of a subst.

clause, דור טהור בעיניו הוא, one sees distinctly, from Pro 30:13 and Pro 30:14, that what follows דור is to be understood, not as a pred. , but as an attributive clause. As little can we interpret Pro 30:14, with Löwenstein, as pred. of the three subj. , “it is a generation whose teeth are swords;” that would at least have required the words דור הוא; but Pro 30:14 is not at all a judgment valid for all the three subjects.

The Targ. and Jerome translate correctly, as we above; but by this rendering there are four subjects in the preamble, and the whole appears, since the common pred. is wanting, as a mutilated Priamel. Perhaps the author meant to say: it is such a generation that encompasses us; or: such is an abomination to Jahve; for דור is a Gesamtheit = totality, generation of men who are bound together by contemporary existence, or homogeneity, or by both, but always a totality; so that these Pro 30:11-14, might describe quatuor detestabilia genera hominum (C.

B. Michaelis), and yet one generatio , which divide among themselves these four vices, of blackest ingratitude, loathsome self-righteousness, arrogant presumption, and unmerciful covetousness. Similar is the description given in the Mishna Sota ix. 14, of the character of the age in which the Messiah appeared. “The appearance of this age,” thus it concludes, “is like the appearance of a dog; a son is not ashamed before his father; to whom will we then look for help?

To our Father in heaven! ” The undutifulness of a child is here placed first. To curse one’s parents is, after Exo 21:17, cf. Pro 20:10, a crime worthy of death; “not to bless,” is here, per litoten , of the same force as קלּל to curse. The second characteristic, Pro 30:12, is wicked blindness as to one’s judgment of himself. The lxx coarsely, but not bad: τὴν δ ̓ ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἀπένιψεν.

Of such darkness one says: sordes suas putat olere cinnama . רחץ is not the abbreviated part. (Stuart), as e. g. , Exo 3:2, but the finite, as e. g. , Hos 1:6. In 13a the attributive clause forms itself, so as to express the astonishing height of arrogance, into an exclamation: a generation, how lofty are their eyes (cf. e. g. , Pro 6:17, עינים רמות)! to which, as usual, it is simply added: and his eyelids ( palpebrae ) lift themselves up; in Lat.

, the lifting up of the eyebrow as an expression of haughtiness is described by elatum ( superbum ) supercilium . The fourth characteristic is insatiable covetousness, which does not spare even the poor, and preys upon them, the helpless and the defenceless: they devour them as one eats bread, Psa 14:4. The teeth, as the instruments of eating, are compared to swords and knives, as at Psa 57:4 to spears and arrows.

With שׁנּיו there is interchanged, as at Job 29:17; Jon 1:6, מתלּעתיו (not 'מת, as Norzi writes, contrary to Metheg - Setzung , §37, according to which Gaja , with the servant going before, is inadmissible), transposed from מלתּעתיו, Psa 58:7, from לתע, to strike, pierce, bite. The designation of place, מארץ, “from the earth” (which also, in pausa , is not modified into מארץ), and מאדם, “from the midst of men,” do not belong to the obj.

: those who belong to the earth, to mankind ( vid . , Psa 10:18), for thus interpreted they would be useless; but to the word of action: from the earth, out from the midst of men away, so that they disappear from thence (Amo 8:4). By means of fine but cobweb combinations, Hitzig finds Amalek in this fourfold proverb. But it is a portrait of the times, like Psa 14:1-7, and certainly without any national stamp.

Pro 30:11-14 There now follows a Priamel , the first line of which is, by יקלל, connected with the יקללך of the preceding distich: 11 A generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother; 12 A generation pure in their own eyes, And yet not washed from their filthiness; 13 A generation - how haughty their eyes, And their eyelids lift themselves up; 14 A generation whose teeth are swords and their jaw teeth knives To devour the poor from the earth and the needy from the midst of men. Ewald translates: O generation!

but that would have required the word, 13a, הדּור (Jer 2:31), and one would have expected to have found something mentioned which the generation addressed were to take heed to; but it is not so. But if “O generation! ” should be equivalent to “O regarding the generation! ” then הוי ought to have introduced the sentence. And if we translate, with Luther: There is a generation, etc.

, then ישׁ is supplied, which might drop out, but could not be omitted. The lxx inserts after ἔκγονον the word κακόν, and then renders what follows as pred. - a simple expedient, but worthless. The Venet . does not need this expedient, for it renders γενεὰ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ βλασφημέσει; but then the order of the words in 11a would have been דור יקלל אביו; and in 12a, after the manner of a subst.

clause, דור טהור בעיניו הוא, one sees distinctly, from Pro 30:13 and Pro 30:14, that what follows דור is to be understood, not as a pred. , but as an attributive clause. As little can we interpret Pro 30:14, with Löwenstein, as pred. of the three subj. , “it is a generation whose teeth are swords;” that would at least have required the words דור הוא; but Pro 30:14 is not at all a judgment valid for all the three subjects.

The Targ. and Jerome translate correctly, as we above; but by this rendering there are four subjects in the preamble, and the whole appears, since the common pred. is wanting, as a mutilated Priamel. Perhaps the author meant to say: it is such a generation that encompasses us; or: such is an abomination to Jahve; for דור is a Gesamtheit = totality, generation of men who are bound together by contemporary existence, or homogeneity, or by both, but always a totality; so that these Pro 30:11-14, might describe quatuor detestabilia genera hominum (C.

B. Michaelis), and yet one generatio , which divide among themselves these four vices, of blackest ingratitude, loathsome self-righteousness, arrogant presumption, and unmerciful covetousness. Similar is the description given in the Mishna Sota ix. 14, of the character of the age in which the Messiah appeared. “The appearance of this age,” thus it concludes, “is like the appearance of a dog; a son is not ashamed before his father; to whom will we then look for help?

To our Father in heaven! ” The undutifulness of a child is here placed first. To curse one’s parents is, after Exo 21:17, cf. Pro 20:10, a crime worthy of death; “not to bless,” is here, per litoten , of the same force as קלּל to curse. The second characteristic, Pro 30:12, is wicked blindness as to one’s judgment of himself. The lxx coarsely, but not bad: τὴν δ ̓ ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἀπένιψεν.

Of such darkness one says: sordes suas putat olere cinnama . רחץ is not the abbreviated part. (Stuart), as e. g. , Exo 3:2, but the finite, as e. g. , Hos 1:6. In 13a the attributive clause forms itself, so as to express the astonishing height of arrogance, into an exclamation: a generation, how lofty are their eyes (cf. e. g. , Pro 6:17, עינים רמות)! to which, as usual, it is simply added: and his eyelids ( palpebrae ) lift themselves up; in Lat.

, the lifting up of the eyebrow as an expression of haughtiness is described by elatum ( superbum ) supercilium . The fourth characteristic is insatiable covetousness, which does not spare even the poor, and preys upon them, the helpless and the defenceless: they devour them as one eats bread, Psa 14:4. The teeth, as the instruments of eating, are compared to swords and knives, as at Psa 57:4 to spears and arrows.

With שׁנּיו there is interchanged, as at Job 29:17; Jon 1:6, מתלּעתיו (not 'מת, as Norzi writes, contrary to Metheg - Setzung , §37, according to which Gaja , with the servant going before, is inadmissible), transposed from מלתּעתיו, Psa 58:7, from לתע, to strike, pierce, bite. The designation of place, מארץ, “from the earth” (which also, in pausa , is not modified into מארץ), and מאדם, “from the midst of men,” do not belong to the obj.

: those who belong to the earth, to mankind ( vid . , Psa 10:18), for thus interpreted they would be useless; but to the word of action: from the earth, out from the midst of men away, so that they disappear from thence (Amo 8:4). By means of fine but cobweb combinations, Hitzig finds Amalek in this fourfold proverb. But it is a portrait of the times, like Psa 14:1-7, and certainly without any national stamp.

Pro 30:11-14 There now follows a Priamel , the first line of which is, by יקלל, connected with the יקללך of the preceding distich: 11 A generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother; 12 A generation pure in their own eyes, And yet not washed from their filthiness; 13 A generation - how haughty their eyes, And their eyelids lift themselves up; 14 A generation whose teeth are swords and their jaw teeth knives To devour the poor from the earth and the needy from the midst of men. Ewald translates: O generation!

but that would have required the word, 13a, הדּור (Jer 2:31), and one would have expected to have found something mentioned which the generation addressed were to take heed to; but it is not so. But if “O generation! ” should be equivalent to “O regarding the generation! ” then הוי ought to have introduced the sentence. And if we translate, with Luther: There is a generation, etc.

, then ישׁ is supplied, which might drop out, but could not be omitted. The lxx inserts after ἔκγονον the word κακόν, and then renders what follows as pred. - a simple expedient, but worthless. The Venet . does not need this expedient, for it renders γενεὰ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ βλασφημέσει; but then the order of the words in 11a would have been דור יקלל אביו; and in 12a, after the manner of a subst.

clause, דור טהור בעיניו הוא, one sees distinctly, from Pro 30:13 and Pro 30:14, that what follows דור is to be understood, not as a pred. , but as an attributive clause. As little can we interpret Pro 30:14, with Löwenstein, as pred. of the three subj. , “it is a generation whose teeth are swords;” that would at least have required the words דור הוא; but Pro 30:14 is not at all a judgment valid for all the three subjects.

The Targ. and Jerome translate correctly, as we above; but by this rendering there are four subjects in the preamble, and the whole appears, since the common pred. is wanting, as a mutilated Priamel. Perhaps the author meant to say: it is such a generation that encompasses us; or: such is an abomination to Jahve; for דור is a Gesamtheit = totality, generation of men who are bound together by contemporary existence, or homogeneity, or by both, but always a totality; so that these Pro 30:11-14, might describe quatuor detestabilia genera hominum (C.

B. Michaelis), and yet one generatio , which divide among themselves these four vices, of blackest ingratitude, loathsome self-righteousness, arrogant presumption, and unmerciful covetousness. Similar is the description given in the Mishna Sota ix. 14, of the character of the age in which the Messiah appeared. “The appearance of this age,” thus it concludes, “is like the appearance of a dog; a son is not ashamed before his father; to whom will we then look for help?

To our Father in heaven! ” The undutifulness of a child is here placed first. To curse one’s parents is, after Exo 21:17, cf. Pro 20:10, a crime worthy of death; “not to bless,” is here, per litoten , of the same force as קלּל to curse. The second characteristic, Pro 30:12, is wicked blindness as to one’s judgment of himself. The lxx coarsely, but not bad: τὴν δ ̓ ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἀπένιψεν.

Of such darkness one says: sordes suas putat olere cinnama . רחץ is not the abbreviated part. (Stuart), as e. g. , Exo 3:2, but the finite, as e. g. , Hos 1:6. In 13a the attributive clause forms itself, so as to express the astonishing height of arrogance, into an exclamation: a generation, how lofty are their eyes (cf. e. g. , Pro 6:17, עינים רמות)! to which, as usual, it is simply added: and his eyelids ( palpebrae ) lift themselves up; in Lat.

, the lifting up of the eyebrow as an expression of haughtiness is described by elatum ( superbum ) supercilium . The fourth characteristic is insatiable covetousness, which does not spare even the poor, and preys upon them, the helpless and the defenceless: they devour them as one eats bread, Psa 14:4. The teeth, as the instruments of eating, are compared to swords and knives, as at Psa 57:4 to spears and arrows.

With שׁנּיו there is interchanged, as at Job 29:17; Jon 1:6, מתלּעתיו (not 'מת, as Norzi writes, contrary to Metheg - Setzung , §37, according to which Gaja , with the servant going before, is inadmissible), transposed from מלתּעתיו, Psa 58:7, from לתע, to strike, pierce, bite. The designation of place, מארץ, “from the earth” (which also, in pausa , is not modified into מארץ), and מאדם, “from the midst of men,” do not belong to the obj.

: those who belong to the earth, to mankind ( vid . , Psa 10:18), for thus interpreted they would be useless; but to the word of action: from the earth, out from the midst of men away, so that they disappear from thence (Amo 8:4). By means of fine but cobweb combinations, Hitzig finds Amalek in this fourfold proverb. But it is a portrait of the times, like Psa 14:1-7, and certainly without any national stamp.

Pro 30:15-16 With the characteristic of insatiableness Pro 30:11-14 closes, and there follows an apophthegma de quatuor insatiabilibus quae ideo comparantur cum sanguisuga (C. B. Michaelis). We translate the text here as it lies before us: 15 The ‛Alûka hath two daughters: Give! Give! Three of these are never satisfied; Four say not: Enough! 16 The under-world and the closing of the womb; The earth is not satisfied with water; And the fire saith not: Enough!

We begin with Masoretic externalities. The first ב in הב is Beth minusculum ; probably it had accidentally this diminutive form in the original MSS, to which the Midrash (cf. Sepher Taghin ed. Bargès , 1866, p. 47) has added absurd conceits. This first הב has Pasek after it, which in this case is servant to the Olewejored going before, according to the rule Thorath Emeth , p.

24, here, as at Psa 85:9, Mehuppach . The second הב, which of itself alone is the representative of Olewejored , has in Hutter, as in the Cod. Erfurt 2, and Cod. 2 of the Leipzig Public Library, the pausal punctuation הב (cf. קח, 1Sa 21:10), but which is not sufficiently attested. Instead of לא־אמרוּ, 15b, לא אמרוּ, and instead of לא־אמרה f, 16b, לא אמרה are to be written; the Zinnorith removes the Makkeph , according to Thorath Emeth , p.

9, Accentuationssystem , iv. §2. Instead of מים, 16a, only Jablonski, as Mühlau remarks, has מים; but incorrectly, since Athnach , after Olewejored , has no pausal force ( vid . , Thorath Emeth , p. 37). All that is without any weight as to the import of the words. But the punctuation affords some little service for the setting aside of a view of Rabbenu Tam ( vid .

, Tosaphoth to Aboda zara 17a, and Erubin 19a), which has been lately advocated by Löwenstein. That view is, that ‛Alûka is the name of a wise man, not Solomon’s, because the Pesikta does not reckon this among the names of Solomon, nor yet a name of hell, because it is not, in the Gemara, numbered among the names of Gehinnom. Thus לעלוּקה would be a superscription, like לדוד and לשׁלמה, Psa 26:1; Psa 72:1, provided with Asla Legarmeh .

But this is not possible, for the Asla Legarmeh , at Psa 26:1 and Psa 72:1, is the transformation of Olewejored , inadmissible on the first word of the verse ( Accentuationssystem , xix. §1); but no Olewejored can follow such an Asla Legarmeh , which has the force of an Olewejored , as after this לעלוקה, which the accentuation then does not regard as the author’s name given as a superscription.

עלוּקה is not the name of a person, and generally not a proper name, but a generic name of certain traditional signification. “One must drink no water” - says the Gemara Aboda zara 12b - “out of a river or pond, nor (immediately) with his mouth, nor by means of his hand; he who, nevertheless, does it, his blood comes on his own head, because of the danger. What danger?

סכּנת עלוּקה,” i. e. , the danger of swallowing a leech. The Aram. also designates a leech by עלוּקא (cf. e. g. , Targ. Ps. 12:9: hence the godless walk about like the leech, which sucks the blood of men), and the Arab. by 'alaḳ ( n. unit . 'alaḳat), as the word is also rendered here by the Aram. and Arab. translators. Accordingly, all the Greeks render it by βδέλλη; Jerome, by sanguisuga (Rashi, sangsue ); also Luther’s Eigel is not the Igel erinaceus [hedgehog], but the Egel , i.

e. , as we now designate it, the Blutegel [leech], or (less correctly) Blutigel . עלוּקה is the fem. of the adj. עלוּק, attached to, which meaning, together with the whole verbal stem, the Arab. has preserved ( vid . , Mühlau’s Mittheilung des Art. 'aluka aus dem Kamus , p. 42). But if, now, the ‛Alûka is the leech, which are then its two daughters, to which is here given the name הב הב, and which at the same time have this cry of desire in their mouths?

Grotius and others understand, by the two daughters of the leech, the two branches of its tongue; more correctly: the double-membered overlip of its sucker. C. B. Michaelis thinks that the greedy cry, “Give! Give! ” is personified: voces istae concipiuntur ut hirudinis filiae, quas ex se gignat et velut mater sobolem impense diligat . But since this does not satisfy, symbolical interpretations of ‛Aluka have been resorted to.

The Talmud, Aboda zara 17a, regards it as a name of hell. In this sense it is used in the language of the Pijut (synagogue poetry). If ‛Alûka is hell, then fancy has the widest room for finding an answer to the question, What are the two daughters? The Talmud supposes that רשׁות (the worldly domination) and מינות (heresy) are meant. The Church-fathers also, understanding by ‛Alûka the power of the devil, expatiated in such interpretations.

Of the same character are Calmet’s interpretation, that sanguisuga is a figure of the mala cupiditas , and its twin-daughters are avaritia and ambitio . The truth lying in all these is this, that here there must be some kind of symbol. But if the poet meant, by the two daughters of the ‛Alûka, two beings or things which he does not name, then he kept the best of his symbol to himself.

And could he use ‛Alûka, this common name for the leech, without further intimation, in any kind of symbolical sense? The most of modern interpreters do nothing to promote the understanding of the word, for they suppose that ‛Alûka, from its nearest signification, denotes a demoniacal spirit of the character of a vampire, like the Dakinî of the Indians, which nourish themselves on human flesh; the ghouls of the Arabs and Persians, which inhabit graveyards, and kill and eat men, particularly wanderers in the desert; in regard to which it is to be remarked, that (Arab.)

‛awlaḳ is indeed a name for a demon, and that al‛aluwaḳ, according to the Kamus, is used in the sense of alghwal. Thus Dathe, Döderlein, Ziegler, Umbreit; thus also Hitzig, Ewald, and others. Mühlau, while he concurs in this understanding of the word, and now throwing open the question, Which, then, are the two daughters of the demoness ‛Alûka? finds no answer to it in the proverb itself, and therefore accepts of the view of Ewald, since 15b-16, taken by themselves, form a fully completed whole, that the line 'לעלוקה וגו is the beginning of a numerical proverb, the end of which is wanting.

We acknowledge, because of the obscurity - not possibly aimed at by the author himself - in which the two daughters remain, the fragmentary characters of the proverb of the ‛Alûka; Stuart also does this, for he regards it as brought out of a connection in which it was intelligible - but we believe that the line 'שׁלושׁ וגו is an original formal part of this proverb. For the proverb forming, according to Mühlau’s judgment, a whole rounded off: שׁלושׁ הנה לא תשׂבענה ארבע לא אמרו הון שׁאול ועצר רחם ארץ לא שׂבעה מים ואשׁ לא אמרה הון contains a mark which makes the original combination of these five lines improbable.

Always where the third is exceeded by the fourth, the step from the third to the fourth is taken by the connecting Vav : Pro 30:18, וארבע; Pro 30:21, ותחת ארבע; Pro 30:29, וארבעה. We therefore conclude that 'ארבע לא וגו is the original commencement of independent proverb. This proverb is: Four things say not: Enough! The under-world and the closing of the womb [i.

e. , unfruitful womb] - The earth is not satisfied with water, And the fire says not: Enough! a tetrastich more acceptable and appropriate than the Arab. proverb (Freytag, Provv . iii. p. 61, No. 347): “three things are not satisfied by three: the womb, and wood by fire, and the earth by rain;” and, on the other hand, it is remarkable to find it thus clothed in the Indian language, as given in the Hitopadesa (p.

67 of Lassen’s ed.) , and in Pantschatantra, i. 153 (ed. of Kosegarten): nâgnis tṛpjati kâshṭhânân nâpagânân mahôdadhih nântakah sarvabhûtânân na punsân vâmalocanâh. Fire is not sated with wood, nor the ocean with the streams, Nor death with all the living, nor the beautiful-eyed with men. As in the proverb of Agur the 4 falls into 2 + 2, so also in this Indian sloka .

