16:18 Pride 6 goes 7 before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall. 8
29:23 A person’s pride 9 will bring him low, 10
but one who has a lowly spirit 11 will gain honor.
1:3 Your presumptuous heart 13 has deceived you –
you who reside in the safety of the rocky cliffs, 14
whose home is high in the mountains. 15
You think to yourself, 16
‘No one can 17 bring me down to the ground!’ 18
1 tn Heb “and they seized him with hooks.”
2 tn Heb “came up against him.”
3 tn Heb “to carry him away.”
4 tn Heb “sent and brought him.”
5 tn Heb “and he made Zedekiah his brother king.” According to the parallel text in 2 Kgs 24:17, Zedekiah was Jehoiachin’s uncle, not his brother. Therefore many interpreters understand אח here in its less specific sense of “relative” (NEB “made his father’s brother Zedekiah king”; NASB “made his kinsman Zedekiah king”; NIV “made Jehoiachin’s uncle, Zedekiah, king”; NRSV “made his brother Zedekiah king”).
6 sn The two lines of this proverb are synonymous parallelism, and so there are parasynonyms. “Pride” is paired with “haughty spirit” (“spirit” being a genitive of specification); and “destruction” is matched with “a tottering, falling.”
7 tn Heb “[is] before destruction.”
8 sn Many proverbs have been written in a similar way to warn against the inevitable disintegration and downfall of pride. W. McKane records an Arabic proverb: “The nose is in the heavens, the seat is in the mire” (Proverbs [OTL], 490).
9 tn Heb “pride of a man,” with “man” functioning as a possessive. There is no indication in the immediate context that this is restricted only to males.
10 tn There is a wordplay here due to the repetition of the root שָׁפֵל (shafel). In the first line the verb תִּשְׁפִּילֶנּוּ (tishpilennu) is the Hiphil imperfect of the root, rendered “will bring him low.” In the second line the word is used in the description of the “lowly of spirit,” שְׁפַל־רוּחַ (shÿfal-ruakh). The contrast works well: The proud will be brought “low,” but the one who is “lowly” will be honored. In this instance the wordplay can be preserved in the translation.
11 tn Heb “low in spirit”; KJV “humble in spirit.” This refers to an attitude of humility.
12 tn Aram “walk.”
13 tn Heb “the presumption of your heart”; NAB, NIV “the pride of your heart”; NASB “arrogance of your heart.”
14 tn Heb “in the concealed places of the rock”; KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV “in the clefts of the rock”; NCV “the hollow places of the cliff”; CEV “a mountain fortress.”
15 tn Heb “on high (is) his dwelling”; NASB “in the loftiness of your dwelling place”; NRSV “whose dwelling (abode NAB) is in the heights.”
16 tn Heb “the one who says in his heart.”
17 tn The Hebrew imperfect verb used here is best understood in a modal sense (“Who can bring me down?”) rather than in the sense of a simple future (“Who will bring me down?”). So also in v. 4 (“I can bring you down”). The question is not so much whether this will happen at some time in the future, but whether it even lies in the realm of possible events. In their hubris the Edomites were boasting that no one had the capability of breaching their impregnable defenses. However, their pride caused them to fail to consider the vast capabilities of Yahweh as warrior.
18 tn Heb “Who can bring me down?” This rhetorical question implies a negative answer: “No one!”
19 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but” to indicate the contrast present in this context, which involves the reversal of expected roles.
20 sn The point of the statement the one who humbles himself will be exalted is humility and the reversal imagery used to underline it is common: Luke 1:52-53; 6:21; 10:15; 18:14.