10:12 Hatred 1 stirs up dissension,
but love covers all transgressions. 2
16:23 A wise person’s heart 3 makes his speech wise 4
and it adds persuasiveness 5 to his words. 6
16:27 A wicked scoundrel 7 digs up 8 evil,
and his slander 9 is like a scorching fire. 10
19:3 A person’s folly 11 subverts 12 his way,
and 13 his heart rages 14 against the Lord.
1 sn This contrasts the wicked motivated by hatred (animosity, rejection) with the righteous motivated by love (kind acts, showing favor).
2 sn Love acts like forgiveness. Hatred looks for and exaggerates faults; but love seeks ways to make sins disappear (e.g., 1 Pet 4:8).
3 tn Or “mind” (cf. NCV, NRSV, NLT).
4 tn Heb “makes wise his mouth,” with “mouth” being a metonymy of cause for what is said: “speech.”
5 sn Those who are wise say wise things. The proverb uses synthetic parallelism: The first line asserts that the wise heart ensures that what is said is wise, and the second line adds that such a person increases the reception of what is said.
6 tn Heb “to his lips.” The term “lips” functions as a metonymy of cause for what is said.
5 tn Heb “a man of belial.” This phrase means “wicked scoundrel.” Some translate “worthless” (so ASV, NASB, CEV), but the phrase includes deep depravity and wickedness (C. H. Toy, Proverbs [ICC], 125-26).
6 tn Heb “digs up” (so NASB). The “wicked scoundrel” finds out about evil and brings it to the surface (Prov 26:27; Jer 18:20). What he digs up he spreads by speech.
7 tn Heb “on his lips” (so NAB) The term “lips” is a metonymy of cause. To say that “evil” is on his lips means that he talks about the evil he has dug up.
8 sn The simile stresses the devastating way that slander hurts people. W. McKane says that this one “digs for scandal and…propagates it with words which are ablaze with misanthropy” (Proverbs [OTL], 494).
7 tn Heb “the folly of a man.”
8 tn The verb סָלַף (salaf) normally means “to twist; to pervert; to overturn,” but in this context it means “to subvert” (BDB 701 s.v.); cf. ASV “subverteth.”
9 tn The clause begins with vav on the nonverb phrase “against the
10 sn The “heart raging” is a metonymy of cause (or adjunct); it represents the emotions that will lead to blaming God for the frustration. Genesis 42:28 offers a calmer illustration of this as the brothers ask what God was doing to them.