In both, fire and the realm of death (ântaka is death as the personified “end-maker”) correspond; and as there the womb and the earth, so here feminarium cupiditas and the ocean. The parallelizing of ארץ and רחם is after passages such as Psa 139:15; Job 1:21 (cf. also Pro 5:16; Num 24:7; Isa 48:1); that of שׁאול and אשׁ is to be judged of after passages such as Deu 32:22, Isa 56:1-12 :24.

That לא אמרו הון repeats itself in לא אמרה הון is now, as we render the proverb independently, much more satisfactory than if it began with 'שׁלושׁ וגו: it rounds itself off, for the end returns into the beginning. Regarding הון, vid . , Pro 1:13. From הוּן, to be light, it signifies living lightly; ease, superabundance, in that which renders life light or easy.

“Used accusatively, and as an exclamation, it is equivalent to plenty! enough! It is used in the same sense in the North African Arab. brrakat (spreading out, fulness). Wetzstein remarks that in Damascus lahôn i. e. , hitherto, is used in the sense of ḥajah, enough; and that, accordingly, we may attempt to explain הון of our Heb. language in the sense of (Arab.)

hawn haddah, i. e. , here the end of it! ” (Mühlau). But what do we now make of the two remaining lines of the proverb of the ‛Alûka? The proverb also in this division of two lines is a fragment. Ewald completes it, for to the one line, of which, according to his view, the fragment consists, he adds two: The bloodsucker has two daughters, “Hither! hither! ” Three saying, “Hither, hither, hither the blood, The blood of the wicked child.

” A proverb of this kind may stand in the O. T. alone: it sounds as if quoted from Grimm’s Mährchen , and is a side-piece to Zappert’s altdeutsch. Schlummerliede . Cannot the mutilation of the proverb be rectified in a less violent way without any self-made addition? If this is the case, that in Pro 30:15 and Pro 30:16, which now form one proverb, there are two melted together, only the first of which lies before us in a confused form, then this phenomenon is explained by supposing that the proverb of the ‛Alûka originally stood in this form: The ‛Alûka has two daughters: Give!

give! - The under-world and the closing of the womb; There are three that are never satisfied. Thus completed, this tristich presents itself as the original side-piece of the lost tetrastich, beginning with ארבע. One might suppose that if שׁאול and עצר רחם have to be regarded as the daughters of the ‛Alûka, which Hitzig and also Zöckler have recognised, then there exists no reason for dividing the one proverb into two.

Yet the taking of them as separate is necessary, for this reason, because in the fourth, into which it expands, the ‛Alûka is altogether left out of account. But in the above tristich it is taken into account, as was to be expected, as the mother with her children. This, that sheol (שׁאול is for the most part fem.) , and the womb (רחם = רחם, which is fem. , Jer 20:17) to which conception is denied, are called, on account of their greediness, the daughters of the ‛Alûka, is to be understood in the same way as when a mountain height is called, Isa 5:1, a horn of the son of oil.

In the Arab. , which is inexhaustibly rich in such figurative names, a man is called “a son of the clay (limi);” a thief, “a son of the night;” a nettle, “the daughter of fire. ” The under-world and a closed womb have the ‛Alûka nature; they are insatiable, like the leech. It is unnecessary to interpret, as Zöckler at last does, ‛Alûka as the name of a female demon, and the לילית, “daughters,” as her companions.

It may be adduced in favour of this view that לעלוּקה is without the article, after the manner of a proper name. But is it really without the article? Such a doubtful case we had before us at Pro 27:23. As yet only Böttcher, §394, has entered on this difficulty of punctuation. We compare Gen 29:27, בּעבדה; 1Ki 12:32, לעגלים; 1Ch 13:7, בּעגלה; and consequently also Psa 146:7, לעשׁוּקים; thus the assimilating force of the Chateph appears here to have changed the syntactically required ל and בּ into ל and בּ.

But also supposing that עלוּקה in לעלוּקה is treated as a proper name, this is explained from the circumstance that the leech is not meant here in the natural history sense of the word, but as embodied greediness, and is made a person, one individual being. Also the symbol of the two daughters is opposed to the mythological character of the ‛Alûka. The imper.

הב, from יהב, occurs only here and at Dan 7:17 (= תּן), and in the bibl. Heb. only with the intentional āh, and in inflection forms. The insatiableness of sheol (Pro 27:20) is described by Isa; Isa 5:14; and Rachel, Gen 30:1, with her “Give me children,” is an example of the greediness of the “closed-up womb” (Gen 20:18). The womb of a childless wife is meant, which, because she would have children, the nuptiae never satisfy; or also of one who, because she does not fear to become pregnant, invites to her many men, and always burns anew with lust.

“In Arab. 'aluwaḳ means not only one fast bound to her husband, but, according to Wetzstein, in the whole of Syria and Palestine, the prostitute, as well as the κίναιδοι, are called 'ulak (plur. 'alwak), because they obtrude themselves and hold fast to their victim” (Mühlau). In the third line, the three: the leech, hell, and the shut womb, are summarized: tira sunt quae non satiantur .

Thus it is to be translated with Fleischer, not with Mühlau and others, tira haec non satiantur . “These three” is expressed in Heb. by שׁלשׁ־אלּה, Exo 21:11, or אלּה(ה) שׁלשׁת, 2Sa 21:22; הנּה (which, besides, does not signify haec , but illa ) is here, taken correctly, the pred. , and represents in general the verb of being (Isa 51:19), vid . , at Pro 6:16.

Zöckler finds the point of the proverb in the greediness of the unfruitful womb, and is of opinion that the poet purposely somewhat concealed this point, and gave to his proverb thereby the enhanced attraction of the ingenious. But the tetrastich 'אברע וגו shows that hell, which is compared to fire, and the unfruitful womb, to which the parched and thirsty earth is compared, were placed by the poet on one and the same line; it is otherwise with Pro 30:18-20, but where that point is nothing less than concealed.

Pro 30:15-16 With the characteristic of insatiableness Pro 30:11-14 closes, and there follows an apophthegma de quatuor insatiabilibus quae ideo comparantur cum sanguisuga (C. B. Michaelis). We translate the text here as it lies before us: 15 The ‛Alûka hath two daughters: Give! Give! Three of these are never satisfied; Four say not: Enough! 16 The under-world and the closing of the womb; The earth is not satisfied with water; And the fire saith not: Enough!

We begin with Masoretic externalities. The first ב in הב is Beth minusculum ; probably it had accidentally this diminutive form in the original MSS, to which the Midrash (cf. Sepher Taghin ed. Bargès , 1866, p. 47) has added absurd conceits. This first הב has Pasek after it, which in this case is servant to the Olewejored going before, according to the rule Thorath Emeth , p.

24, here, as at Psa 85:9, Mehuppach . The second הב, which of itself alone is the representative of Olewejored , has in Hutter, as in the Cod. Erfurt 2, and Cod. 2 of the Leipzig Public Library, the pausal punctuation הב (cf. קח, 1Sa 21:10), but which is not sufficiently attested. Instead of לא־אמרוּ, 15b, לא אמרוּ, and instead of לא־אמרה f, 16b, לא אמרה are to be written; the Zinnorith removes the Makkeph , according to Thorath Emeth , p.

9, Accentuationssystem , iv. §2. Instead of מים, 16a, only Jablonski, as Mühlau remarks, has מים; but incorrectly, since Athnach , after Olewejored , has no pausal force ( vid . , Thorath Emeth , p. 37). All that is without any weight as to the import of the words. But the punctuation affords some little service for the setting aside of a view of Rabbenu Tam ( vid .

, Tosaphoth to Aboda zara 17a, and Erubin 19a), which has been lately advocated by Löwenstein. That view is, that ‛Alûka is the name of a wise man, not Solomon’s, because the Pesikta does not reckon this among the names of Solomon, nor yet a name of hell, because it is not, in the Gemara, numbered among the names of Gehinnom. Thus לעלוּקה would be a superscription, like לדוד and לשׁלמה, Psa 26:1; Psa 72:1, provided with Asla Legarmeh .

But this is not possible, for the Asla Legarmeh , at Psa 26:1 and Psa 72:1, is the transformation of Olewejored , inadmissible on the first word of the verse ( Accentuationssystem , xix. §1); but no Olewejored can follow such an Asla Legarmeh , which has the force of an Olewejored , as after this לעלוקה, which the accentuation then does not regard as the author’s name given as a superscription.

עלוּקה is not the name of a person, and generally not a proper name, but a generic name of certain traditional signification. “One must drink no water” - says the Gemara Aboda zara 12b - “out of a river or pond, nor (immediately) with his mouth, nor by means of his hand; he who, nevertheless, does it, his blood comes on his own head, because of the danger. What danger?

סכּנת עלוּקה,” i. e. , the danger of swallowing a leech. The Aram. also designates a leech by עלוּקא (cf. e. g. , Targ. Ps. 12:9: hence the godless walk about like the leech, which sucks the blood of men), and the Arab. by 'alaḳ ( n. unit . 'alaḳat), as the word is also rendered here by the Aram. and Arab. translators. Accordingly, all the Greeks render it by βδέλλη; Jerome, by sanguisuga (Rashi, sangsue ); also Luther’s Eigel is not the Igel erinaceus [hedgehog], but the Egel , i.

e. , as we now designate it, the Blutegel [leech], or (less correctly) Blutigel . עלוּקה is the fem. of the adj. עלוּק, attached to, which meaning, together with the whole verbal stem, the Arab. has preserved ( vid . , Mühlau’s Mittheilung des Art. 'aluka aus dem Kamus , p. 42). But if, now, the ‛Alûka is the leech, which are then its two daughters, to which is here given the name הב הב, and which at the same time have this cry of desire in their mouths?

Grotius and others understand, by the two daughters of the leech, the two branches of its tongue; more correctly: the double-membered overlip of its sucker. C. B. Michaelis thinks that the greedy cry, “Give! Give! ” is personified: voces istae concipiuntur ut hirudinis filiae, quas ex se gignat et velut mater sobolem impense diligat . But since this does not satisfy, symbolical interpretations of ‛Aluka have been resorted to.

The Talmud, Aboda zara 17a, regards it as a name of hell. In this sense it is used in the language of the Pijut (synagogue poetry). If ‛Alûka is hell, then fancy has the widest room for finding an answer to the question, What are the two daughters? The Talmud supposes that רשׁות (the worldly domination) and מינות (heresy) are meant. The Church-fathers also, understanding by ‛Alûka the power of the devil, expatiated in such interpretations.

Of the same character are Calmet’s interpretation, that sanguisuga is a figure of the mala cupiditas , and its twin-daughters are avaritia and ambitio . The truth lying in all these is this, that here there must be some kind of symbol. But if the poet meant, by the two daughters of the ‛Alûka, two beings or things which he does not name, then he kept the best of his symbol to himself.

And could he use ‛Alûka, this common name for the leech, without further intimation, in any kind of symbolical sense? The most of modern interpreters do nothing to promote the understanding of the word, for they suppose that ‛Alûka, from its nearest signification, denotes a demoniacal spirit of the character of a vampire, like the Dakinî of the Indians, which nourish themselves on human flesh; the ghouls of the Arabs and Persians, which inhabit graveyards, and kill and eat men, particularly wanderers in the desert; in regard to which it is to be remarked, that (Arab.)

‛awlaḳ is indeed a name for a demon, and that al‛aluwaḳ, according to the Kamus, is used in the sense of alghwal. Thus Dathe, Döderlein, Ziegler, Umbreit; thus also Hitzig, Ewald, and others. Mühlau, while he concurs in this understanding of the word, and now throwing open the question, Which, then, are the two daughters of the demoness ‛Alûka? finds no answer to it in the proverb itself, and therefore accepts of the view of Ewald, since 15b-16, taken by themselves, form a fully completed whole, that the line 'לעלוקה וגו is the beginning of a numerical proverb, the end of which is wanting.

We acknowledge, because of the obscurity - not possibly aimed at by the author himself - in which the two daughters remain, the fragmentary characters of the proverb of the ‛Alûka; Stuart also does this, for he regards it as brought out of a connection in which it was intelligible - but we believe that the line 'שׁלושׁ וגו is an original formal part of this proverb. For the proverb forming, according to Mühlau’s judgment, a whole rounded off: שׁלושׁ הנה לא תשׂבענה ארבע לא אמרו הון שׁאול ועצר רחם ארץ לא שׂבעה מים ואשׁ לא אמרה הון contains a mark which makes the original combination of these five lines improbable.

Always where the third is exceeded by the fourth, the step from the third to the fourth is taken by the connecting Vav : Pro 30:18, וארבע; Pro 30:21, ותחת ארבע; Pro 30:29, וארבעה. We therefore conclude that 'ארבע לא וגו is the original commencement of independent proverb. This proverb is: Four things say not: Enough! The under-world and the closing of the womb [i.

e. , unfruitful womb] - The earth is not satisfied with water, And the fire says not: Enough! a tetrastich more acceptable and appropriate than the Arab. proverb (Freytag, Provv . iii. p. 61, No. 347): “three things are not satisfied by three: the womb, and wood by fire, and the earth by rain;” and, on the other hand, it is remarkable to find it thus clothed in the Indian language, as given in the Hitopadesa (p.

67 of Lassen’s ed.) , and in Pantschatantra, i. 153 (ed. of Kosegarten): nâgnis tṛpjati kâshṭhânân nâpagânân mahôdadhih nântakah sarvabhûtânân na punsân vâmalocanâh. Fire is not sated with wood, nor the ocean with the streams, Nor death with all the living, nor the beautiful-eyed with men. As in the proverb of Agur the 4 falls into 2 + 2, so also in this Indian sloka .

In both, fire and the realm of death (ântaka is death as the personified “end-maker”) correspond; and as there the womb and the earth, so here feminarium cupiditas and the ocean. The parallelizing of ארץ and רחם is after passages such as Psa 139:15; Job 1:21 (cf. also Pro 5:16; Num 24:7; Isa 48:1); that of שׁאול and אשׁ is to be judged of after passages such as Deu 32:22, Isa 56:1-12 :24.

That לא אמרו הון repeats itself in לא אמרה הון is now, as we render the proverb independently, much more satisfactory than if it began with 'שׁלושׁ וגו: it rounds itself off, for the end returns into the beginning. Regarding הון, vid . , Pro 1:13. From הוּן, to be light, it signifies living lightly; ease, superabundance, in that which renders life light or easy.

“Used accusatively, and as an exclamation, it is equivalent to plenty! enough! It is used in the same sense in the North African Arab. brrakat (spreading out, fulness). Wetzstein remarks that in Damascus lahôn i. e. , hitherto, is used in the sense of ḥajah, enough; and that, accordingly, we may attempt to explain הון of our Heb. language in the sense of (Arab.)

hawn haddah, i. e. , here the end of it! ” (Mühlau). But what do we now make of the two remaining lines of the proverb of the ‛Alûka? The proverb also in this division of two lines is a fragment. Ewald completes it, for to the one line, of which, according to his view, the fragment consists, he adds two: The bloodsucker has two daughters, “Hither! hither! ” Three saying, “Hither, hither, hither the blood, The blood of the wicked child.

” A proverb of this kind may stand in the O. T. alone: it sounds as if quoted from Grimm’s Mährchen , and is a side-piece to Zappert’s altdeutsch. Schlummerliede . Cannot the mutilation of the proverb be rectified in a less violent way without any self-made addition? If this is the case, that in Pro 30:15 and Pro 30:16, which now form one proverb, there are two melted together, only the first of which lies before us in a confused form, then this phenomenon is explained by supposing that the proverb of the ‛Alûka originally stood in this form: The ‛Alûka has two daughters: Give!

give! - The under-world and the closing of the womb; There are three that are never satisfied. Thus completed, this tristich presents itself as the original side-piece of the lost tetrastich, beginning with ארבע. One might suppose that if שׁאול and עצר רחם have to be regarded as the daughters of the ‛Alûka, which Hitzig and also Zöckler have recognised, then there exists no reason for dividing the one proverb into two.

Yet the taking of them as separate is necessary, for this reason, because in the fourth, into which it expands, the ‛Alûka is altogether left out of account. But in the above tristich it is taken into account, as was to be expected, as the mother with her children. This, that sheol (שׁאול is for the most part fem.) , and the womb (רחם = רחם, which is fem. , Jer 20:17) to which conception is denied, are called, on account of their greediness, the daughters of the ‛Alûka, is to be understood in the same way as when a mountain height is called, Isa 5:1, a horn of the son of oil.

In the Arab. , which is inexhaustibly rich in such figurative names, a man is called “a son of the clay (limi);” a thief, “a son of the night;” a nettle, “the daughter of fire. ” The under-world and a closed womb have the ‛Alûka nature; they are insatiable, like the leech. It is unnecessary to interpret, as Zöckler at last does, ‛Alûka as the name of a female demon, and the לילית, “daughters,” as her companions.

It may be adduced in favour of this view that לעלוּקה is without the article, after the manner of a proper name. But is it really without the article? Such a doubtful case we had before us at Pro 27:23. As yet only Böttcher, §394, has entered on this difficulty of punctuation. We compare Gen 29:27, בּעבדה; 1Ki 12:32, לעגלים; 1Ch 13:7, בּעגלה; and consequently also Psa 146:7, לעשׁוּקים; thus the assimilating force of the Chateph appears here to have changed the syntactically required ל and בּ into ל and בּ.

But also supposing that עלוּקה in לעלוּקה is treated as a proper name, this is explained from the circumstance that the leech is not meant here in the natural history sense of the word, but as embodied greediness, and is made a person, one individual being. Also the symbol of the two daughters is opposed to the mythological character of the ‛Alûka. The imper.

הב, from יהב, occurs only here and at Dan 7:17 (= תּן), and in the bibl. Heb. only with the intentional āh, and in inflection forms. The insatiableness of sheol (Pro 27:20) is described by Isa; Isa 5:14; and Rachel, Gen 30:1, with her “Give me children,” is an example of the greediness of the “closed-up womb” (Gen 20:18). The womb of a childless wife is meant, which, because she would have children, the nuptiae never satisfy; or also of one who, because she does not fear to become pregnant, invites to her many men, and always burns anew with lust.

“In Arab. 'aluwaḳ means not only one fast bound to her husband, but, according to Wetzstein, in the whole of Syria and Palestine, the prostitute, as well as the κίναιδοι, are called 'ulak (plur. 'alwak), because they obtrude themselves and hold fast to their victim” (Mühlau). In the third line, the three: the leech, hell, and the shut womb, are summarized: tira sunt quae non satiantur .

Thus it is to be translated with Fleischer, not with Mühlau and others, tira haec non satiantur . “These three” is expressed in Heb. by שׁלשׁ־אלּה, Exo 21:11, or אלּה(ה) שׁלשׁת, 2Sa 21:22; הנּה (which, besides, does not signify haec , but illa ) is here, taken correctly, the pred. , and represents in general the verb of being (Isa 51:19), vid . , at Pro 6:16.

Zöckler finds the point of the proverb in the greediness of the unfruitful womb, and is of opinion that the poet purposely somewhat concealed this point, and gave to his proverb thereby the enhanced attraction of the ingenious. But the tetrastich 'אברע וגו shows that hell, which is compared to fire, and the unfruitful womb, to which the parched and thirsty earth is compared, were placed by the poet on one and the same line; it is otherwise with Pro 30:18-20, but where that point is nothing less than concealed.

Pro 30:17 The proverb of the ‛Alûka is the first of the proverbs founded on the figure of an animal among the “words” of Agur. It is now followed by another of a similar character: 17 An eye that mocketh at his father, And despiseth obedience to his mother: The ravens of the brook shall pluck it out, And the young eagles shall eat it. If “an eye,” and not “eyes,” are spoken of here, this is accounted for by the consideration that the duality of the organ falls back against the unity of the mental activity and mental expression which it serves (cf.

