“‘Your heart is proud 2 and you said, “I am a god; 3
I sit in the seat of gods, in the heart of the seas” –
yet you are a man and not a god,
though you think you are godlike. 4
28:5 By your great skill 5 in trade you have increased your wealth,
and your heart is proud because of your wealth.
16:15 “‘But you trusted in your beauty and capitalized on your fame by becoming a prostitute. You offered your sexual favors to every man who passed by so that your beauty 8 became his.
31:10 “‘Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: Because it was tall in stature, and its top reached into the clouds, and it was proud of its height,
11:2 When pride 9 comes, 10 then comes disgrace, 11
but with humility 12 comes 13 wisdom.
16:18 Pride 14 goes 15 before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall. 16
1 tn Or “ruler” (NIV, NCV).
2 tn Heb “lifted up.”
3 tn Or “I am divine.”
4 tn Heb “and you made your heart (mind) like the heart (mind) of gods.”
5 tn Or “wisdom.”
6 tn Heb “name.”
7 sn The description of the nation Israel in vv. 10-14 recalls the splendor of the nation’s golden age under King Solomon.
8 tn Heb “it” (so KJV, ASV); the referent (the beauty in which the prostitute trusted, see the beginning of the verse) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
9 tn Heb “presumptuousness.” This term is from the root זִיד, zid (or זוּד, zud) which means “to boil; to seethe; to act proudly; to act presumptuously.” The idea is that of boiling over the edge of the pot, signifying overstepping the boundaries (e.g., Gen 25:29).
10 tn The verbs show both the sequence and the correlation. The first is the perfect tense of בּוֹא (bo’, “to enter; to come”); it is followed by the preterite with vav consecutive from the same verb, showing that one follows or comes with the other. Because the second verb in the colon is sequential to the first, the first may be subordinated as a temporal clause.
11 sn This proverb does not state how the disgrace will come, but affirms that it will follow pride. The proud will be brought down.
12 tn Heb “modesty”; KJV, ASV “the lowly.” The adjective צְנוּעִים (tsÿnu’im, “modest”) is used as a noun; this is an example of antimeria in which one part of speech is used in the place of another (see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 491-506), e.g., “Let the dry [adjective] appear!” = dry land (Gen 1:9). The root צָנַע (tsana’, “to be modest; to be humble”) describes those who are reserved, retiring, modest. The plural form is used for the abstract idea of humility.
13 tn The term “comes” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation from parallelism.
14 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.”
15 tn Heb “[is] before destruction.”
16 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).
17 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but” to indicate the contrast present in this context, which involves the reversal of expected roles.
18 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.
19 sn A quotation from Prov 3:34.