Proverbs 16:5

16:5 The Lord abhors ¹  every arrogant person; ² 

rest assured ³  that they will not go unpunished. ⁴ 

Proverbs 16:18

16:18 Pride ⁵  goes ⁶  before destruction,

and a haughty spirit before a fall. ⁷ 

[16:5]  ¹ tn Heb “an abomination of the Lord.” The term יְהוָה (yÿhvah, “the Lord”) is a subjective genitive: “the Lord abhors.”

[16:5]  ² tn Heb “every proud of heart”; NIV “all the proud of heart.” “Heart” is the genitive of specification; the phrase is talking about people who have proud hearts, whose ideas are arrogant. These are people who set themselves presumptuously against God (e.g., 2 Chr 26:16; Ps 131:1; Prov 18:12).

[16:5]  ³ tn Heb “hand to hand.” This idiom means “you can be assured” (e.g., Prov 11:21).

[16:5]  ⁴ tc The LXX has inserted two couplets here: “The beginning of a good way is to do justly, // and it is more acceptable with God than to do sacrifices; // he who seeks the Lord will find knowledge with righteousness, // and they who rightly seek him will find peace.” C. H. Toy reminds the reader that there were many proverbs in existence that sounded similar to those in the book of Proverbs; these lines are in the Greek OT as well as in Sirach (Proverbs [ICC], 321-22).

[16:18]  ⁵ sn The two lines of this proverb are synonymous parallelism, and so there are parasynonyms. “Pride” is paired with “haughty spirit” (“spirit” being a genitive of specification); and “destruction” is matched with “a tottering, falling.”

[16:18]  ⁶ tn Heb “[is] before destruction.”

[16:18]  ⁷ sn Many proverbs have been written in a similar way to warn against the inevitable disintegration and downfall of pride. W. McKane records an Arabic proverb: “The nose is in the heavens, the seat is in the mire” (Proverbs [OTL], 490).