Psychol . p. 234). As haughtiness reveals itself (Pro 30:13) in the action of the eyes, so is the eye also the mirror of humble subordination, and also of malicious scorn which refuses reverence and subjection to father and mother. As in German the verbs [ verspotten, spotten, höhnen, hohnsprechen signifying to mock at or scorn may be used with the accus. , genit.

, or dat. , so also לעג [to deride] and בּוּז [to despise] may be connected at pleasure with either an accusative object or a dative object. Ben-Chajim, Athias, van der Hooght, and others write תּלעג; Jablonski, Michaelis, Löwenstein, תּלעג, Mühlau, with Norzi, accurately, תּלעג, with Munach , like תּבחר, Psa 65:5; the writing of Ben-Asher is תּלעג, with Gaja , Chateph , and Munach .

The punctuation of ליקהת is more fluctuating. The word לקהת ( e. g. , Cod. Jaman .) may remain out of view, for the Dag. dirimens in ק stands here as firmly as at Gen 49:10, cf. Psa 45:10. But it is a question whether one has to write ליקּהת with Yod quiesc . (regarding this form of writing, preferred by Ben-Naphtali, the Psalmen-Comm . under Psa 45:10, in both Edd.

; Luzzatto’s Gramm . §193; Baer’s Genesis , p. 84, note 2; and Heidenheim’s Pentateuch , with the text-crit. Comm . of Jekuthiël ha-Nakdans, under Gen 47:17; Gen 49:10), as it is found in Kimchi, Michlol 45a, and under יקה, and as also Norzi requires, or ליקּהת (as e. g. , Cod. Erfurt 1), which appears to be the form adopted by Ben-Asher, for it is attested as such by Jekuthiël under Gen 49:10, and also expressly as such by an old Masora-Cod.

of the Erfurt Library. Löwenstein translates, “the weakness of the mother. ” Thus after Rashi, who refers the word to קהה, to draw together, and explains it, Gen 49:10, “collection;” but in the passage before us, understands it of the wrinkles on the countenance of the aged mother. Nachmani (Ramban) goes still further, giving to the word, at Gen 49:10, everywhere the meaning of weakness and frailty.

Aben Ezra also, and Gersuni (Ralbag), do not go beyond the meaning of a drawing together; and the lxx, with the Aram. , who all translate the word by senectus , have also קהה in the sense of to become dull, infirm (certainly not the Aethiopic leheḳa, to become old, weak through old age). But Kimchi, whom the Venet . and Luther follow, is informed by Abulwalîd, skilled in the Arab.

, of a better: יקהה (or יקּהה, cf. נצּרה, Psa 141:3) is the Arab. wakhat, obedience ( vid . , above יקה under 1a). If now it is said of such a haughty, insolent eye, that the ravens of the brook (cf. 1Ki 17:4) will pluck it out, and the בני־נשׁר eat it, they, the eagle’s children, the unchildlike human eye: it is only the description of the fate that is before such an one, to die a violent death, and to become a prey to the fowls of heaven (cf.

e. g. , Jer 16:3. , and Passow’s Lex . under κόραξ); and if this threatening is not always thus literally fulfilled, yet one has not on that account to render the future optatively, with Hitzig; this is a false conclusion, from a too literal interpretation, for the threatening is only to be understood after its spirit, viz. , that a fearful and a dishonourable end will come to such an one.

Instead of יקּרוּה, as Mühlau reads from the Leipzig Cod. , יקרוה, with Mercha (Athias and Nissel have it with Tarcha ), is to be read, for a word between Olewejored and Athnach must always contain a conjunctive accent ( Thorath Emeth , p. 51; Accentuationssystem , xviii. §9). ערבי־נחל is also irregular, and instead of it ערבי־נחל is to be written, for the reason given above under Pro 30:16 (מים).

Pro 30:18-20 The following proverb, again a numerical proverb, begins with the eagle, mentioned in the last line of the foregoing: 18 Three things lie beyond me, And four I understand not: 19 The way of the eagle in the heavens, The way of a serpent over a rock, The way of a ship on the high sea, And the way of a man with a maid. 20 Thus is the way of the adulterous woman: She eateth and wipeth her mouth, and saith: I have done no iniquity.

נפלאוּ ממּנּי, as relative clause, like 15b (where Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion rightly: τρία δέ ἐστιν ἃ οὐ πλησθήσεται), is joined to שׁלשׁה המּה. On the other hand, ארבע (τέσσαρα, for with the Kerı̂, conforming to 18a, ארבּעה, τέσσαρας) has to be interpreted as object. accus. The introduction of four things that are not known is in expressions like Job 42:3; cf.

Psa 139:6. The turning-point lies in the fourth; to that point the other three expressions gravitate, which have not an object in themselves, but are only as folie to the fourth. The articles wanting after הנּשׁר: they would be only the marks of the gender, and are therefore unnecessary; cf. under Pro 29:2. And while בּשּׁמים, in the heavens, and בלב־ים, in the sea, are the expressions used, עלי צוּר is used for on the rock, because here “on” is not at the same time “in,” “within,” as the eagle cleaves the air and the ship the waves.

For this same reason the expression, “the way of a man בּעלמה,” is not to be understood of love unsought, suddenly taking possession of and captivating a man toward this or that maid, so that the principal thought of the proverb may be compared to the saying, “marriages are made in heaven;” but, as in Kidduschin 2b, with reference to this passage, is said coitus via appellatur . The ב refers to copula carnalis .

But in what respect did his understanding not reach to this? “Wonderful,” thus Hitzig explains as the best interpreter of this opinion elsewhere (cf. Psychol . p. 115) propounded, “appeared to him the flying, and that how a large and thus heavy bird could raise itself so high in the air (Job 39:27); then how, over the smooth rock, which offers no hold, the serpent pushes itself along; finally, how the ship in the trackless waves, which present nothing to the eye as a guide, nevertheless finds its way.

These three things have at the same time this in common, that they leave no trace of their pathway behind them. But of the fourth way that cannot be said; for the trace is left on the substrat , which the man דּרך, and it becomes manifest, possibly as pregnancy, keeping out of view that the עלמה may yet be בתולה. That which is wonderful is consequently only the coition itself, its mystical act and its incomprehensible consequences.

” But does not this interpretation carry in itself its own refutation? To the three wonderful ways which leave no traces behind them, there cannot be compared a fourth, the consequences of which are not only not trackless, but, on the contrary, become manifest as proceeding from the act in an incomprehensible way. The point of comparison is either the wonderfulness of the event or the tracklessness of its consequences.

But now “the way of a man בתולה” is altogether inappropriate to designate the wonderful event of the origin of a human being. How altogether differently the Chokma expresses itself on this matter is seen from Job 10:8-12; Ecc 11:5 (cf. Psychol . p. 210). That “way of a man with a maid” denotes only the act of coition, which physiologically differs in nothing from that of the lower animals, and which in itself, in the externality of its accomplishment, the poet cannot possibly call something transcendent.

And why did he use the word בעלמה, and not rather בּנקבה [with a female] or בּאשּׁה [ id .] For this reason, because he meant the act of coition, not as a physiological event, but as a historical occurrence, as it takes place particularly in youth as the goal of love, not always reached in the divinely-appointed way. The point of comparison hence is not the secret of conception, but the tracelessness of the carnal intercourse.

Now it is also clear why the way of the serpent עלי צור was in his eye: among grass, and still more in sand, the trace of the serpent’s path would perhaps be visible, but not on a hard stone, over which it has glided. And it is clear why it is said of the ship בלב־ים [in the heart of the sea]: while the ship is still in sight from the land, one knows the track it follows; but who can in the heart of the sea, i.

e. , on the high sea, say that here or there a ship has ploughed the water, since the water-furrows have long ago disappeared? Looking to the heavens, one cannot say that an eagle has passed there; to the rock, that a serpent has wound its way over it; to the high sea, that a ship has been steered through it; to the maid, that a man has had carnal intercourse with her.

That the fact might appear on nearer investigation, although this will not always guide to a certain conclusion, is not kept in view; only the outward appearance is spoken of, the intentional concealment (Rashi) being in this case added thereto. Sins against the sixth [= seventh] commandment remain concealed from human knowledge, and are distinguished from others by this, that they shun human cognition (as the proverb says: אין אפיטרופוס לעריות, there is for sins of the flesh no ἐπίτροπος) - unchastity can mask itself, the marks of chastity are deceitful, here only the All-seeing Eye (עין ראה כּל, Aboth ii.

1) perceives that which is done. Yet it is not maintained that “the way of a man with a maid” refers exclusively to external intercourse; but altogether on this side the proverb gains ethical significance. Regarding עלמה (from עלם, pubes esse et caeundi cupidus , not from עלם, to conceal, and not, as Schultens derives it, from עלם, signare , to seal) as distinguished from בּתוּלה, vid .

, under Isa 7:14. The mark of maidenhood belongs to עלמה not in the same way as to בתולה (cf. Gen 24:43 with 16), but only the marks of puberty and youth; the wife אשּׁה (viz. , אושׁת אישׁ) cannot as such be called עלמה. Ralbag’s gloss עלמה שׁהיא בעולה is incorrect, and in Arama’s explanation ( Akeda , Abschn. 9): the time is not to be determined when the sexual love of the husband to his wife flames out, ought to have been ודרך אישׁ בּאשׁתּו ne.

One has therefore to suppose that Pro 30:20 explains what is meant by “the way of a man with a maid” by a strong example (for “the adulterous woman” can mean only an old adulteress), there not inclusive, for the tracklessness of sins of the flesh in their consequences. This 20th verse does not appear to have been an original part of the numerical proverb, but is an appendix thereto (Hitzig).

If we assume that כּן points forwards: thus as follows is it with the... (Fleischer), then we should hold this verse as an independent cognate proverb; but where is there a proverb (except Pro 11:19) that begins with כּן? כן, which may mean eodem modo (for one does not say כּן גּם) as well as eo modo , here points backwards in the former sense. Instead of וּמחתה פּיה (not פּיה; for the attraction of that which follows, brought about by the retrogression of the tone of the first word, requires dageshing, Thorath Emeth , p.

30) the lxx has merely ἀπονιψαμένη, i. e. , as Immanuel explains: מקנּחה עצמה, abstergens semet ipsam , with Grotius, who to tergens os suum adds the remark: σεμνολογία ( honesta elocutio ). But eating is just a figure, like the “secret bread,” Pro 9:17, and the wiping of the mouth belongs to this figure. This appendix, with its כן, confirms it, that the intention of the four ways refers to the tracklessness of the consequences.

Pro 30:18-20 The following proverb, again a numerical proverb, begins with the eagle, mentioned in the last line of the foregoing: 18 Three things lie beyond me, And four I understand not: 19 The way of the eagle in the heavens, The way of a serpent over a rock, The way of a ship on the high sea, And the way of a man with a maid. 20 Thus is the way of the adulterous woman: She eateth and wipeth her mouth, and saith: I have done no iniquity.

נפלאוּ ממּנּי, as relative clause, like 15b (where Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion rightly: τρία δέ ἐστιν ἃ οὐ πλησθήσεται), is joined to שׁלשׁה המּה. On the other hand, ארבע (τέσσαρα, for with the Kerı̂, conforming to 18a, ארבּעה, τέσσαρας) has to be interpreted as object. accus. The introduction of four things that are not known is in expressions like Job 42:3; cf.

Psa 139:6. The turning-point lies in the fourth; to that point the other three expressions gravitate, which have not an object in themselves, but are only as folie to the fourth. The articles wanting after הנּשׁר: they would be only the marks of the gender, and are therefore unnecessary; cf. under Pro 29:2. And while בּשּׁמים, in the heavens, and בלב־ים, in the sea, are the expressions used, עלי צוּר is used for on the rock, because here “on” is not at the same time “in,” “within,” as the eagle cleaves the air and the ship the waves.

For this same reason the expression, “the way of a man בּעלמה,” is not to be understood of love unsought, suddenly taking possession of and captivating a man toward this or that maid, so that the principal thought of the proverb may be compared to the saying, “marriages are made in heaven;” but, as in Kidduschin 2b, with reference to this passage, is said coitus via appellatur . The ב refers to copula carnalis .

But in what respect did his understanding not reach to this? “Wonderful,” thus Hitzig explains as the best interpreter of this opinion elsewhere (cf. Psychol . p. 115) propounded, “appeared to him the flying, and that how a large and thus heavy bird could raise itself so high in the air (Job 39:27); then how, over the smooth rock, which offers no hold, the serpent pushes itself along; finally, how the ship in the trackless waves, which present nothing to the eye as a guide, nevertheless finds its way.

These three things have at the same time this in common, that they leave no trace of their pathway behind them. But of the fourth way that cannot be said; for the trace is left on the substrat , which the man דּרך, and it becomes manifest, possibly as pregnancy, keeping out of view that the עלמה may yet be בתולה. That which is wonderful is consequently only the coition itself, its mystical act and its incomprehensible consequences.

” But does not this interpretation carry in itself its own refutation? To the three wonderful ways which leave no traces behind them, there cannot be compared a fourth, the consequences of which are not only not trackless, but, on the contrary, become manifest as proceeding from the act in an incomprehensible way. The point of comparison is either the wonderfulness of the event or the tracklessness of its consequences.

But now “the way of a man בתולה” is altogether inappropriate to designate the wonderful event of the origin of a human being. How altogether differently the Chokma expresses itself on this matter is seen from Job 10:8-12; Ecc 11:5 (cf. Psychol . p. 210). That “way of a man with a maid” denotes only the act of coition, which physiologically differs in nothing from that of the lower animals, and which in itself, in the externality of its accomplishment, the poet cannot possibly call something transcendent.

And why did he use the word בעלמה, and not rather בּנקבה [with a female] or בּאשּׁה [ id .] For this reason, because he meant the act of coition, not as a physiological event, but as a historical occurrence, as it takes place particularly in youth as the goal of love, not always reached in the divinely-appointed way. The point of comparison hence is not the secret of conception, but the tracelessness of the carnal intercourse.

Now it is also clear why the way of the serpent עלי צור was in his eye: among grass, and still more in sand, the trace of the serpent’s path would perhaps be visible, but not on a hard stone, over which it has glided. And it is clear why it is said of the ship בלב־ים [in the heart of the sea]: while the ship is still in sight from the land, one knows the track it follows; but who can in the heart of the sea, i.

e. , on the high sea, say that here or there a ship has ploughed the water, since the water-furrows have long ago disappeared? Looking to the heavens, one cannot say that an eagle has passed there; to the rock, that a serpent has wound its way over it; to the high sea, that a ship has been steered through it; to the maid, that a man has had carnal intercourse with her.

That the fact might appear on nearer investigation, although this will not always guide to a certain conclusion, is not kept in view; only the outward appearance is spoken of, the intentional concealment (Rashi) being in this case added thereto. Sins against the sixth [= seventh] commandment remain concealed from human knowledge, and are distinguished from others by this, that they shun human cognition (as the proverb says: אין אפיטרופוס לעריות, there is for sins of the flesh no ἐπίτροπος) - unchastity can mask itself, the marks of chastity are deceitful, here only the All-seeing Eye (עין ראה כּל, Aboth ii.

1) perceives that which is done. Yet it is not maintained that “the way of a man with a maid” refers exclusively to external intercourse; but altogether on this side the proverb gains ethical significance. Regarding עלמה (from עלם, pubes esse et caeundi cupidus , not from עלם, to conceal, and not, as Schultens derives it, from עלם, signare , to seal) as distinguished from בּתוּלה, vid .

, under Isa 7:14. The mark of maidenhood belongs to עלמה not in the same way as to בתולה (cf. Gen 24:43 with 16), but only the marks of puberty and youth; the wife אשּׁה (viz. , אושׁת אישׁ) cannot as such be called עלמה. Ralbag’s gloss עלמה שׁהיא בעולה is incorrect, and in Arama’s explanation ( Akeda , Abschn. 9): the time is not to be determined when the sexual love of the husband to his wife flames out, ought to have been ודרך אישׁ בּאשׁתּו ne.

One has therefore to suppose that Pro 30:20 explains what is meant by “the way of a man with a maid” by a strong example (for “the adulterous woman” can mean only an old adulteress), there not inclusive, for the tracklessness of sins of the flesh in their consequences. This 20th verse does not appear to have been an original part of the numerical proverb, but is an appendix thereto (Hitzig).

If we assume that כּן points forwards: thus as follows is it with the... (Fleischer), then we should hold this verse as an independent cognate proverb; but where is there a proverb (except Pro 11:19) that begins with כּן? כן, which may mean eodem modo (for one does not say כּן גּם) as well as eo modo , here points backwards in the former sense. Instead of וּמחתה פּיה (not פּיה; for the attraction of that which follows, brought about by the retrogression of the tone of the first word, requires dageshing, Thorath Emeth , p.

30) the lxx has merely ἀπονιψαμένη, i. e. , as Immanuel explains: מקנּחה עצמה, abstergens semet ipsam , with Grotius, who to tergens os suum adds the remark: σεμνολογία ( honesta elocutio ). But eating is just a figure, like the “secret bread,” Pro 9:17, and the wiping of the mouth belongs to this figure. This appendix, with its כן, confirms it, that the intention of the four ways refers to the tracklessness of the consequences.

Pro 30:18-20 The following proverb, again a numerical proverb, begins with the eagle, mentioned in the last line of the foregoing: 18 Three things lie beyond me, And four I understand not: 19 The way of the eagle in the heavens, The way of a serpent over a rock, The way of a ship on the high sea, And the way of a man with a maid. 20 Thus is the way of the adulterous woman: She eateth and wipeth her mouth, and saith: I have done no iniquity.

נפלאוּ ממּנּי, as relative clause, like 15b (where Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion rightly: τρία δέ ἐστιν ἃ οὐ πλησθήσεται), is joined to שׁלשׁה המּה. On the other hand, ארבע (τέσσαρα, for with the Kerı̂, conforming to 18a, ארבּעה, τέσσαρας) has to be interpreted as object. accus. The introduction of four things that are not known is in expressions like Job 42:3; cf.

Psa 139:6. The turning-point lies in the fourth; to that point the other three expressions gravitate, which have not an object in themselves, but are only as folie to the fourth. The articles wanting after הנּשׁר: they would be only the marks of the gender, and are therefore unnecessary; cf. under Pro 29:2. And while בּשּׁמים, in the heavens, and בלב־ים, in the sea, are the expressions used, עלי צוּר is used for on the rock, because here “on” is not at the same time “in,” “within,” as the eagle cleaves the air and the ship the waves.

For this same reason the expression, “the way of a man בּעלמה,” is not to be understood of love unsought, suddenly taking possession of and captivating a man toward this or that maid, so that the principal thought of the proverb may be compared to the saying, “marriages are made in heaven;” but, as in Kidduschin 2b, with reference to this passage, is said coitus via appellatur . The ב refers to copula carnalis .

But in what respect did his understanding not reach to this? “Wonderful,” thus Hitzig explains as the best interpreter of this opinion elsewhere (cf. Psychol . p. 115) propounded, “appeared to him the flying, and that how a large and thus heavy bird could raise itself so high in the air (Job 39:27); then how, over the smooth rock, which offers no hold, the serpent pushes itself along; finally, how the ship in the trackless waves, which present nothing to the eye as a guide, nevertheless finds its way.

These three things have at the same time this in common, that they leave no trace of their pathway behind them. But of the fourth way that cannot be said; for the trace is left on the substrat , which the man דּרך, and it becomes manifest, possibly as pregnancy, keeping out of view that the עלמה may yet be בתולה. That which is wonderful is consequently only the coition itself, its mystical act and its incomprehensible consequences.

