Proverbs 5:11-13

5:11 And at the end of your life ¹  you will groan ² 

when your flesh and your body are wasted away. ³ 

5:12 And you will say, “How I hated discipline!

My heart spurned reproof!

5:13 For ⁴  I did not obey my teachers ⁵ 

and I did not heed ⁶  my instructors. ⁷ 

Proverbs 14:14

14:14 The backslider ⁸  will be paid back ⁹  from his own ways,

but a good person will be rewarded ¹⁰  for his.

Jeremiah 2:17-18

2:17 You have brought all this on yourself, Israel, ¹¹ 

by deserting the Lord your God when he was leading you along the right path. ¹² 

2:18 What good will it do you ¹³  then ¹⁴  to go down to Egypt

to seek help from the Egyptians? ¹⁵ 

What good will it do you ¹⁶  to go over to Assyria

to seek help from the Assyrians? ¹⁷ 

[5:11]  ¹ tn Heb “at your end.”

[5:11]  ² tn The form is the perfect tense with the vav consecutive; it is equal to a specific future within this context.

[5:11]  ³ tn Heb “in the finishing of your flesh and your body.” The construction uses the Qal infinitive construct of כָּלָה (calah) in a temporal clause; the verb means “be complete, at an end, finished, spent.”

[5:13]  ⁴ tn The vav that introduces this clause functions in an explanatory sense.

[5:13]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew term מוֹרַי (moray) is the nominal form based on the Hiphil plural participle with a suffix, from the root יָרָה (yarah). The verb is “to teach,” the common noun is “instruction, law [torah],” and this participle form is teacher (“my teachers”).

[5:13]  ⁶ sn The idioms are vivid: This expression is “incline the ear”; earlier in the first line is “listen to the voice,” meaning “obey.” Such detailed description emphasizes the importance of the material.

[5:13]  ⁷ tn The form is the Piel plural participle of לָמַד (lamad) used substantivally.

[14:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “a turning away of heart.” The genitive לֵב (lev, “heart”) functions as an attributive adjective: “a backslidden heart.” The term סוּג (sug) means “to move away; to move backwards; to depart; to backslide” (BDB 690 s.v. I סוּג). This individual is the one who backslides, that is, who departs from the path of righteousness.

[14:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “will be filled”; cf. KJV, ASV. The verb (“to be filled, to be satisfied”) here means “to be repaid,” that is, to partake in his own evil ways. His faithlessness will come back to haunt him.

[14:14]  ¹⁰ tn The phrase “will be rewarded” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.

[2:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Are you not bringing this on yourself.” The question is rhetorical and expects a positive answer.

[2:17]  ¹² tn Heb “at the time of leading you in the way.”

[2:18]  ¹³ tn Heb “What to you to the way.”

[2:18]  ¹⁴ tn The introductory particle וְעַתָּה (vÿ’attah, “and now”) carries a logical, not temporal, connotation here (cf. BDB 274 s.v. עַתָּה 2.b).

[2:18]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “to drink water from the Shihor [a branch of the Nile].” The reference is to seeking help through political alliance with Egypt as opposed to trusting in God for help. This is an extension of the figure in 2:13.

[2:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “What to you to the way.”

[2:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “to drink water from the River [a common designation in biblical Hebrew for the Euphrates River].” This refers to seeking help through political alliance. See the preceding note.