20:29 The glory 1 of young men is their strength,
and the splendor 2 of old men is gray hair. 3
24:10 If you faint 4 in the day of trouble, 5
your strength is small! 6
5:10 lest strangers devour 7 your strength, 8
and your labor 9 benefit 10 another man’s house.
14:4 Where there are no oxen, the feeding trough is clean,
but an abundant harvest is produced by strong oxen. 11
24:5 A wise warrior 12 is strong, 13
and a man of knowledge makes his strength stronger;
1 tn The Hebrew term תִּפְאֶרֶת (tif’eret) means “beauty; glory”; in a context like this it means “honor” in the sense of glorying or boasting (BDB 802 s.v. 3.b).
2 tn The Hebrew term הֲדַר (hadar), the noun in construct, means “splendor; honor; ornament.” The latter sense is used here, since grey hair is like a crown on the head.
3 sn “Grey hair” is a metonymy of adjunct; it represents everything valuable about old age – dignity, wisdom, honor, experience, as well as worry and suffering of life. At the very least, since they survived, they must know something. At the most, they were the sages and elders of the people.
4 tn Heb “show yourself slack” (NASB similar). The verb רָפָה (rafah) means “to sink; to relax.” In the causative stems it means “to let slacken; to let go; to refrain; to fail; to do nothing.” In the Hitpael stem BDB 952 s.v. defines it as “to show yourself slack.” It has also been rendered as “give up” (NCV, CEV); “fail” (NLT); “falter” (NIV). The colon implies a condition, for which the second part of the verse is the apodosis.
5 tn The verse employs a paronomasia to underscore the point: “trouble” is צָרָה (tsarah), literally “a bind; a strait [or, narrow] place”; “small” is צַר (tsar), with the same idea of “narrow” or “close.”
6 sn The test of strength is adversity, for it reveals how strong a person is. Of course a weak person can always plead adverse conditions in order to quit. This is the twenty-fourth saying.
7 tn Or “are sated, satisfied.”
8 tn The word כֹּחַ (coakh, “strength”) refers to what laborious toil would produce (so a metonymy of cause). Everything that this person worked for could become the property for others to enjoy.
9 tn “labor, painful toil.”
10 tn The term “benefit” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.
10 tn Heb “the strength of oxen.” The genitive שׁוֹר (shor, “oxen”) functions as an attributed genitive: “strong oxen.” Strong oxen are indispensable for a good harvest, and for oxen to be strong they must be well-fed. The farmer has to balance grain consumption with the work oxen do.
13 sn The twenty-first saying seems to be concerned with the need for wisdom in warfare. In line with that, the word used here is גֶּבֶר (gever), “mighty man; hero; warrior.”
14 tn The expression בַּעוֹז (ba’oz) employs a beth essentiae, meaning he “is strong,” not “in strength.”