” But does not this interpretation carry in itself its own refutation? To the three wonderful ways which leave no traces behind them, there cannot be compared a fourth, the consequences of which are not only not trackless, but, on the contrary, become manifest as proceeding from the act in an incomprehensible way. The point of comparison is either the wonderfulness of the event or the tracklessness of its consequences.

But now “the way of a man בתולה” is altogether inappropriate to designate the wonderful event of the origin of a human being. How altogether differently the Chokma expresses itself on this matter is seen from Job 10:8-12; Ecc 11:5 (cf. Psychol . p. 210). That “way of a man with a maid” denotes only the act of coition, which physiologically differs in nothing from that of the lower animals, and which in itself, in the externality of its accomplishment, the poet cannot possibly call something transcendent.

And why did he use the word בעלמה, and not rather בּנקבה [with a female] or בּאשּׁה [ id .] For this reason, because he meant the act of coition, not as a physiological event, but as a historical occurrence, as it takes place particularly in youth as the goal of love, not always reached in the divinely-appointed way. The point of comparison hence is not the secret of conception, but the tracelessness of the carnal intercourse.

Now it is also clear why the way of the serpent עלי צור was in his eye: among grass, and still more in sand, the trace of the serpent’s path would perhaps be visible, but not on a hard stone, over which it has glided. And it is clear why it is said of the ship בלב־ים [in the heart of the sea]: while the ship is still in sight from the land, one knows the track it follows; but who can in the heart of the sea, i.

e. , on the high sea, say that here or there a ship has ploughed the water, since the water-furrows have long ago disappeared? Looking to the heavens, one cannot say that an eagle has passed there; to the rock, that a serpent has wound its way over it; to the high sea, that a ship has been steered through it; to the maid, that a man has had carnal intercourse with her.

That the fact might appear on nearer investigation, although this will not always guide to a certain conclusion, is not kept in view; only the outward appearance is spoken of, the intentional concealment (Rashi) being in this case added thereto. Sins against the sixth [= seventh] commandment remain concealed from human knowledge, and are distinguished from others by this, that they shun human cognition (as the proverb says: אין אפיטרופוס לעריות, there is for sins of the flesh no ἐπίτροπος) - unchastity can mask itself, the marks of chastity are deceitful, here only the All-seeing Eye (עין ראה כּל, Aboth ii.

1) perceives that which is done. Yet it is not maintained that “the way of a man with a maid” refers exclusively to external intercourse; but altogether on this side the proverb gains ethical significance. Regarding עלמה (from עלם, pubes esse et caeundi cupidus , not from עלם, to conceal, and not, as Schultens derives it, from עלם, signare , to seal) as distinguished from בּתוּלה, vid .

, under Isa 7:14. The mark of maidenhood belongs to עלמה not in the same way as to בתולה (cf. Gen 24:43 with 16), but only the marks of puberty and youth; the wife אשּׁה (viz. , אושׁת אישׁ) cannot as such be called עלמה. Ralbag’s gloss עלמה שׁהיא בעולה is incorrect, and in Arama’s explanation ( Akeda , Abschn. 9): the time is not to be determined when the sexual love of the husband to his wife flames out, ought to have been ודרך אישׁ בּאשׁתּו ne.

One has therefore to suppose that Pro 30:20 explains what is meant by “the way of a man with a maid” by a strong example (for “the adulterous woman” can mean only an old adulteress), there not inclusive, for the tracklessness of sins of the flesh in their consequences. This 20th verse does not appear to have been an original part of the numerical proverb, but is an appendix thereto (Hitzig).

If we assume that כּן points forwards: thus as follows is it with the... (Fleischer), then we should hold this verse as an independent cognate proverb; but where is there a proverb (except Pro 11:19) that begins with כּן? כן, which may mean eodem modo (for one does not say כּן גּם) as well as eo modo , here points backwards in the former sense. Instead of וּמחתה פּיה (not פּיה; for the attraction of that which follows, brought about by the retrogression of the tone of the first word, requires dageshing, Thorath Emeth , p.

30) the lxx has merely ἀπονιψαμένη, i. e. , as Immanuel explains: מקנּחה עצמה, abstergens semet ipsam , with Grotius, who to tergens os suum adds the remark: σεμνολογία ( honesta elocutio ). But eating is just a figure, like the “secret bread,” Pro 9:17, and the wiping of the mouth belongs to this figure. This appendix, with its כן, confirms it, that the intention of the four ways refers to the tracklessness of the consequences.

Pro 30:21-23 It is now not at all necessary to rack one’s brains over the grounds or the reasons of the arrangement of the following proverb ( vid . , Hitzig). There are, up to this point, two numerical proverbs which begin with שׁתּים, Pro 30:7, and שׁתּי, Pro 30:15; after the cipher 2 there then, Pro 30:18, followed the cipher 3, which is now here continued: 21 Under three things doth the earth tremble, And under four can it not stand: 22 Under a servant when he becomes king, And a profligate when he has bread enough; 23 Under an unloved woman when she is married, And a maid-servant when she becomes heiress to her mistress.

We cannot say here that the 4 falls into 3 + 1; but the four consists of four ones standing beside one another. ארץ is here without pausal change, although the Athnach here, as at Pro 30:24, where the modification of sound occurs, divides the verse into two; מארץ, 14b (cf. Psa 35:2), remains, on the other hand, correctly unchanged. The “earth” stands here, as frequently, instead of the inhabitants of the earth.

It trembles when one of the four persons named above comes and gains free space for acting; it feels itself oppressed as by an insufferable burden (an expression similar to Amo 7:10); - the arrangement of society is shattered; an oppressive closeness of the air, as it were, settles over all minds. The first case is already designated, Pro 19:10, as improper: under a slave, when he comes to reign ( quum rex fit ); for suppose that such an one has reached the place of government, not by the murder of the king and by the robbery of the crown, but, as is possible in an elective monarchy, by means of the dominant party of the people, he will, as a rule, seek to indemnify himself in his present highness for his former lowliness, and in the measure of his rule show himself unable to rise above his servile habits, and to pass out of the limited circle of his earlier state.

The second case is this: a נבל, one whose mind is perverted and whose conduct is profligate - in short, a low man ( vid . , Pro 17:17) - ישׂבּע־לחם (cf. Metheg - Setzung , §28), i. e. , has enough to eat (cf. to the expression Pro 28:19; Jer 44:17); for this undeserved living without care and without want makes him only so much the more arrogant, and troublesome, and dangerous.

The שׂנוּאה, in the second case, is not thought of as a spouse, and that, as in supposed polygamy, Gen 29:31; Deu 21:15-17, as fallen into disfavour, but who again comes to favour and honour (Dathe, Rosenmüller); for she can be שׂנואה without her own fault, and as such she is yet no גּרוּשׁה; and it is not to be perceived why the re-assumption of such an one should shatter social order. Rightly Hitzig, and, after his example, Zöckler: an unmarried lady, an old spinster, is meant, whom no one desired because she had nothing attractive, and was only repulsive (cf.

Grimm, under Sir. 7:26b). If such an one, as כּי תבעל says, at length, however, finds her husband and enters into the married relation, then she carries her head so much the higher; for she gives vent to ill-humour, strengthened by long restraint, against her subordinates; then she richly requites her earlier and happily married companions for their depreciation of her, among whom she had to suffer, as able to find no one who would love her.

In the last case it is asked whether כּי־תירשׁ is meant of inheriting as an heiress (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targ. , Jerome, the Venet . , and Luther), or supplanting (Euchel, Gesenius, Hitzig), i. e. , an entering into the inheritance of the dead, or an entering into the place of a living mistress. Since ירשׁ, with the accus. of the person, Gen 15:3-4, signifies to be the heir of one, and only with the accus.

of peoples and lands signifies, “to take into possession (to seize) by supplanting,” the former is to be preferred; the lxx (Syr.) , ὅταν ἐκβάλῃ, appear to have read כּי־תגרשׁ. This גּרשׁ would certainly be, after Gen 21:10, a piece of the world turned upside down; but also the entering, as heiress, into the inheritance, makes the maid-servant the reverse of that which she was before, and brings with it the danger that the heiress, notwithstanding her want of culture and dignity, demean herself also as heiress of the rank.

Although the old Israelitish law knew only intestate succession to an inheritance, yet there also the case might arise, that where there were no natural or legal heirs, the bequest of a wife of rank passed over to her servants and nurses.

Pro 30:21-23 It is now not at all necessary to rack one’s brains over the grounds or the reasons of the arrangement of the following proverb ( vid . , Hitzig). There are, up to this point, two numerical proverbs which begin with שׁתּים, Pro 30:7, and שׁתּי, Pro 30:15; after the cipher 2 there then, Pro 30:18, followed the cipher 3, which is now here continued: 21 Under three things doth the earth tremble, And under four can it not stand: 22 Under a servant when he becomes king, And a profligate when he has bread enough; 23 Under an unloved woman when she is married, And a maid-servant when she becomes heiress to her mistress.

We cannot say here that the 4 falls into 3 + 1; but the four consists of four ones standing beside one another. ארץ is here without pausal change, although the Athnach here, as at Pro 30:24, where the modification of sound occurs, divides the verse into two; מארץ, 14b (cf. Psa 35:2), remains, on the other hand, correctly unchanged. The “earth” stands here, as frequently, instead of the inhabitants of the earth.

It trembles when one of the four persons named above comes and gains free space for acting; it feels itself oppressed as by an insufferable burden (an expression similar to Amo 7:10); - the arrangement of society is shattered; an oppressive closeness of the air, as it were, settles over all minds. The first case is already designated, Pro 19:10, as improper: under a slave, when he comes to reign ( quum rex fit ); for suppose that such an one has reached the place of government, not by the murder of the king and by the robbery of the crown, but, as is possible in an elective monarchy, by means of the dominant party of the people, he will, as a rule, seek to indemnify himself in his present highness for his former lowliness, and in the measure of his rule show himself unable to rise above his servile habits, and to pass out of the limited circle of his earlier state.

The second case is this: a נבל, one whose mind is perverted and whose conduct is profligate - in short, a low man ( vid . , Pro 17:17) - ישׂבּע־לחם (cf. Metheg - Setzung , §28), i. e. , has enough to eat (cf. to the expression Pro 28:19; Jer 44:17); for this undeserved living without care and without want makes him only so much the more arrogant, and troublesome, and dangerous.

The שׂנוּאה, in the second case, is not thought of as a spouse, and that, as in supposed polygamy, Gen 29:31; Deu 21:15-17, as fallen into disfavour, but who again comes to favour and honour (Dathe, Rosenmüller); for she can be שׂנואה without her own fault, and as such she is yet no גּרוּשׁה; and it is not to be perceived why the re-assumption of such an one should shatter social order. Rightly Hitzig, and, after his example, Zöckler: an unmarried lady, an old spinster, is meant, whom no one desired because she had nothing attractive, and was only repulsive (cf.

Grimm, under Sir. 7:26b). If such an one, as כּי תבעל says, at length, however, finds her husband and enters into the married relation, then she carries her head so much the higher; for she gives vent to ill-humour, strengthened by long restraint, against her subordinates; then she richly requites her earlier and happily married companions for their depreciation of her, among whom she had to suffer, as able to find no one who would love her.

In the last case it is asked whether כּי־תירשׁ is meant of inheriting as an heiress (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targ. , Jerome, the Venet . , and Luther), or supplanting (Euchel, Gesenius, Hitzig), i. e. , an entering into the inheritance of the dead, or an entering into the place of a living mistress. Since ירשׁ, with the accus. of the person, Gen 15:3-4, signifies to be the heir of one, and only with the accus.

of peoples and lands signifies, “to take into possession (to seize) by supplanting,” the former is to be preferred; the lxx (Syr.) , ὅταν ἐκβάλῃ, appear to have read כּי־תגרשׁ. This גּרשׁ would certainly be, after Gen 21:10, a piece of the world turned upside down; but also the entering, as heiress, into the inheritance, makes the maid-servant the reverse of that which she was before, and brings with it the danger that the heiress, notwithstanding her want of culture and dignity, demean herself also as heiress of the rank.

Although the old Israelitish law knew only intestate succession to an inheritance, yet there also the case might arise, that where there were no natural or legal heirs, the bequest of a wife of rank passed over to her servants and nurses.

Pro 30:21-23 It is now not at all necessary to rack one’s brains over the grounds or the reasons of the arrangement of the following proverb ( vid . , Hitzig). There are, up to this point, two numerical proverbs which begin with שׁתּים, Pro 30:7, and שׁתּי, Pro 30:15; after the cipher 2 there then, Pro 30:18, followed the cipher 3, which is now here continued: 21 Under three things doth the earth tremble, And under four can it not stand: 22 Under a servant when he becomes king, And a profligate when he has bread enough; 23 Under an unloved woman when she is married, And a maid-servant when she becomes heiress to her mistress.

We cannot say here that the 4 falls into 3 + 1; but the four consists of four ones standing beside one another. ארץ is here without pausal change, although the Athnach here, as at Pro 30:24, where the modification of sound occurs, divides the verse into two; מארץ, 14b (cf. Psa 35:2), remains, on the other hand, correctly unchanged. The “earth” stands here, as frequently, instead of the inhabitants of the earth.

It trembles when one of the four persons named above comes and gains free space for acting; it feels itself oppressed as by an insufferable burden (an expression similar to Amo 7:10); - the arrangement of society is shattered; an oppressive closeness of the air, as it were, settles over all minds. The first case is already designated, Pro 19:10, as improper: under a slave, when he comes to reign ( quum rex fit ); for suppose that such an one has reached the place of government, not by the murder of the king and by the robbery of the crown, but, as is possible in an elective monarchy, by means of the dominant party of the people, he will, as a rule, seek to indemnify himself in his present highness for his former lowliness, and in the measure of his rule show himself unable to rise above his servile habits, and to pass out of the limited circle of his earlier state.

The second case is this: a נבל, one whose mind is perverted and whose conduct is profligate - in short, a low man ( vid . , Pro 17:17) - ישׂבּע־לחם (cf. Metheg - Setzung , §28), i. e. , has enough to eat (cf. to the expression Pro 28:19; Jer 44:17); for this undeserved living without care and without want makes him only so much the more arrogant, and troublesome, and dangerous.

The שׂנוּאה, in the second case, is not thought of as a spouse, and that, as in supposed polygamy, Gen 29:31; Deu 21:15-17, as fallen into disfavour, but who again comes to favour and honour (Dathe, Rosenmüller); for she can be שׂנואה without her own fault, and as such she is yet no גּרוּשׁה; and it is not to be perceived why the re-assumption of such an one should shatter social order. Rightly Hitzig, and, after his example, Zöckler: an unmarried lady, an old spinster, is meant, whom no one desired because she had nothing attractive, and was only repulsive (cf.

Grimm, under Sir. 7:26b). If such an one, as כּי תבעל says, at length, however, finds her husband and enters into the married relation, then she carries her head so much the higher; for she gives vent to ill-humour, strengthened by long restraint, against her subordinates; then she richly requites her earlier and happily married companions for their depreciation of her, among whom she had to suffer, as able to find no one who would love her.

In the last case it is asked whether כּי־תירשׁ is meant of inheriting as an heiress (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targ. , Jerome, the Venet . , and Luther), or supplanting (Euchel, Gesenius, Hitzig), i. e. , an entering into the inheritance of the dead, or an entering into the place of a living mistress. Since ירשׁ, with the accus. of the person, Gen 15:3-4, signifies to be the heir of one, and only with the accus.

of peoples and lands signifies, “to take into possession (to seize) by supplanting,” the former is to be preferred; the lxx (Syr.) , ὅταν ἐκβάλῃ, appear to have read כּי־תגרשׁ. This גּרשׁ would certainly be, after Gen 21:10, a piece of the world turned upside down; but also the entering, as heiress, into the inheritance, makes the maid-servant the reverse of that which she was before, and brings with it the danger that the heiress, notwithstanding her want of culture and dignity, demean herself also as heiress of the rank.

Although the old Israelitish law knew only intestate succession to an inheritance, yet there also the case might arise, that where there were no natural or legal heirs, the bequest of a wife of rank passed over to her servants and nurses.

Pro 30:24-28 Another proverb with the cipher 4, its first line terminating in ארץ: 24 Four are the little things of the earth, And yet they are quick of wit - wise: 25 The ants - a people not strong, And yet they prepare in summer their food; 26 Conies - a people not mighty, And yet set their dwelling on the rocks; 27 No king have the locusts, And yet they go forth in rank and file, all of them together; 28 The lizard thou canst catch with the hands, And yet it is in the king’s palaces. By the disjunctive accent, ארבּעה, in spite of the following word toned on the beginning, retains its ultima -toning, 18a; but here, by the conjunctive accent, the tone retrogrades to the penult .

, which does not elsewhere occur with this word. The connection קטנּי־ארץ is not superlat. (for it is impossible that the author could reckon the שׁפנים, conies, among the smallest of beasts), but, as in the expression נכבּדּי־ארץ, the honoured of the earth, Isa 23:8. In 24b, the lxx, Syr. , Jerome, and Luther see in מ the comparative: σοφώτερα τῶν σοφῶν (מחכמים), but in this connection of words it could only be partitive (wise, reckoning among the wise); the part.

Pual מחכּמים (Theodotion, the Venet . σεσοφισμένα) was in use after Psa 88:6, and signified, like בּשׁל מבשּׁל, Exo 12:9, boiled well; thus חכמים מחכמים, taught wit, wise, cunning, prudent (cf. Psa 64:7, a planned plan = a cunningly wrought out plan; Isa 28:16, and Vitringa thereto: grounded = firm, grounding), Ewald, §313c. The reckoning moves in the contrasts of littleness to power, and of greatness to prudence.

The unfolding of the ארבעה [four] begins with the הנּמלים [the ants] and שׁפנּים [conies], subject conceptions with apposit. joined; 26a, at least in the indetermination of the subject, cannot be a declaration. Regarding the fut. consec . as the expression, not of a causal, but of a contrasted connection, vid . , Ewald, §342, 1a. The ants are called עם, and they deserve this name, for they truly form communities with well-ordered economy; but, besides, the ancients took delight in speaking of the various classes of animals as peoples and states.

That which is said, 25b, as also Pro 6:8, is not to be understood of stores laid up for the winter. For the ants are torpid for the most part in winter; but certainly the summer is their time for labour, when the labourers gather together food, and feed in a truly motherly way the helpless. שׁפן, translated arbitrarily in the Venet . by ἐχῖνοι, in the lxx by χοιρογρύλλιοι, by the Syr.

and Targ. here and at Ps 104 by חגס, and by Jerome by lepusculus (cf. λαγίδιον), both of which names, here to be understood after a prevailing Jewish opinion, denote the Caninichen (Luther), Latin cuniculus (κόνικλος), is not the kaninchen [rabbit], nor the marmot, χοιρογρύλλιος (C. B. Michaelis, Ziegler, and others); this is called in Arab. yarbuw'; but שׁפן is the wabr, which in South Arab.

is called thufun, or rather thafan, viz. , the klippdachs ( hyrax syriacus ), like the marmot, which lives in societies and dwells in the clefts of the mountains, e. g. , at the Kedron, the Dead Sea, and at Sinai ( vid . , Knobel on Lev 11:5; cf. Brehm’s Thierleben , ii. p. 721ff. , the Illustrirte Zeitung , 1868, Nr. 1290). The klippdachs are a weak little people, and yet with their weakness they unite the wisdom that they establish themselves among the rocks.

The ants show their wisdom in the organization of labour, here in the arranging of inaccessible dwellings.

