23:26 Give me your heart, my son, 1
and let your eyes observe my ways;
12:2 You plant them like trees and they put down their roots. 2
They grow prosperous and are very fruitful. 3
They always talk about you,
but they really care nothing about you. 4
3:12 See to it, 7 brothers and sisters, 8 that none of you has 9 an evil, unbelieving heart that forsakes 10 the living God. 11
1 tn Heb “my son”; the reference to a “son” is retained in the translation here because in the following lines the advice is to avoid women who are prostitutes.
2 tn Heb “You planted them and they took root.”
3 tn Heb “they grow and produce fruit.” For the nuance “grow” for the verb which normally means “go, walk,” see BDB 232 s.v. חָלַךְ Qal.I.3 and compare Hos 14:7.
4 tn Heb “You are near in their mouths, but far from their kidneys.” The figure of substitution is being used here, “mouth” for “words” and “kidneys” for passions and affections. A contemporary equivalent might be, “your name is always on their lips, but their hearts are far from you.”
5 tn The translation “share or part” is given by L&N 63.13.
6 tn Since the semantic range for λόγος (logos) is so broad, a number of different translations could be given for the prepositional phrase here. Something along the lines of “in this thing” would work well, but is too colloquial for the present translation.
7 tn Or “take care.”
8 tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 2:11.
9 tn Grk “that there not be in any of you.”
10 tn Or “deserts,” “rebels against.”
11 tn Grk “in forsaking the living God.”