12:10 A righteous person cares for 11 the life of his animal,
but even the most compassionate acts 12 of the wicked are cruel.
10:14 The roar of battle will rise against your people;
all your fortresses will be devastated,
just as Shalman devastated 13 Beth Arbel on the day of battle,
when mothers were dashed to the ground with their children.
1 tn The words “bring out” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
2 tn Following the Hiphil imperative, “bring out,” the three perfect verb forms with vav (ו) consecutive carry an imperatival nuance. For a discussion of the Hebrew construction here and the difficulty of translating it into English, see S. R. Driver, A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew, 124-25.
3 tn Heb “and let them swarm in the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
4 tn The imperative has the force of a prayer here, not a command.
5 tn The “hand” here is a metonymy for “power.”
6 tn Heb “from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau.”
7 tn Heb “for I am afraid of him, lest he come.”
8 sn Heb “me, [the] mother upon [the] sons.” The first person pronoun “me” probably means here “me and mine,” as the following clause suggests.
9 tn Heb “And an ox or a sheep, it and its son, you shall not slaughter.”
10 tn Heb “in one day.”
11 tn Heb “knows”; NLT “concerned for the welfare of.” The righteous take care of animals, not just people.
12 tn Heb “but the mercies.” The additional words appear in the translation for the sake of clarification. The line can be interpreted in two ways: (1) when the wicked exhibit a kind act, they do it in a cruel way, or (2) even the kindest of their acts is cruel by all assessments, e.g., stuffing animals with food to fatten them for market – their “kindness” is driven by ulterior motives (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 129).
13 tn Heb “as the devastation of Shalman.” The genitive noun שַׁלְמַן (shalman, “Shalman”) functions as a subjective genitive: “as Shalman devastated [Beth Arbel].”