Pro 30:24-28 Another proverb with the cipher 4, its first line terminating in ארץ: 24 Four are the little things of the earth, And yet they are quick of wit - wise: 25 The ants - a people not strong, And yet they prepare in summer their food; 26 Conies - a people not mighty, And yet set their dwelling on the rocks; 27 No king have the locusts, And yet they go forth in rank and file, all of them together; 28 The lizard thou canst catch with the hands, And yet it is in the king’s palaces. By the disjunctive accent, ארבּעה, in spite of the following word toned on the beginning, retains its ultima -toning, 18a; but here, by the conjunctive accent, the tone retrogrades to the penult .

, which does not elsewhere occur with this word. The connection קטנּי־ארץ is not superlat. (for it is impossible that the author could reckon the שׁפנים, conies, among the smallest of beasts), but, as in the expression נכבּדּי־ארץ, the honoured of the earth, Isa 23:8. In 24b, the lxx, Syr. , Jerome, and Luther see in מ the comparative: σοφώτερα τῶν σοφῶν (מחכמים), but in this connection of words it could only be partitive (wise, reckoning among the wise); the part.

Pual מחכּמים (Theodotion, the Venet . σεσοφισμένα) was in use after Psa 88:6, and signified, like בּשׁל מבשּׁל, Exo 12:9, boiled well; thus חכמים מחכמים, taught wit, wise, cunning, prudent (cf. Psa 64:7, a planned plan = a cunningly wrought out plan; Isa 28:16, and Vitringa thereto: grounded = firm, grounding), Ewald, §313c. The reckoning moves in the contrasts of littleness to power, and of greatness to prudence.

The unfolding of the ארבעה [four] begins with the הנּמלים [the ants] and שׁפנּים [conies], subject conceptions with apposit. joined; 26a, at least in the indetermination of the subject, cannot be a declaration. Regarding the fut. consec . as the expression, not of a causal, but of a contrasted connection, vid . , Ewald, §342, 1a. The ants are called עם, and they deserve this name, for they truly form communities with well-ordered economy; but, besides, the ancients took delight in speaking of the various classes of animals as peoples and states.

That which is said, 25b, as also Pro 6:8, is not to be understood of stores laid up for the winter. For the ants are torpid for the most part in winter; but certainly the summer is their time for labour, when the labourers gather together food, and feed in a truly motherly way the helpless. שׁפן, translated arbitrarily in the Venet . by ἐχῖνοι, in the lxx by χοιρογρύλλιοι, by the Syr.

and Targ. here and at Ps 104 by חגס, and by Jerome by lepusculus (cf. λαγίδιον), both of which names, here to be understood after a prevailing Jewish opinion, denote the Caninichen (Luther), Latin cuniculus (κόνικλος), is not the kaninchen [rabbit], nor the marmot, χοιρογρύλλιος (C. B. Michaelis, Ziegler, and others); this is called in Arab. yarbuw'; but שׁפן is the wabr, which in South Arab.

is called thufun, or rather thafan, viz. , the klippdachs ( hyrax syriacus ), like the marmot, which lives in societies and dwells in the clefts of the mountains, e. g. , at the Kedron, the Dead Sea, and at Sinai ( vid . , Knobel on Lev 11:5; cf. Brehm’s Thierleben , ii. p. 721ff. , the Illustrirte Zeitung , 1868, Nr. 1290). The klippdachs are a weak little people, and yet with their weakness they unite the wisdom that they establish themselves among the rocks.

The ants show their wisdom in the organization of labour, here in the arranging of inaccessible dwellings.

Pro 30:24-28 Another proverb with the cipher 4, its first line terminating in ארץ: 24 Four are the little things of the earth, And yet they are quick of wit - wise: 25 The ants - a people not strong, And yet they prepare in summer their food; 26 Conies - a people not mighty, And yet set their dwelling on the rocks; 27 No king have the locusts, And yet they go forth in rank and file, all of them together; 28 The lizard thou canst catch with the hands, And yet it is in the king’s palaces. By the disjunctive accent, ארבּעה, in spite of the following word toned on the beginning, retains its ultima -toning, 18a; but here, by the conjunctive accent, the tone retrogrades to the penult .

, which does not elsewhere occur with this word. The connection קטנּי־ארץ is not superlat. (for it is impossible that the author could reckon the שׁפנים, conies, among the smallest of beasts), but, as in the expression נכבּדּי־ארץ, the honoured of the earth, Isa 23:8. In 24b, the lxx, Syr. , Jerome, and Luther see in מ the comparative: σοφώτερα τῶν σοφῶν (מחכמים), but in this connection of words it could only be partitive (wise, reckoning among the wise); the part.

Pual מחכּמים (Theodotion, the Venet . σεσοφισμένα) was in use after Psa 88:6, and signified, like בּשׁל מבשּׁל, Exo 12:9, boiled well; thus חכמים מחכמים, taught wit, wise, cunning, prudent (cf. Psa 64:7, a planned plan = a cunningly wrought out plan; Isa 28:16, and Vitringa thereto: grounded = firm, grounding), Ewald, §313c. The reckoning moves in the contrasts of littleness to power, and of greatness to prudence.

The unfolding of the ארבעה [four] begins with the הנּמלים [the ants] and שׁפנּים [conies], subject conceptions with apposit. joined; 26a, at least in the indetermination of the subject, cannot be a declaration. Regarding the fut. consec . as the expression, not of a causal, but of a contrasted connection, vid . , Ewald, §342, 1a. The ants are called עם, and they deserve this name, for they truly form communities with well-ordered economy; but, besides, the ancients took delight in speaking of the various classes of animals as peoples and states.

That which is said, 25b, as also Pro 6:8, is not to be understood of stores laid up for the winter. For the ants are torpid for the most part in winter; but certainly the summer is their time for labour, when the labourers gather together food, and feed in a truly motherly way the helpless. שׁפן, translated arbitrarily in the Venet . by ἐχῖνοι, in the lxx by χοιρογρύλλιοι, by the Syr.

and Targ. here and at Ps 104 by חגס, and by Jerome by lepusculus (cf. λαγίδιον), both of which names, here to be understood after a prevailing Jewish opinion, denote the Caninichen (Luther), Latin cuniculus (κόνικλος), is not the kaninchen [rabbit], nor the marmot, χοιρογρύλλιος (C. B. Michaelis, Ziegler, and others); this is called in Arab. yarbuw'; but שׁפן is the wabr, which in South Arab.

is called thufun, or rather thafan, viz. , the klippdachs ( hyrax syriacus ), like the marmot, which lives in societies and dwells in the clefts of the mountains, e. g. , at the Kedron, the Dead Sea, and at Sinai ( vid . , Knobel on Lev 11:5; cf. Brehm’s Thierleben , ii. p. 721ff. , the Illustrirte Zeitung , 1868, Nr. 1290). The klippdachs are a weak little people, and yet with their weakness they unite the wisdom that they establish themselves among the rocks.

The ants show their wisdom in the organization of labour, here in the arranging of inaccessible dwellings.

Pro 30:24-28 Another proverb with the cipher 4, its first line terminating in ארץ: 24 Four are the little things of the earth, And yet they are quick of wit - wise: 25 The ants - a people not strong, And yet they prepare in summer their food; 26 Conies - a people not mighty, And yet set their dwelling on the rocks; 27 No king have the locusts, And yet they go forth in rank and file, all of them together; 28 The lizard thou canst catch with the hands, And yet it is in the king’s palaces. By the disjunctive accent, ארבּעה, in spite of the following word toned on the beginning, retains its ultima -toning, 18a; but here, by the conjunctive accent, the tone retrogrades to the penult .

, which does not elsewhere occur with this word. The connection קטנּי־ארץ is not superlat. (for it is impossible that the author could reckon the שׁפנים, conies, among the smallest of beasts), but, as in the expression נכבּדּי־ארץ, the honoured of the earth, Isa 23:8. In 24b, the lxx, Syr. , Jerome, and Luther see in מ the comparative: σοφώτερα τῶν σοφῶν (מחכמים), but in this connection of words it could only be partitive (wise, reckoning among the wise); the part.

Pual מחכּמים (Theodotion, the Venet . σεσοφισμένα) was in use after Psa 88:6, and signified, like בּשׁל מבשּׁל, Exo 12:9, boiled well; thus חכמים מחכמים, taught wit, wise, cunning, prudent (cf. Psa 64:7, a planned plan = a cunningly wrought out plan; Isa 28:16, and Vitringa thereto: grounded = firm, grounding), Ewald, §313c. The reckoning moves in the contrasts of littleness to power, and of greatness to prudence.

The unfolding of the ארבעה [four] begins with the הנּמלים [the ants] and שׁפנּים [conies], subject conceptions with apposit. joined; 26a, at least in the indetermination of the subject, cannot be a declaration. Regarding the fut. consec . as the expression, not of a causal, but of a contrasted connection, vid . , Ewald, §342, 1a. The ants are called עם, and they deserve this name, for they truly form communities with well-ordered economy; but, besides, the ancients took delight in speaking of the various classes of animals as peoples and states.

That which is said, 25b, as also Pro 6:8, is not to be understood of stores laid up for the winter. For the ants are torpid for the most part in winter; but certainly the summer is their time for labour, when the labourers gather together food, and feed in a truly motherly way the helpless. שׁפן, translated arbitrarily in the Venet . by ἐχῖνοι, in the lxx by χοιρογρύλλιοι, by the Syr.

and Targ. here and at Ps 104 by חגס, and by Jerome by lepusculus (cf. λαγίδιον), both of which names, here to be understood after a prevailing Jewish opinion, denote the Caninichen (Luther), Latin cuniculus (κόνικλος), is not the kaninchen [rabbit], nor the marmot, χοιρογρύλλιος (C. B. Michaelis, Ziegler, and others); this is called in Arab. yarbuw'; but שׁפן is the wabr, which in South Arab.

is called thufun, or rather thafan, viz. , the klippdachs ( hyrax syriacus ), like the marmot, which lives in societies and dwells in the clefts of the mountains, e. g. , at the Kedron, the Dead Sea, and at Sinai ( vid . , Knobel on Lev 11:5; cf. Brehm’s Thierleben , ii. p. 721ff. , the Illustrirte Zeitung , 1868, Nr. 1290). The klippdachs are a weak little people, and yet with their weakness they unite the wisdom that they establish themselves among the rocks.

The ants show their wisdom in the organization of labour, here in the arranging of inaccessible dwellings.

Pro 30:24-28 Another proverb with the cipher 4, its first line terminating in ארץ: 24 Four are the little things of the earth, And yet they are quick of wit - wise: 25 The ants - a people not strong, And yet they prepare in summer their food; 26 Conies - a people not mighty, And yet set their dwelling on the rocks; 27 No king have the locusts, And yet they go forth in rank and file, all of them together; 28 The lizard thou canst catch with the hands, And yet it is in the king’s palaces. By the disjunctive accent, ארבּעה, in spite of the following word toned on the beginning, retains its ultima -toning, 18a; but here, by the conjunctive accent, the tone retrogrades to the penult .

, which does not elsewhere occur with this word. The connection קטנּי־ארץ is not superlat. (for it is impossible that the author could reckon the שׁפנים, conies, among the smallest of beasts), but, as in the expression נכבּדּי־ארץ, the honoured of the earth, Isa 23:8. In 24b, the lxx, Syr. , Jerome, and Luther see in מ the comparative: σοφώτερα τῶν σοφῶν (מחכמים), but in this connection of words it could only be partitive (wise, reckoning among the wise); the part.

Pual מחכּמים (Theodotion, the Venet . σεσοφισμένα) was in use after Psa 88:6, and signified, like בּשׁל מבשּׁל, Exo 12:9, boiled well; thus חכמים מחכמים, taught wit, wise, cunning, prudent (cf. Psa 64:7, a planned plan = a cunningly wrought out plan; Isa 28:16, and Vitringa thereto: grounded = firm, grounding), Ewald, §313c. The reckoning moves in the contrasts of littleness to power, and of greatness to prudence.

The unfolding of the ארבעה [four] begins with the הנּמלים [the ants] and שׁפנּים [conies], subject conceptions with apposit. joined; 26a, at least in the indetermination of the subject, cannot be a declaration. Regarding the fut. consec . as the expression, not of a causal, but of a contrasted connection, vid . , Ewald, §342, 1a. The ants are called עם, and they deserve this name, for they truly form communities with well-ordered economy; but, besides, the ancients took delight in speaking of the various classes of animals as peoples and states.

That which is said, 25b, as also Pro 6:8, is not to be understood of stores laid up for the winter. For the ants are torpid for the most part in winter; but certainly the summer is their time for labour, when the labourers gather together food, and feed in a truly motherly way the helpless. שׁפן, translated arbitrarily in the Venet . by ἐχῖνοι, in the lxx by χοιρογρύλλιοι, by the Syr.

and Targ. here and at Ps 104 by חגס, and by Jerome by lepusculus (cf. λαγίδιον), both of which names, here to be understood after a prevailing Jewish opinion, denote the Caninichen (Luther), Latin cuniculus (κόνικλος), is not the kaninchen [rabbit], nor the marmot, χοιρογρύλλιος (C. B. Michaelis, Ziegler, and others); this is called in Arab. yarbuw'; but שׁפן is the wabr, which in South Arab.

is called thufun, or rather thafan, viz. , the klippdachs ( hyrax syriacus ), like the marmot, which lives in societies and dwells in the clefts of the mountains, e. g. , at the Kedron, the Dead Sea, and at Sinai ( vid . , Knobel on Lev 11:5; cf. Brehm’s Thierleben , ii. p. 721ff. , the Illustrirte Zeitung , 1868, Nr. 1290). The klippdachs are a weak little people, and yet with their weakness they unite the wisdom that they establish themselves among the rocks.

The ants show their wisdom in the organization of labour, here in the arranging of inaccessible dwellings.

Pro 30:29-31 Another numerical proverb with the cipher 4 = 3 + 1: 29 Three things are of stately walk, And four of stately going: 30 The lion, the hero among beasts, And that turneth back before nothing; 31 The swift-loined, also the goat; And a king with whom is the calling out of the host. Regarding היטיב with inf . following (the segolated n. actionis צעד is of equal force with an inf .)

, vid . , under Pro 15:2. The relation of the members of the sentence in 30a is like that in 25a and 26a: subj. and apposit. , which there, as here, is continued in a verbal clause which appears to us as relative. It deserves to be here remarked that לישׁ, as the name for a lion, occurs only here and at Job 4:11, and in the description of the Sinai wilderness, Isa 30:6; in Arab.

it is layth, Aram. לית, and belongs to the Arameo-Arab. dialect of this language; the lxx and Syr. translate it “the young lion;” the Venet . excellently, by the epic λῖς. בּבּהמה has the article only to denote the genus, viz. , of the beasts, and particularly the four-footed beasts. What is said in 30b (cf. with the expression, Job 39:22) is described in Isa 30:4.

The two other beasts which distinguish themselves by their stately going are in 31a only briefly named. But we are not in the condition of the readers of this Book of Proverbs, who needed only to hear the designation זרזיר מתנים at once to know what beast was meant. Certainly זרזיר, as the name for a beast, is not altogether unknown in the post-bibl. Heb. “In the days of Rabbi Chija (the great teacher who came from Babylon to the Academy of Sepphoris), as is narrated in Bereschith rabba , sect.

65, a zarzir flew to the land of Israel, and it was brought to him with the question whether it were eatable. Go, said he, place it on the roof! Then came an Egyptian raven and lighted down beside it. See, said Chija, it is unclean, for it belongs to the genus of the ravens, which is unclean (Lev 11:15). From this circumstance there arose the proverb: The raven goes to the zarzir because it belongs to his own tribe.

” Also the Jer. Rosch ha-schane , Halacha 3: “It is the manner of the world that one seeks to assist his zarzir, and another his zarzir, to obtain the victory;” and Midrash Echa v. 1, according to which it is the custom of the world, that one who has a large and a little zarzir in his house, is wont to treat the little one sparingly, so that in the case of the large one being killed, he might not need to buy another.

According to this, the zarzir is a pugnacious animal, which also the proverb Bereschith rabba , c. 75, confirms: two zarzir do not sleep on one board; and one makes use of his for contests like cock-fights. According to this, the זרזיר is a bird, and that of the species of the raven; after Rashi, the étourneau , the starling, which is confirmed by the Arab. zurzur (vulgar Arab.

zarzur), the common name of starlings (cf. Syr. zarzizo, under zrz of Castelli). But for the passage before us, we cannot regard this as important, for why is the starling fully named זרזיר מתנים? To this question Kimchi has already remarked that he knows no answer for it. Only, perhaps, the grave magpie ( corvus pica ), strutting with upraised tail, might be called succinctus lumbos , if מתנים can at all be used here of a bird.

At the earliest, this might possibly be used of a cock, which the later Heb. named directly גּבר, because of its manly demeanour; most old translators so understand it. The lxx translates, omitting the loins, by ἀλέκτωρ ἐμπεριπατῶν θηλείαις εὔψυχος, according to which the Syr. and Targ. : like the cock which struts about proudly among the hens; Aquila and Theodotion: ἀλέκτωρ (ἀλεκτρυὼν) νώτου; The Quinta: ἀλέκτωρ ὀσφύος; Jezome: gallus succinctus lumbos .

Ṣarṣar (not ṣirṣir, as Hitzig vocalizes) is in Arab. a name for a cock, from ṣarṣara, to crow, an onomatopoeia. But the Heb. זרזיר, as the name of a bird, signifies, as the Talmud proves on the ground of that history, not a cock, but a bird of the raven order, whether a starling, a crow, or a magpie. And if this name of a corvinus is formed from the onomatopoeia זרזר, the weaker form of that (Arab.)

ṣarṣar, then מתנים, which, for זרזיר, requires the verbal root זרז, to girdle, is not wholly appropriate; and how strangely would the three animals be mingled together, if between לישׁ and תישׁ, the two four-footed animals, a bird were placed! If, as is to be expected, the “ Lendenumgürtete ” [the one girded about the loins = זרזיר מתנים] be a four-footed animal, then it lies near, with C.

B. Michaelis and Ziegler, after Ludolf's example, to think of the zebra, the South African wild ass. But this animal lay beyond the sphere of the author’s observation, and perhaps also of his knowledge, and at the same time of that of the Israelitish readers of this Book of Proverbs; and the dark-brown cross stripes on a white ground, by which the zebra is distinguished, extend not merely to its limbs, but over the whole body, and particularly over the front of the body.

It would be more tenable to think of the leopard, with its black round spots, or the tiger, with dark stripes; but the name זרזיר מתנים scarcely refers to the colour of the hair, since one has to understand it after the Aram. זרז חרציהּ = שׁנּס מתניו, 1Ki 18:46, or אחר חלציו, Job 38:3, and thus of an activity, i. e. , strength and swiftness, depending on the condition of the loins.

Those who, with Kimchi, think that the נמר [leopard] is thus named, ground their view, not on this, that it has rings or stripes round its legs, but on this, that it דק מתנים וחזק במתניו. But this beast has certainly its definite name; but a fundamental supposition entering into every attempt at an explanation is this, that זרזיר מתנים, as well as לישׁ and תישׁ, is the proper name of a beast, not a descriptive attribute.

Therefore the opinion of Rosse, which Bochart has skilfully established in the Hierozoicon , does not recommend itself, for he only suggests, for choice, to understand the name, “the girded about the loins,” in the proper sense of straps and clasps around and on the loins (thus e. g. , Gesenius, Fleischer, Hitzig), or of strength, in the sense of the Arab. habuwk, the firmly-bound = compact, or ṣamm alṣlab, the girded loin (thus e.

g. , Muntinghe). Schultens connects together both references: Utrumque jungas licet . That the by-name fits the horse, particularly the war-horse, is undeniable; one would have to refer it, with Mühlau, to the slender structure, the thin flanks, which are reckoned among the requisites of a beautiful horse. But if succinctus lumbos were a by-name of a horse, why did not the author at once say סוס זרזיר מתנים?

