Proverbs 15:11

15:11 Death and Destruction ¹  are before the Lord –

how much more ²  the hearts of humans! ³ 

Proverbs 27:20

27:20 As ⁴  Death and Destruction are never satisfied, ⁵ 

so the eyes of a person ⁶  are never satisfied. ⁷ 

Isaiah 38:17

38:17 “Look, the grief I experienced was for my benefit. ⁸ 

You delivered me ⁹  from the pit of oblivion. ¹⁰ 

For you removed all my sins from your sight. ¹¹ 

¹ tn Heb “Sheol and Abaddon” (שְׁאוֹל וַאֲבַדּוֹן (shÿ’ol va’adon); so ASV, NASB, NRSV; cf. KJV “Hell and destruction”; NAB “the nether world and the abyss.” These terms represent the remote underworld and all the mighty powers that reside there (e.g., Prov 27:20; Job 26:6; Ps 139:8; Amos 9:2; Rev 9:11). The Lord knows everything about this remote region.

² tn The construction אַף כִּי (’af ki, “how much more!”) introduces an argument from the lesser to the greater: If all this is open before the Lord, how much more so human hearts. “Hearts” here is a metonymy of subject, meaning the motives and thoughts (cf. NCV “the thoughts of the living”).

³ tn Heb “the hearts of the sons of man,” although here “sons of man” simply means “men” or “human beings.”

⁴ tn The term “as” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation in light of the analogy.

⁵ sn Countless generations of people have gone into the world below; yet “death” is never satisfied – it always takes more. The line personifies Death and Destruction. It forms the emblem in the parallelism.

⁶ tn Heb “eyes of a man.” This expression refers to the desires – what the individual looks longingly on. Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1:34 (one of the rabbinic Midrashim) says, “No man dies and has one-half of what he wanted.”

⁷ tc The LXX contains a scribal addition: “He who fixes his eye is an abomination to the Lord, and the uninstructed do not restrain their tongues.” This is unlikely to be original.

⁸ tn Heb “Look, for peace bitterness was to me bitter”; NAB “thus is my bitterness transformed into peace.”

⁹ tc The Hebrew text reads, “you loved my soul,” but this does not fit syntactically with the following prepositional phrase. חָשַׁקְתָּ (khashaqta, “you loved”), may reflect an aural error; most emend the form to חָשַׂכְת, (khasakht, “you held back”).

¹⁰ tn בְּלִי (bÿli) most often appears as a negation, meaning “without,” suggesting the meaning “nothingness, oblivion,” here. Some translate “decay” or “destruction.”

¹¹ tn Heb “for you threw behind your back all my sins.”