We shall give the preference to the opinion, according to which the expression, “girt about the loins” = “with strong loins,” or “with slender limbs,” is not the by-name, but the proper name of the animal. This may be said of the hunting-hound, lévrier (according to which the Venet . , incorrectly translating מתנים: λαγῳοκύων ψοιῶν), which Kimchi ranks in the first place.

Luther, by his translation, Ein Wind = Windhund [greyhound], of good limbs, has given the right direction to this opinion. Melanchton, Lavater, Mercier, Geier, and others, follow him; and, among the moderns, so also do Ewald and Böttcher (also Bertheau and Stuart), which latter supposes that before זרזיר מתנים there originally stood כבל, which afterwards disappeared.

But why should the greyhound not at once be called זרזיר מתנים? We call the smaller variety of this dog the Windspiel [greyhound]; and by this name we think on a hound, without saying Windspielhund . The name זרזיר מתנים (Symmachus excellently: περιεσφιγμένος, not περιεσφραγισμένος, τὴν ὀσφύν, i. e. , strongly bound in the limbs) is fitted at once to suggest to us this almost restless, slender animal, with its high, thin, nimble limbs.

The verbal stem זרר (Arab.) zarr, signifies to press together, to knit together; the reduplicative form זרזר, to bind firmly together, whence זרזיר, firmly bound together, referred to the limbs as designating a natural property (Ewald, §158a): of straight and easily-moveable legs. The hunting-hound ( salâki or salûki , i. e. , coming from Seleucia) is celebrated by the Arab.

poets as much as the hunting-horse. The name כּלב, though not superfluous, the author ought certainly to have avoided, because it does not sound well in the Heb. collocation of words. There now follows תישׁ, a goat, and that not the ram (Jerome, Luther), which is called איל, but the he-goat, which bears this name, as Schultens has already recognised, from its pushing, as it is also called עתּוּד, as paratus ad pugnam ; the two names appear to be only provincially different; שׂעיר, on the contrary, is the old he-goat, as shaggy; and צפיר also perhaps denotes it, as Schultens supposes, with twisted, i.

e. , curled hair ( tortipilus ). In Arab. tays denotes the he-goat as well as the roebuck and the gazelle, and that at full growth. The lxx (the Syr. and Targ. , which is to be emended after the Syr.) is certainly right, for it understands the leading goat: καὶ τράγος ἡγούμενος αἰπολίου. The text, however, has not ותישׁ, but או תישׁ, ἢ τράγος (Aquila, Theodotion, Quinta, and the Venet .)

Böttcher is astonished that Hitzig did not take hold of this או, and conjectures תּאו־תישׁ, which should mean a “gazelle-goat” (Mühlau: dorcas mas ). But it is too bold to introduce here תּאו (תּוא), which is only twice named in the O. T. , and תאו־תישׁ for תּאו זכר is not the Heb. style; and besides, the setting aside of או has a harsh asyndeton for its consequence, which bears evidence to the appearance that תאו and תישׁ are two different animals.

And is the או then so objectionable? More wonderful still must Sol 2:9 appear to us. If the author enumerated the four of stately going on his fingers, he would certainly have said ותישׁ. By או he communicates to the hearer, setting before him another figure, how there in the Song Sulamith’s fancy passed from one object to another. To the lion, the king of the animal world, the king אלקוּם עמּו corresponds.

This אלקום Hitzig regards as mutilated from אלהים (which was both written and pronounced as אלקום by the Jews, so as to conceal the true sound of the name of God) - which is untenable, for this reason, that this religious conclusion [“A king with whom God is”] accords badly with the secular character of this proverb. Geiger ( Urschrift , p. 62ff.) translates: “and King Alkimos corresponding to it (the lustful and daring goat)” - he makes the harmless proverb into a ludibrium from the time of the Maccabeo-Syrian war.

The lxx, which the Syr. and Targ. follow, translates καὶ βασιλεὺς δημηγορῶν ἐν ἔθνει; it appears to have changed אלקום עמו into קם אל עמו (standing with his people and haranguing them), like the Quinta: καὶ βας. ἀναστὰς (ὃς ἀνέστη) ἐν τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ. Ziegler and Böttcher also, reading עמּו and אל without any transposition, get ומלך אל־קוּם עמּו t, which the former translates: “a king with the presence of his people;” the latter, “a king with the setting up of his people,” - not accordant with the thought, for the king should be brought forward as מיטיב לכת.

For the same reason, Kimchi’s explanation is not suitable: a king with whom is no resistance, i. e. , against whom no one can rank himself (thus e. g. , also Immanuel); or more specially, but not better: who has no successor of his race (according to which the Venet . ἀδιάδεκτος ξὺν ἑαυτῷ). Rather this explanation commends itself: a king with whom ( i. e. , in war with whom) is no resistance.

Thus Jerome and Luther: against whom no one dare place himself; thus Rashi, Aben Ezra, Ralbag (שׁאין תקומה עמו), Ahron b. Josef (קום = ἀντίστασις), Arama, and others; thus also Schultens, Fleischer ( adversus quem nemo consistere audet ), Ewald, Bertheau, Elster, Stuart, and others. But this connection of אל with the infin. is not Heb. ; and if the Chokma , xii.

28, has coined the expression אל־מות for the idea of “immortality,” then certainly it does not express the idea of resistlessness by so bold a quasi compositum . But this boldness is also there mitigated, for יהי is supplied after אל, which is not here practicable with קוּם, which is not a subst. like מות. Pocock in the Spec. historiae Arabum , and Castellus in the Lex.

Heptaglotton (not Castellio, as the word is printed by Zöckler), have recognised in אלקום the Arab. âlkawm; Schultens gives the lxx the honour of this recognition, for he regards their translation as a paraphrase of ὁ δῆμος μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ. Bertheau thinks that it ought to be in Arab. kawmuhu, but אלקום עמו = âlkawhu ma'ahu is perfectly correct, âlkawhu is the summons or the Heerbann = arriere-ban ; in North Africa they speak in their language in the same sense of the Gums .

This explanation of אלקום, from the Arab. Dachselt ( rex cum satellitio suo ), Diedrichs in his Arab. -Syr. Spicilegium (1777), Umbreit, Gesenius, and Vaihinger, have recognised, and Mühlau has anew confirmed it at length. Hitzig, on the contrary, remarks that if Agur wrote on Arab. territory, we could be contented with the Arab. appellative, but not with the article, which in words like אלגּבישׁ and אלמגּים is no longer of force as an art.

, but is an integ. component part of the word. We think that it is with אלקום exactly as with other words descriptive of lordship, and the many similar that have passed over into the Spanish language; the word is taken over along with the article, without requiring the Heb. listener to take the art. as such, although he certainly felt it better than we do, when we say “ das Alkoran ” [the Alcoran], “ das Alcohol ,” and the like.

Blau also, in his Gesch. der Arab. Substantiv-Determ . , regards it as certain that Agur borrowed this אלקום from the idiom of the Arabians, among whom he lived, and heard it constantly spoken. By this explanation we first reach a correspondence between what is announced in lines first and second and line sixth. A king as such is certainly not “comely in going;” he can sit upon his throne, and especially as δημηγορῶν will he sit (Act 12:21) and not stand.

But the majesty of his going shows itself when he marches at the head of those who have risen up at his summons to war. Then he is for the army what the תישׁ he-goat is for the flock. The או, preferred to ו, draws close together the רישׁ e and the king (cf. e. g. , Isa 14:9).

Pro 30:29-31 Another numerical proverb with the cipher 4 = 3 + 1: 29 Three things are of stately walk, And four of stately going: 30 The lion, the hero among beasts, And that turneth back before nothing; 31 The swift-loined, also the goat; And a king with whom is the calling out of the host. Regarding היטיב with inf . following (the segolated n. actionis צעד is of equal force with an inf .)

, vid . , under Pro 15:2. The relation of the members of the sentence in 30a is like that in 25a and 26a: subj. and apposit. , which there, as here, is continued in a verbal clause which appears to us as relative. It deserves to be here remarked that לישׁ, as the name for a lion, occurs only here and at Job 4:11, and in the description of the Sinai wilderness, Isa 30:6; in Arab.

it is layth, Aram. לית, and belongs to the Arameo-Arab. dialect of this language; the lxx and Syr. translate it “the young lion;” the Venet . excellently, by the epic λῖς. בּבּהמה has the article only to denote the genus, viz. , of the beasts, and particularly the four-footed beasts. What is said in 30b (cf. with the expression, Job 39:22) is described in Isa 30:4.

The two other beasts which distinguish themselves by their stately going are in 31a only briefly named. But we are not in the condition of the readers of this Book of Proverbs, who needed only to hear the designation זרזיר מתנים at once to know what beast was meant. Certainly זרזיר, as the name for a beast, is not altogether unknown in the post-bibl. Heb. “In the days of Rabbi Chija (the great teacher who came from Babylon to the Academy of Sepphoris), as is narrated in Bereschith rabba , sect.

65, a zarzir flew to the land of Israel, and it was brought to him with the question whether it were eatable. Go, said he, place it on the roof! Then came an Egyptian raven and lighted down beside it. See, said Chija, it is unclean, for it belongs to the genus of the ravens, which is unclean (Lev 11:15). From this circumstance there arose the proverb: The raven goes to the zarzir because it belongs to his own tribe.

” Also the Jer. Rosch ha-schane , Halacha 3: “It is the manner of the world that one seeks to assist his zarzir, and another his zarzir, to obtain the victory;” and Midrash Echa v. 1, according to which it is the custom of the world, that one who has a large and a little zarzir in his house, is wont to treat the little one sparingly, so that in the case of the large one being killed, he might not need to buy another.

According to this, the zarzir is a pugnacious animal, which also the proverb Bereschith rabba , c. 75, confirms: two zarzir do not sleep on one board; and one makes use of his for contests like cock-fights. According to this, the זרזיר is a bird, and that of the species of the raven; after Rashi, the étourneau , the starling, which is confirmed by the Arab. zurzur (vulgar Arab.

zarzur), the common name of starlings (cf. Syr. zarzizo, under zrz of Castelli). But for the passage before us, we cannot regard this as important, for why is the starling fully named זרזיר מתנים? To this question Kimchi has already remarked that he knows no answer for it. Only, perhaps, the grave magpie ( corvus pica ), strutting with upraised tail, might be called succinctus lumbos , if מתנים can at all be used here of a bird.

At the earliest, this might possibly be used of a cock, which the later Heb. named directly גּבר, because of its manly demeanour; most old translators so understand it. The lxx translates, omitting the loins, by ἀλέκτωρ ἐμπεριπατῶν θηλείαις εὔψυχος, according to which the Syr. and Targ. : like the cock which struts about proudly among the hens; Aquila and Theodotion: ἀλέκτωρ (ἀλεκτρυὼν) νώτου; The Quinta: ἀλέκτωρ ὀσφύος; Jezome: gallus succinctus lumbos .

Ṣarṣar (not ṣirṣir, as Hitzig vocalizes) is in Arab. a name for a cock, from ṣarṣara, to crow, an onomatopoeia. But the Heb. זרזיר, as the name of a bird, signifies, as the Talmud proves on the ground of that history, not a cock, but a bird of the raven order, whether a starling, a crow, or a magpie. And if this name of a corvinus is formed from the onomatopoeia זרזר, the weaker form of that (Arab.)

ṣarṣar, then מתנים, which, for זרזיר, requires the verbal root זרז, to girdle, is not wholly appropriate; and how strangely would the three animals be mingled together, if between לישׁ and תישׁ, the two four-footed animals, a bird were placed! If, as is to be expected, the “ Lendenumgürtete ” [the one girded about the loins = זרזיר מתנים] be a four-footed animal, then it lies near, with C.

B. Michaelis and Ziegler, after Ludolf's example, to think of the zebra, the South African wild ass. But this animal lay beyond the sphere of the author’s observation, and perhaps also of his knowledge, and at the same time of that of the Israelitish readers of this Book of Proverbs; and the dark-brown cross stripes on a white ground, by which the zebra is distinguished, extend not merely to its limbs, but over the whole body, and particularly over the front of the body.

It would be more tenable to think of the leopard, with its black round spots, or the tiger, with dark stripes; but the name זרזיר מתנים scarcely refers to the colour of the hair, since one has to understand it after the Aram. זרז חרציהּ = שׁנּס מתניו, 1Ki 18:46, or אחר חלציו, Job 38:3, and thus of an activity, i. e. , strength and swiftness, depending on the condition of the loins.

Those who, with Kimchi, think that the נמר [leopard] is thus named, ground their view, not on this, that it has rings or stripes round its legs, but on this, that it דק מתנים וחזק במתניו. But this beast has certainly its definite name; but a fundamental supposition entering into every attempt at an explanation is this, that זרזיר מתנים, as well as לישׁ and תישׁ, is the proper name of a beast, not a descriptive attribute.

Therefore the opinion of Rosse, which Bochart has skilfully established in the Hierozoicon , does not recommend itself, for he only suggests, for choice, to understand the name, “the girded about the loins,” in the proper sense of straps and clasps around and on the loins (thus e. g. , Gesenius, Fleischer, Hitzig), or of strength, in the sense of the Arab. habuwk, the firmly-bound = compact, or ṣamm alṣlab, the girded loin (thus e.

g. , Muntinghe). Schultens connects together both references: Utrumque jungas licet . That the by-name fits the horse, particularly the war-horse, is undeniable; one would have to refer it, with Mühlau, to the slender structure, the thin flanks, which are reckoned among the requisites of a beautiful horse. But if succinctus lumbos were a by-name of a horse, why did not the author at once say סוס זרזיר מתנים?

We shall give the preference to the opinion, according to which the expression, “girt about the loins” = “with strong loins,” or “with slender limbs,” is not the by-name, but the proper name of the animal. This may be said of the hunting-hound, lévrier (according to which the Venet . , incorrectly translating מתנים: λαγῳοκύων ψοιῶν), which Kimchi ranks in the first place.

Luther, by his translation, Ein Wind = Windhund [greyhound], of good limbs, has given the right direction to this opinion. Melanchton, Lavater, Mercier, Geier, and others, follow him; and, among the moderns, so also do Ewald and Böttcher (also Bertheau and Stuart), which latter supposes that before זרזיר מתנים there originally stood כבל, which afterwards disappeared.

But why should the greyhound not at once be called זרזיר מתנים? We call the smaller variety of this dog the Windspiel [greyhound]; and by this name we think on a hound, without saying Windspielhund . The name זרזיר מתנים (Symmachus excellently: περιεσφιγμένος, not περιεσφραγισμένος, τὴν ὀσφύν, i. e. , strongly bound in the limbs) is fitted at once to suggest to us this almost restless, slender animal, with its high, thin, nimble limbs.

The verbal stem זרר (Arab.) zarr, signifies to press together, to knit together; the reduplicative form זרזר, to bind firmly together, whence זרזיר, firmly bound together, referred to the limbs as designating a natural property (Ewald, §158a): of straight and easily-moveable legs. The hunting-hound ( salâki or salûki , i. e. , coming from Seleucia) is celebrated by the Arab.

poets as much as the hunting-horse. The name כּלב, though not superfluous, the author ought certainly to have avoided, because it does not sound well in the Heb. collocation of words. There now follows תישׁ, a goat, and that not the ram (Jerome, Luther), which is called איל, but the he-goat, which bears this name, as Schultens has already recognised, from its pushing, as it is also called עתּוּד, as paratus ad pugnam ; the two names appear to be only provincially different; שׂעיר, on the contrary, is the old he-goat, as shaggy; and צפיר also perhaps denotes it, as Schultens supposes, with twisted, i.

e. , curled hair ( tortipilus ). In Arab. tays denotes the he-goat as well as the roebuck and the gazelle, and that at full growth. The lxx (the Syr. and Targ. , which is to be emended after the Syr.) is certainly right, for it understands the leading goat: καὶ τράγος ἡγούμενος αἰπολίου. The text, however, has not ותישׁ, but או תישׁ, ἢ τράγος (Aquila, Theodotion, Quinta, and the Venet .)

Böttcher is astonished that Hitzig did not take hold of this או, and conjectures תּאו־תישׁ, which should mean a “gazelle-goat” (Mühlau: dorcas mas ). But it is too bold to introduce here תּאו (תּוא), which is only twice named in the O. T. , and תאו־תישׁ for תּאו זכר is not the Heb. style; and besides, the setting aside of או has a harsh asyndeton for its consequence, which bears evidence to the appearance that תאו and תישׁ are two different animals.

And is the או then so objectionable? More wonderful still must Sol 2:9 appear to us. If the author enumerated the four of stately going on his fingers, he would certainly have said ותישׁ. By או he communicates to the hearer, setting before him another figure, how there in the Song Sulamith’s fancy passed from one object to another. To the lion, the king of the animal world, the king אלקוּם עמּו corresponds.

This אלקום Hitzig regards as mutilated from אלהים (which was both written and pronounced as אלקום by the Jews, so as to conceal the true sound of the name of God) - which is untenable, for this reason, that this religious conclusion [“A king with whom God is”] accords badly with the secular character of this proverb. Geiger ( Urschrift , p. 62ff.) translates: “and King Alkimos corresponding to it (the lustful and daring goat)” - he makes the harmless proverb into a ludibrium from the time of the Maccabeo-Syrian war.

The lxx, which the Syr. and Targ. follow, translates καὶ βασιλεὺς δημηγορῶν ἐν ἔθνει; it appears to have changed אלקום עמו into קם אל עמו (standing with his people and haranguing them), like the Quinta: καὶ βας. ἀναστὰς (ὃς ἀνέστη) ἐν τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ. Ziegler and Böttcher also, reading עמּו and אל without any transposition, get ומלך אל־קוּם עמּו t, which the former translates: “a king with the presence of his people;” the latter, “a king with the setting up of his people,” - not accordant with the thought, for the king should be brought forward as מיטיב לכת.

For the same reason, Kimchi’s explanation is not suitable: a king with whom is no resistance, i. e. , against whom no one can rank himself (thus e. g. , also Immanuel); or more specially, but not better: who has no successor of his race (according to which the Venet . ἀδιάδεκτος ξὺν ἑαυτῷ). Rather this explanation commends itself: a king with whom ( i. e. , in war with whom) is no resistance.

Thus Jerome and Luther: against whom no one dare place himself; thus Rashi, Aben Ezra, Ralbag (שׁאין תקומה עמו), Ahron b. Josef (קום = ἀντίστασις), Arama, and others; thus also Schultens, Fleischer ( adversus quem nemo consistere audet ), Ewald, Bertheau, Elster, Stuart, and others. But this connection of אל with the infin. is not Heb. ; and if the Chokma , xii.

28, has coined the expression אל־מות for the idea of “immortality,” then certainly it does not express the idea of resistlessness by so bold a quasi compositum . But this boldness is also there mitigated, for יהי is supplied after אל, which is not here practicable with קוּם, which is not a subst. like מות. Pocock in the Spec. historiae Arabum , and Castellus in the Lex.

Heptaglotton (not Castellio, as the word is printed by Zöckler), have recognised in אלקום the Arab. âlkawm; Schultens gives the lxx the honour of this recognition, for he regards their translation as a paraphrase of ὁ δῆμος μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ. Bertheau thinks that it ought to be in Arab. kawmuhu, but אלקום עמו = âlkawhu ma'ahu is perfectly correct, âlkawhu is the summons or the Heerbann = arriere-ban ; in North Africa they speak in their language in the same sense of the Gums .

This explanation of אלקום, from the Arab. Dachselt ( rex cum satellitio suo ), Diedrichs in his Arab. -Syr. Spicilegium (1777), Umbreit, Gesenius, and Vaihinger, have recognised, and Mühlau has anew confirmed it at length. Hitzig, on the contrary, remarks that if Agur wrote on Arab. territory, we could be contented with the Arab. appellative, but not with the article, which in words like אלגּבישׁ and אלמגּים is no longer of force as an art.

, but is an integ. component part of the word. We think that it is with אלקום exactly as with other words descriptive of lordship, and the many similar that have passed over into the Spanish language; the word is taken over along with the article, without requiring the Heb. listener to take the art. as such, although he certainly felt it better than we do, when we say “ das Alkoran ” [the Alcoran], “ das Alcohol ,” and the like.

Blau also, in his Gesch. der Arab. Substantiv-Determ . , regards it as certain that Agur borrowed this אלקום from the idiom of the Arabians, among whom he lived, and heard it constantly spoken. By this explanation we first reach a correspondence between what is announced in lines first and second and line sixth. A king as such is certainly not “comely in going;” he can sit upon his throne, and especially as δημηγορῶν will he sit (Act 12:21) and not stand.

But the majesty of his going shows itself when he marches at the head of those who have risen up at his summons to war. Then he is for the army what the תישׁ he-goat is for the flock. The או, preferred to ו, draws close together the רישׁ e and the king (cf. e. g. , Isa 14:9).

Pro 30:29-31 Another numerical proverb with the cipher 4 = 3 + 1: 29 Three things are of stately walk, And four of stately going: 30 The lion, the hero among beasts, And that turneth back before nothing; 31 The swift-loined, also the goat; And a king with whom is the calling out of the host. Regarding היטיב with inf . following (the segolated n. actionis צעד is of equal force with an inf .)

, vid . , under Pro 15:2. The relation of the members of the sentence in 30a is like that in 25a and 26a: subj. and apposit. , which there, as here, is continued in a verbal clause which appears to us as relative. It deserves to be here remarked that לישׁ, as the name for a lion, occurs only here and at Job 4:11, and in the description of the Sinai wilderness, Isa 30:6; in Arab.

it is layth, Aram. לית, and belongs to the Arameo-Arab. dialect of this language; the lxx and Syr. translate it “the young lion;” the Venet . excellently, by the epic λῖς. בּבּהמה has the article only to denote the genus, viz. , of the beasts, and particularly the four-footed beasts. What is said in 30b (cf. with the expression, Job 39:22) is described in Isa 30:4.

The two other beasts which distinguish themselves by their stately going are in 31a only briefly named. But we are not in the condition of the readers of this Book of Proverbs, who needed only to hear the designation זרזיר מתנים at once to know what beast was meant. Certainly זרזיר, as the name for a beast, is not altogether unknown in the post-bibl. Heb. “In the days of Rabbi Chija (the great teacher who came from Babylon to the Academy of Sepphoris), as is narrated in Bereschith rabba , sect.

65, a zarzir flew to the land of Israel, and it was brought to him with the question whether it were eatable. Go, said he, place it on the roof! Then came an Egyptian raven and lighted down beside it. See, said Chija, it is unclean, for it belongs to the genus of the ravens, which is unclean (Lev 11:15). From this circumstance there arose the proverb: The raven goes to the zarzir because it belongs to his own tribe.

” Also the Jer. Rosch ha-schane , Halacha 3: “It is the manner of the world that one seeks to assist his zarzir, and another his zarzir, to obtain the victory;” and Midrash Echa v. 1, according to which it is the custom of the world, that one who has a large and a little zarzir in his house, is wont to treat the little one sparingly, so that in the case of the large one being killed, he might not need to buy another.

According to this, the zarzir is a pugnacious animal, which also the proverb Bereschith rabba , c. 75, confirms: two zarzir do not sleep on one board; and one makes use of his for contests like cock-fights. According to this, the זרזיר is a bird, and that of the species of the raven; after Rashi, the étourneau , the starling, which is confirmed by the Arab. zurzur (vulgar Arab.

zarzur), the common name of starlings (cf. Syr. zarzizo, under zrz of Castelli). But for the passage before us, we cannot regard this as important, for why is the starling fully named זרזיר מתנים? To this question Kimchi has already remarked that he knows no answer for it. Only, perhaps, the grave magpie ( corvus pica ), strutting with upraised tail, might be called succinctus lumbos , if מתנים can at all be used here of a bird.

At the earliest, this might possibly be used of a cock, which the later Heb. named directly גּבר, because of its manly demeanour; most old translators so understand it. The lxx translates, omitting the loins, by ἀλέκτωρ ἐμπεριπατῶν θηλείαις εὔψυχος, according to which the Syr. and Targ. : like the cock which struts about proudly among the hens; Aquila and Theodotion: ἀλέκτωρ (ἀλεκτρυὼν) νώτου; The Quinta: ἀλέκτωρ ὀσφύος; Jezome: gallus succinctus lumbos .

Ṣarṣar (not ṣirṣir, as Hitzig vocalizes) is in Arab. a name for a cock, from ṣarṣara, to crow, an onomatopoeia. But the Heb. זרזיר, as the name of a bird, signifies, as the Talmud proves on the ground of that history, not a cock, but a bird of the raven order, whether a starling, a crow, or a magpie. And if this name of a corvinus is formed from the onomatopoeia זרזר, the weaker form of that (Arab.)

ṣarṣar, then מתנים, which, for זרזיר, requires the verbal root זרז, to girdle, is not wholly appropriate; and how strangely would the three animals be mingled together, if between לישׁ and תישׁ, the two four-footed animals, a bird were placed! If, as is to be expected, the “ Lendenumgürtete ” [the one girded about the loins = זרזיר מתנים] be a four-footed animal, then it lies near, with C.

B. Michaelis and Ziegler, after Ludolf's example, to think of the zebra, the South African wild ass. But this animal lay beyond the sphere of the author’s observation, and perhaps also of his knowledge, and at the same time of that of the Israelitish readers of this Book of Proverbs; and the dark-brown cross stripes on a white ground, by which the zebra is distinguished, extend not merely to its limbs, but over the whole body, and particularly over the front of the body.

It would be more tenable to think of the leopard, with its black round spots, or the tiger, with dark stripes; but the name זרזיר מתנים scarcely refers to the colour of the hair, since one has to understand it after the Aram. זרז חרציהּ = שׁנּס מתניו, 1Ki 18:46, or אחר חלציו, Job 38:3, and thus of an activity, i. e. , strength and swiftness, depending on the condition of the loins.

Those who, with Kimchi, think that the נמר [leopard] is thus named, ground their view, not on this, that it has rings or stripes round its legs, but on this, that it דק מתנים וחזק במתניו. But this beast has certainly its definite name; but a fundamental supposition entering into every attempt at an explanation is this, that זרזיר מתנים, as well as לישׁ and תישׁ, is the proper name of a beast, not a descriptive attribute.

Therefore the opinion of Rosse, which Bochart has skilfully established in the Hierozoicon , does not recommend itself, for he only suggests, for choice, to understand the name, “the girded about the loins,” in the proper sense of straps and clasps around and on the loins (thus e. g. , Gesenius, Fleischer, Hitzig), or of strength, in the sense of the Arab. habuwk, the firmly-bound = compact, or ṣamm alṣlab, the girded loin (thus e.

g. , Muntinghe). Schultens connects together both references: Utrumque jungas licet . That the by-name fits the horse, particularly the war-horse, is undeniable; one would have to refer it, with Mühlau, to the slender structure, the thin flanks, which are reckoned among the requisites of a beautiful horse. But if succinctus lumbos were a by-name of a horse, why did not the author at once say סוס זרזיר מתנים?

We shall give the preference to the opinion, according to which the expression, “girt about the loins” = “with strong loins,” or “with slender limbs,” is not the by-name, but the proper name of the animal. This may be said of the hunting-hound, lévrier (according to which the Venet . , incorrectly translating מתנים: λαγῳοκύων ψοιῶν), which Kimchi ranks in the first place.

Luther, by his translation, Ein Wind = Windhund [greyhound], of good limbs, has given the right direction to this opinion. Melanchton, Lavater, Mercier, Geier, and others, follow him; and, among the moderns, so also do Ewald and Böttcher (also Bertheau and Stuart), which latter supposes that before זרזיר מתנים there originally stood כבל, which afterwards disappeared.

But why should the greyhound not at once be called זרזיר מתנים? We call the smaller variety of this dog the Windspiel [greyhound]; and by this name we think on a hound, without saying Windspielhund . The name זרזיר מתנים (Symmachus excellently: περιεσφιγμένος, not περιεσφραγισμένος, τὴν ὀσφύν, i. e. , strongly bound in the limbs) is fitted at once to suggest to us this almost restless, slender animal, with its high, thin, nimble limbs.

The verbal stem זרר (Arab.) zarr, signifies to press together, to knit together; the reduplicative form זרזר, to bind firmly together, whence זרזיר, firmly bound together, referred to the limbs as designating a natural property (Ewald, §158a): of straight and easily-moveable legs. The hunting-hound ( salâki or salûki , i. e. , coming from Seleucia) is celebrated by the Arab.

poets as much as the hunting-horse. The name כּלב, though not superfluous, the author ought certainly to have avoided, because it does not sound well in the Heb. collocation of words. There now follows תישׁ, a goat, and that not the ram (Jerome, Luther), which is called איל, but the he-goat, which bears this name, as Schultens has already recognised, from its pushing, as it is also called עתּוּד, as paratus ad pugnam ; the two names appear to be only provincially different; שׂעיר, on the contrary, is the old he-goat, as shaggy; and צפיר also perhaps denotes it, as Schultens supposes, with twisted, i.

e. , curled hair ( tortipilus ). In Arab. tays denotes the he-goat as well as the roebuck and the gazelle, and that at full growth. The lxx (the Syr. and Targ. , which is to be emended after the Syr.) is certainly right, for it understands the leading goat: καὶ τράγος ἡγούμενος αἰπολίου. The text, however, has not ותישׁ, but או תישׁ, ἢ τράγος (Aquila, Theodotion, Quinta, and the Venet .)

Böttcher is astonished that Hitzig did not take hold of this או, and conjectures תּאו־תישׁ, which should mean a “gazelle-goat” (Mühlau: dorcas mas ). But it is too bold to introduce here תּאו (תּוא), which is only twice named in the O. T. , and תאו־תישׁ for תּאו זכר is not the Heb. style; and besides, the setting aside of או has a harsh asyndeton for its consequence, which bears evidence to the appearance that תאו and תישׁ are two different animals.

And is the או then so objectionable? More wonderful still must Sol 2:9 appear to us. If the author enumerated the four of stately going on his fingers, he would certainly have said ותישׁ. By או he communicates to the hearer, setting before him another figure, how there in the Song Sulamith’s fancy passed from one object to another. To the lion, the king of the animal world, the king אלקוּם עמּו corresponds.

This אלקום Hitzig regards as mutilated from אלהים (which was both written and pronounced as אלקום by the Jews, so as to conceal the true sound of the name of God) - which is untenable, for this reason, that this religious conclusion [“A king with whom God is”] accords badly with the secular character of this proverb. Geiger ( Urschrift , p. 62ff.) translates: “and King Alkimos corresponding to it (the lustful and daring goat)” - he makes the harmless proverb into a ludibrium from the time of the Maccabeo-Syrian war.

The lxx, which the Syr. and Targ. follow, translates καὶ βασιλεὺς δημηγορῶν ἐν ἔθνει; it appears to have changed אלקום עמו into קם אל עמו (standing with his people and haranguing them), like the Quinta: καὶ βας. ἀναστὰς (ὃς ἀνέστη) ἐν τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ. Ziegler and Böttcher also, reading עמּו and אל without any transposition, get ומלך אל־קוּם עמּו t, which the former translates: “a king with the presence of his people;” the latter, “a king with the setting up of his people,” - not accordant with the thought, for the king should be brought forward as מיטיב לכת.

For the same reason, Kimchi’s explanation is not suitable: a king with whom is no resistance, i. e. , against whom no one can rank himself (thus e. g. , also Immanuel); or more specially, but not better: who has no successor of his race (according to which the Venet . ἀδιάδεκτος ξὺν ἑαυτῷ). Rather this explanation commends itself: a king with whom ( i. e. , in war with whom) is no resistance.

Thus Jerome and Luther: against whom no one dare place himself; thus Rashi, Aben Ezra, Ralbag (שׁאין תקומה עמו), Ahron b. Josef (קום = ἀντίστασις), Arama, and others; thus also Schultens, Fleischer ( adversus quem nemo consistere audet ), Ewald, Bertheau, Elster, Stuart, and others. But this connection of אל with the infin. is not Heb. ; and if the Chokma , xii.

28, has coined the expression אל־מות for the idea of “immortality,” then certainly it does not express the idea of resistlessness by so bold a quasi compositum . But this boldness is also there mitigated, for יהי is supplied after אל, which is not here practicable with קוּם, which is not a subst. like מות. Pocock in the Spec. historiae Arabum , and Castellus in the Lex.

Heptaglotton (not Castellio, as the word is printed by Zöckler), have recognised in אלקום the Arab. âlkawm; Schultens gives the lxx the honour of this recognition, for he regards their translation as a paraphrase of ὁ δῆμος μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ. Bertheau thinks that it ought to be in Arab. kawmuhu, but אלקום עמו = âlkawhu ma'ahu is perfectly correct, âlkawhu is the summons or the Heerbann = arriere-ban ; in North Africa they speak in their language in the same sense of the Gums .

This explanation of אלקום, from the Arab. Dachselt ( rex cum satellitio suo ), Diedrichs in his Arab. -Syr. Spicilegium (1777), Umbreit, Gesenius, and Vaihinger, have recognised, and Mühlau has anew confirmed it at length. Hitzig, on the contrary, remarks that if Agur wrote on Arab. territory, we could be contented with the Arab. appellative, but not with the article, which in words like אלגּבישׁ and אלמגּים is no longer of force as an art.

, but is an integ. component part of the word. We think that it is with אלקום exactly as with other words descriptive of lordship, and the many similar that have passed over into the Spanish language; the word is taken over along with the article, without requiring the Heb. listener to take the art. as such, although he certainly felt it better than we do, when we say “ das Alkoran ” [the Alcoran], “ das Alcohol ,” and the like.

Blau also, in his Gesch. der Arab. Substantiv-Determ . , regards it as certain that Agur borrowed this אלקום from the idiom of the Arabians, among whom he lived, and heard it constantly spoken. By this explanation we first reach a correspondence between what is announced in lines first and second and line sixth. A king as such is certainly not “comely in going;” he can sit upon his throne, and especially as δημηγορῶν will he sit (Act 12:21) and not stand.

But the majesty of his going shows itself when he marches at the head of those who have risen up at his summons to war. Then he is for the army what the תישׁ he-goat is for the flock. The או, preferred to ו, draws close together the רישׁ e and the king (cf. e. g. , Isa 14:9).

Pro 30:32-33 Another proverb, the last of Agur’s “Words” which exhorts to thoughtful, discreet demeanour, here follows the proverb of self-conscious, grave deportment: 32 If thou art foolish in that thou exaltest thyself, Or in devising, - put thy hand to thy mouth! 33 For the pressure on milk bringeth forth butter, And pressure on the nose bringeth forth blood, And pressure on sensibility bringeth forth altercation.

Löwenstein translates Pro 30:32 : Art thou despicable, it is by boasting; Art thou prudent, then hold thy hand on thy mouth. But if זמם denotes reflection and deliberation, then נבל, as its opposite, denotes unreflecting, foolish conduct. Then בּהתנשּׂא ne by boasting is not to be regarded as a consequent (thus it happens by lifting thyself up; or: it is connected with boasting); by this construction also, אם־נבלתּ must be accented with Dechi , not with Tarcha .

Otherwise Euchel: Hast thou become offensive through pride, Or seems it so to thee, - lay thy hand to thy mouth. The thought is appropriate, but נבלתּ for נבּלתּ is more than improbable; נבל, thus absolutely taken in an ethical connection, is certainly related to נבל, as כּסל, Jer 10:8, to כּסיל. The prevailing mode of explanation is adopted by Fleischer: si stulta arrogantia elatus fueris et si quid durius ( in alios ) mente conceperis, manum ori impone ; i.

e. , if thou arrogantly, and with offensive words, wilt strive with others, then keep thyself back, and say not what thou hast in thy mind. But while מזמּה and מזמּות denote intrigues, Pro 14:17, as well as plans and considerations, זמם has never by itself alone the sense of meditari mala ; at Psa 37:12, also with ל of the object at which the evil devices aim.

Then for ואם ... אם (Arab. ân ... wân) there is the supposition of a correlative relation, as e. g. , 1Ki 20:18; Ecc 11:3, by which at the same time זמּות is obviously thought of as a contrast to נבלתּ. This contrast excludes for זמות not only the sense of mala moliri (thus e. g. , also Mühlau), but also the sense of the Arab. zamm, superbire (Schultens). Hitzig has the right determination of the relation of the members of the sentence and the ideas: if thou art irrational in ebullition of temper and in thought - thy hand to thy mouth!

But התנשּׂא has neither here nor elsewhere the meaning of התעבּר (to be out of oneself with anger); it signifies everywhere to elevate or exalt oneself, i. e. , rightly or wrongly to make much of oneself. There are cases where a man, who raises himself above others, appears as a fool, and indeed acts foolishly; but there are also other cases, when the despised has a reason and an object for vindicating his superiority, his repute, his just claim: when, as we say, he places himself in his right position, and assumes importance; the poet here recommends, to the one as well as to the other, silence.

The rule that silence is gold has its exceptions, but here also it is held valid as a rule. Luther and others interpret the perfecta as looking back: “hast thou become a fool and ascended too high and intended evil, then lay thy hand on thy mouth. ” But the reason in Pro 30:33 does not accord with this rendering, for when that has been done, the occasion for hatred is already given; but the proverb designs to warn against the stirring up of hatred by the reclaiming of personal pretensions.

The perfecta , therefore, are to be interpreted as at Deu 32:29; Job 9:15, as the expression of the abstract present; or better, as at Job 9:16, as the expression of the fut. exactum : if thou wouldest have acted foolishly, since thou walkest proudly, or if thou hadst (before) thought of it (Aquila, Theodotion: καὶ ἐὰν ἐννοηθῇς) - the hand on thy mouth, i. e.

, let it alone, be silent rather (expression as Pro 11:24; Jdg 18:19; Job 40:4). The Venet . best: εἴπερ ἐμώρανας ἐν τῷ ἐπαίρεσθαι καὶ εἴπερ ἐλογίσω, χεὶρ τῷ στόματι. When we have now interpreted התנשׂא, not of the rising up of anger, we do not also, with Hitzig, interpret the dual of the two snorting noses - viz. of the double anger, that of him who provokes to anger, and that of him who is made angry - but אפּים denotes the two nostrils of one and the same person, and, figuratively, snorting or anger.

Pressure against the nose is designated ומיץ־אף, ἐκμύζησις (ἐκπίεσις) μυκτῆρος (write ומיץ־אף, with Metheg , with the long tone, after Metheg - Setzung , §11, 9, 12), and מיץ אפּים, ἐκμύζησις θυμοῦ (Theodotion), with reference to the proper meaning of אפים, pressure to anger, i. e. , to the stirring up and strengthening of anger. The nose of him who raises himself up comes into view, in so far as, with such self-estimation, sneering, snuffling scorn (μυκτηρίζειν) easily connects itself; but this view of מתנשׂא is not here spoken of.

Pro 30:32-33 Another proverb, the last of Agur’s “Words” which exhorts to thoughtful, discreet demeanour, here follows the proverb of self-conscious, grave deportment: 32 If thou art foolish in that thou exaltest thyself, Or in devising, - put thy hand to thy mouth! 33 For the pressure on milk bringeth forth butter, And pressure on the nose bringeth forth blood, And pressure on sensibility bringeth forth altercation.

Löwenstein translates Pro 30:32 : Art thou despicable, it is by boasting; Art thou prudent, then hold thy hand on thy mouth. But if זמם denotes reflection and deliberation, then נבל, as its opposite, denotes unreflecting, foolish conduct. Then בּהתנשּׂא ne by boasting is not to be regarded as a consequent (thus it happens by lifting thyself up; or: it is connected with boasting); by this construction also, אם־נבלתּ must be accented with Dechi , not with Tarcha .

Otherwise Euchel: Hast thou become offensive through pride, Or seems it so to thee, - lay thy hand to thy mouth. The thought is appropriate, but נבלתּ for נבּלתּ is more than improbable; נבל, thus absolutely taken in an ethical connection, is certainly related to נבל, as כּסל, Jer 10:8, to כּסיל. The prevailing mode of explanation is adopted by Fleischer: si stulta arrogantia elatus fueris et si quid durius ( in alios ) mente conceperis, manum ori impone ; i.

e. , if thou arrogantly, and with offensive words, wilt strive with others, then keep thyself back, and say not what thou hast in thy mind. But while מזמּה and מזמּות denote intrigues, Pro 14:17, as well as plans and considerations, זמם has never by itself alone the sense of meditari mala ; at Psa 37:12, also with ל of the object at which the evil devices aim.

Then for ואם ... אם (Arab. ân ... wân) there is the supposition of a correlative relation, as e. g. , 1Ki 20:18; Ecc 11:3, by which at the same time זמּות is obviously thought of as a contrast to נבלתּ. This contrast excludes for זמות not only the sense of mala moliri (thus e. g. , also Mühlau), but also the sense of the Arab. zamm, superbire (Schultens). Hitzig has the right determination of the relation of the members of the sentence and the ideas: if thou art irrational in ebullition of temper and in thought - thy hand to thy mouth!

But התנשּׂא has neither here nor elsewhere the meaning of התעבּר (to be out of oneself with anger); it signifies everywhere to elevate or exalt oneself, i. e. , rightly or wrongly to make much of oneself. There are cases where a man, who raises himself above others, appears as a fool, and indeed acts foolishly; but there are also other cases, when the despised has a reason and an object for vindicating his superiority, his repute, his just claim: when, as we say, he places himself in his right position, and assumes importance; the poet here recommends, to the one as well as to the other, silence.

The rule that silence is gold has its exceptions, but here also it is held valid as a rule. Luther and others interpret the perfecta as looking back: “hast thou become a fool and ascended too high and intended evil, then lay thy hand on thy mouth. ” But the reason in Pro 30:33 does not accord with this rendering, for when that has been done, the occasion for hatred is already given; but the proverb designs to warn against the stirring up of hatred by the reclaiming of personal pretensions.

The perfecta , therefore, are to be interpreted as at Deu 32:29; Job 9:15, as the expression of the abstract present; or better, as at Job 9:16, as the expression of the fut. exactum : if thou wouldest have acted foolishly, since thou walkest proudly, or if thou hadst (before) thought of it (Aquila, Theodotion: καὶ ἐὰν ἐννοηθῇς) - the hand on thy mouth, i. e.

, let it alone, be silent rather (expression as Pro 11:24; Jdg 18:19; Job 40:4). The Venet . best: εἴπερ ἐμώρανας ἐν τῷ ἐπαίρεσθαι καὶ εἴπερ ἐλογίσω, χεὶρ τῷ στόματι. When we have now interpreted התנשׂא, not of the rising up of anger, we do not also, with Hitzig, interpret the dual of the two snorting noses - viz. of the double anger, that of him who provokes to anger, and that of him who is made angry - but אפּים denotes the two nostrils of one and the same person, and, figuratively, snorting or anger.

Pressure against the nose is designated ומיץ־אף, ἐκμύζησις (ἐκπίεσις) μυκτῆρος (write ומיץ־אף, with Metheg , with the long tone, after Metheg - Setzung , §11, 9, 12), and מיץ אפּים, ἐκμύζησις θυμοῦ (Theodotion), with reference to the proper meaning of אפים, pressure to anger, i. e. , to the stirring up and strengthening of anger. The nose of him who raises himself up comes into view, in so far as, with such self-estimation, sneering, snuffling scorn (μυκτηρίζειν) easily connects itself; but this view of מתנשׂא is not here spoken of.

Pro 31:1 Superscription: 1 Words of Lemuel the king, The utterance wherewith his mother warned him. Such would be the superscription if the interpunction of the text as it lies before us were correct. But it is not possibly right. For, notwithstanding the assurance of Ewald, §277b, למואל מלך, nevertheless, as it would be here used, remains an impossibility. Certainly under circumstances an indeterminate apposition can follow a proper name.

That on coins we read מתתיה כהן גדול or נרון קיסר is nothing strange; in this case we also use the words “Nero, emperor,” and that we altogether omit the article shows that the case is singular: the apposition wavers between the force of a generic and of a proper name. A similar case is the naming of the proper name with the general specification of the class to which this or that one bearing the name belongs in lists of persons, as e.

g. , 1Ki 4:2-6, or in such expressions as, e. g. , “Damascus, a town,” or “ Tel Hum , a castle,” and the like; here we have the indefinite article, because the apposition is a simple declaration of the class. But would the expression, “The poem of Oscar, a king,” be proper as the title of a book? Proportionally more so than “Oscar, king;” but also that form of indeterminate apposition is contrary to the usus loq .

, especially with a king with whom the apposition is not a generic name, but a name of honour. We assume that “Lemuel” is a symbolical name, like “Jareb” in “King Jareb,” Hos 5:13; Hos 10:6; so we would expect the phrase to be מלך למואל(ה) rather than למואל מלך. The phrase “Lemuel, king,” here in the title of this section of the book, sounds like a double name, after the manner of עבר מלך in the book of Jeremiah.

In the Greek version also the phrase Λεμουέλου βασιλέως ( Venet .) is not used as syntactically correct without having joined to the βασιλέως a dependent genitive such as τῶν Αράβων, while none of the old translators, except Jerome, take the words למואל מלך together in the sense of Lamuelis regis . Thus מלך משּׂא are to be taken together, with Hitzig, Bertheau, Zöckler, Mühlau, and Dächsel, against Ewald and Kamphausen; משׂא, whether it be a name of a tribe or a country, or of both at the same time, is the region ruled over by Lemuel, and since this proper name throws back the determination which it has in itself on מלך, the phrase is to be translated: “Words of Lemuel the king of Massa” ( vid .

, under Pro 30:1). If Aquila renders this proper name by Λεμμοῦν, Symmachus by Ἰαμουήλ, Theodotion by Ρεβουήλ, the same arbitrariness prevails with reference to the initial and terminal sound of the word, as in the case of the words Ἀμβακούμ, Βεελζεβούλ, Βελίαρ. The name למוּאל sounds like the name of Simeon’s first-born, ימוּאל, Gen 46:10, written in Num 26:12 and 1Ch 4:24 as נמוּאל; יואל also appears, 1Ch 4:35, as a Simeonite name, which Hitzig adduces in favour of his view that משׂא was a North Arab.

Simeonite colony. The interchange of the names ימואל and נמואל is intelligible if it is supposed that ימואל (from ימה = ימא) designates the sworn (sworn to) of God, and נמואל (from נם Mishnic = נאם) the expressed (addressed) of God; here the reference of ימו and נמו to verbal stems is at least possible, but a verb למּה is found only in the Arab. , and with significations inus .

But there are two other derivations of the name: (1) The verb (Arab.) waâla signifies to hasten (with the infin. of the onomatop . verbs waniyal, like raḥyal, walking, because motion, especially that which is tumultuous, proceeds with a noise), whence mawnil, the place to which one flees, retreat. Hence למוּאל or למואל, which is in this case to be assumed as the ground-form, might be formed from אל מואל, God is a refuge, with the rejection of the א.

This is the opinion of Fleischer, which Mühlau adopts and has established, p. 38-41; for he shows that the initial א is not only often rejected where it is without the support of a full vocal, e. g. , נחנוּ = אנחנוּ, lalah = ilalah ( Deus ), but that this aphaeresis not seldom also occurs where the initial has a full vocal, e. g. , לעזר = אלעזר, laḥmaru = âllahmaru ( ruber ), laḥsâ = âl-laḥsâ (the name of a town); cf.

also Blau in Deutsch. Morgenl. Zeitschr . xxv. 580. But this view is thus acceptable and tenable; a derivation which spares us by a like certainty the supposition of such an abbreviation established only by the late Palestinian לעזר, Λάζαρος, might well desire the preference. (2) Fleischer himself suggests another derivation: “The signification of the name is Deo consecratus , למו, poetic for ל, as also in Pro 31:4 it is to be vocalized למואל after the Masora.

” The form למואל is certainly not less favourable to that first derivation than to this second; the û is in both cases an obscuration of the original. But that “Lemuel” may be explained in this second way is shown by “Lael,” Num 3:24 (Olshausen, §277d). It is a beautiful sign for King Lemuel, and a verification of his name, that it is he himself by whom we receive the admonition with which his mother in her care counselled him when he attained to independent government.

אשׁר connects itself with דברי, after we have connected משׂא with מלך; it is accus. of the manner to יסּרתּוּ = יסּרתהוּ; cf. הטּתּוּ, Pro 7:21, with גּמלתהוּ, Pro 31:12 : wherewith (with which words) she earnestly and impressively admonished him. The Syr. translates: words of Muel, as if ל were that of the author. “Others as inconsistently: words to Lemuel - they are words which is himself ought to carry in his mouth as received from his mother” (Fleischer).

The name “Massa,” is it here means effatum , would be proportionally more appropriate for these “Words” of Lemuel than for the “Words” of Agur, for the maternal counsels form an inwardly connected compact whole. They begin with a question which maternal love puts to itself with regard to the beloved son whom she would advise:

Pro 31:2 2 What, my son? and what the son of my womb? And what, O son of my vows?! The thrice repeated מה is completed by תּעשׂה (cf. Köhler under Mal 2:15), and that so that the question is put for the purpose of exciting attention: Consider well, my son, what thou wilt do as ruler, and listen attentively to my counsel (Fleischer). But the passionate repetition of מה would be only affectation if thus interpreted; the underlying thought must be of a subjective nature: what shall I say, אדבּר ( vid .

, under Isa 38:15), what advise thee to do? The question, which is at the same time a call, is like a deep sigh from the heart of the mother concerned for the welfare of her son, who would say to him what is beneficial, and say it in words which strike and remain fixed. He is indeed her dear son, the son whom she carries in her heart, the son for whom with vows of thanksgiving she prayed to God; and as he was given her by God, so to His care she commits him.

The name “Lemuel” is, as we interpret it, like the anagram of the fulfilment of the vows of his mother. בּרי bears the Aramaic shade in the Arameo-Arab. colouring of these proverbs from Massa; בּריהּ is common in the Aram. , and particularly in the Talmudic, but it can scarcely be adduced in support of ברי. וּמה belongs to the 24, מה, with ח or ע not following; vid .

, the Masora to Exo 32:1, and its correction by Norzi at Deu 29:23. We do not write וּמה־בּר; מה, with Makkeph and with Metheg , exclude one another.

Pro 31:3 The first admonition is a warning against effeminating sensuality: Give not thy strength to women, Nor thy ways to them that destroy kings. The punctuation למחות sees in this form a syncopated inf . Hiph . = להמחות ( vid . , at Pro 24:17), according to which we are to translate: viasque tuas ad perdendos reges ( ne dirige ), by which, as Fleischer formulates the twofold possibility, it may either be said: direct not thy effort to this result, to destroy neighbouring kings - viz.

by wars of invasion (properly, to wipe them away from the table of existence, as the Arabs say) - or: do not that by which kings are overthrown; i. e. , with special reference to Lemuel, act not so that thou thyself must thereby be brought to ruin. But the warning against vengeful, rapacious, and covetous propensity to war (thus Jerome, so that Venet . after Kimchi: ἀπομάττειν βασιλέας, C.

B. Michaelis, and earlier, Gesenius) does not stand well as parallel with the warning against giving his bodily and mental strength to women, i. e. , expending it on them. But another explanation: direct not thy ways to the destruction of kings, i. e. , toward that which destroys kings (Elster); or, as Luther translates: go not in the way wherein kings destroy themselves - puts into the words a sense which the author cannot have had in view; for the individualizing expression would then be generalized in the most ambiguous way.

Thus למחות מלכין will be a name for women, parallel to לנּשׁים. So far the translation of the Targum: לבנת מלכין, filiabus (לאמהת?) regum , lies under a right supposition. But the designation is not thus general. Schultens explains catapultis regum after Eze 26:9; but, inasmuch as he takes this as a figure of those who lay siege to the hearts of men, he translates: expugnatricibus regum , for he regards מחות as the plur.

of מחה, a particip. noun, which he translates by deletor . The connecting form of the fem. plur. of this מחה might certainly be מחות (cf. מזי, from מזה), but למחות מלכין ought to be changed into 'וגו 'לם; for one will not appeal to anomalies, such as 'לם, Pro 16:4; 'כּג, Isa 24:2; 'לם, Lam 1:19; or 'וגו 'הת, 1Ki 14:24, to save the Pathach of למחות, which, as we saw, proceeds from an altogether different understanding of the word.

But if 'לם is to be changed into 'לם, then one must go further, since for מחה not an active but a conditional meaning is to be assumed, and we must write למחות, in favour of which Fleischer as well as Gesenius decides: et ne committe consilia factaque tua iis quae reges perdunt, regum pestibus . Ewald also favours the change למחות, for he renders מחה as a denom.

of מח, marrow: those who enfeeble kings, in which Kamphausen follows him. Mühlau goes further; he gives the privative signification, to enfeeble, to the Piel מחה = makhakha (cf. Herzog’s Real-Wörterb . xiv. 712), which is much more probable, and proposes לממחות: iis quae vires enervant regum . But we can appropriately, with Nöldeke, adhere to למחות, deletricibus ( perditricibus ), for by this change the parallelism is satisfied; and that מחה may be used, with immediate reference to men, of entire and total destruction, is sufficiently established by such passages as Gen 6:7; Jdg 21:17, if any proof is at all needed for it.

Regarding the lxx and those misled by it, who, by מלכין and מלכים, 4a, think on the Aram. מלכּין, βουλαί, vid . , Mühlau, p. 53. But the Syr. has an idea worthy of the discourse, who translates epulis regum without our needing, with Mühlau, to charge him with dreaming of לחם in למחות. Perhaps that is true; but perhaps by למחות he thought of למחות (from מה, the particip.

adj. of מחח): do not direct thy ways to rich food (morsels), such as kings love and can have. By this reading, 3b would mediate the transition to Pro 31:4; and that the mother refers to the immorality, the unseemliness, and the dangers of a large harem, only in one brief word (3a), cannot seem strange, much rather it may be regarded as a sign of delicacy. But so much the more badly does וּדרכיך accord with למחות.

Certainly one goes to a banquet, for one finds leisure for it; but of one who himself is a king, it is not said that he should not direct his ways to a king’s dainties. But if למחות refers to the whole conduct of the king, the warning is, that he should not regulate his conduct in dependence on the love and the government of women. But whoever will place himself amid the revelry of lust, is wont to intoxicate himself with ardent spirits; and he who is thus intoxicated, is in danger of giving reins to the beast within him.

Pro 31:4-5 Hence there now follows a warning against drunkenness, not unmediated by the reading למחות: 4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, Not for kings to drink wine, Not for rulers to ask for intoxicating drink; 5 Lest he drink, and forget what is prescribed, And pervert the right of all the children of want. The usual translation of 4a is: non decet reges ...

(as e. g. , also Mühlau); but in this אל is not rightly rendered, which indeed is at times only an οὐ, spoken with close interest, but yet first of all, especially in such paraenetic connection as here, it is a dissuasive μή. But now לא למלכים שׁתות or לא למלכים לשׁתּות, after 2Ch 26:18; Mic 3:1, signifies: it is not the part of kings, it does not become them to drink, which may also be turned into a dissuasive form: let it not be the part of kings to drink, let them not have any business therewith, as if it belonged to their calling; according to which Fleischer renders: Absit a regibus, Lemuel, absit a regibus potare vinum .

The clearer expression למואל, instead of למוּאל, is, after Böttcher, occasioned by this, that the name is here in the vocative; perhaps rather by this, that the meaning of the name: consecrated to God, belonging to God, must be placed in contrast to the descending to low, sensual lust. Both times we write אל לּמלכים with the orthophonic Dagesh in the ל following ל, and without the recompensative Dagesh , the want of which is in a certain measure covered by the Metheg ( vid .

, Norzi). Regarding the inf . constr . שׁתו (cf. קנה, Pro 16:16), vid . , Gesen. §75, Anm. 2; and regarding the sequence of accents here necessary, אל לּמלכים שׁתו־יין (not Mercha , Dechi , Athnach , for Dechi would be here contrary to rule), vid . , Thorath Emeth , p. 22 §6, p. 43 §7. In 4b nothing is to be gained from the Chethı̂b או. There is not a substantive או, desire, the constr .

of which would here have to be read, not או (Umbreit, Gesenius), but או, after the form קו (Maurer); and why did the author not write תּאות שׁכר? But the particle או does not here also fall in with the connection; for if או שׁכר connect itself with יין (Hitzig, Ewald, and others), then it would drag disagreeably, and we would have here a spiritless classification of things unadvisable for kings.

Böttcher therefore sees in this או the remains of the obliterated סבוא; a corrector must then have transformed the וא which remained into או. But before one ventures on such conjectures, the Kerı̂ אי [where?] must be tried. Is it the abbreviated אין (Herzog’s Real-Wörterbuch , xiv. 712)? Certainly not, because וּלרוזנים אין שׁכר would mean: and the princes, or rulers ( vid .

, regarding רוזנים at Pro 8:15), have no mead, which is inconsistent. But אין does not abbreviate itself into אי, but into אי. Not אי, but אי, is in Heb. , as well as in Ethiop. , the word with which negative adjectives such as אי נקי, not innocent, Job 22:30, and in later Heb. also, negative sentences, such as אי אפשׁר: it is not possible, are formed. Therefore Mühlau vocalizes אי, and thinks that the author used this word for אל, so as not to repeat this word for the third time.

But how is that possible? אי שׁכר signifies either: not mead, or: there is not mead; and both afford, for the passage before us, no meaning. Is, then, the Kerı̂ אי truly so unsuitable? Indeed, to explain: how came intoxicating drink to rulers! is inadmissible, since אי always means only ubi ( e. g. , Gen 4:9); not, like the Ethiop. aitê, also quomodo . But the question ubi temetum , as a question of desire, fits the connection, whether the sentence means: non decet principibus dicere (Ahron b.

Josef supplies שׁיאמרו) ubi temetum , or: absit a principibus quaerere ubi temetum (Fleischer), which, from our view of 4a, we prefer. There is in reality nothing to be supplied; but as 4a says that the drinking of wine ought not to characterize kings, so 4b, that “Where is mead? ” ( i. e. , this eager inquiry after mead) ought not to characterize rulers. Why not?

Pro 31:5 says. That the prince, being a slave to drink, may not forget the מחקּק, i. e. , that which has been made and has become חק, thus that which is lawfully right, and may not alter the righteous cause of the miserable, who cry against their oppressors, i. e. , may not handle falsely the facts of the case, and give judgment contrary to them. שׁנּה דין (Aquila, Theodotion, Quinta, ἀλλοιοῦν κρίσιν) is elsewhere equivalent to הטּה משׁפּט (עוּת).

בּני־עני are those who are, as it were, born to oppression and suffering. This mode of expression is a Semitism (Fleischer), but it here heightens the impression of the Arab. colouring. In כל ( Venet . ὡντινοῦν) it is indicated that, not merely with reference to individual poor men, but in general to the whole class of the poorer people, suffering humanity, sympathy and a regard for truth on the part of a prince given to sensuality are easily thrown aside.

Wine is better suited for those who are in a condition to be timeously helped over which, is a refreshment to them.