Proverbs 18:4

18:4 The words of a person’s mouth are like ¹  deep waters, ² 

and ³  the fountain of wisdom ⁴  is like ⁵  a flowing brook. ⁶ 

Proverbs 21:1

21:1 The king’s heart ⁷  is in the hand ⁸  of the Lord like channels of water; ⁹ 

he turns it wherever he wants.

Proverbs 25:21

25:21 If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat,

and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,

Proverbs 25:25

25:25 Like cold water to a weary person, ¹⁰ 

so is good news from a distant land. ¹¹ 

Proverbs 30:16

30:16 the grave, ¹²  the barren womb, ¹³ 

land that is not satisfied with water,

and fire that never says, “Enough!” ¹⁴ 

[18:4]  ¹ tn The comparative “like” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is implied by the metaphor; it is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[18:4]  ² sn The metaphor “deep waters” indicates either that the words have an inexhaustible supply or that they are profound.

[18:4]  ³ tn There is debate about the nature of the parallelism between lines 4a and 4b. The major options are: (1) synonymous parallelism, (2) antithetical parallelism (e.g., NAB, NIV, NCV) or (3) formal parallelism. Normally a vav (ו) would begin an antithetical clause; the structure and the ideas suggest that the second colon continues the idea of the first half, but in a parallel way rather than as additional predicates. The metaphors used in the proverb elsewhere describe the wise.

[18:4]  ⁴ sn This is an implied comparison (hypocatastasis), the fountain of wisdom being the person who speaks. The Greek version has “fountain of life” instead of “wisdom,” probably influenced from 10:11.

[18:4]  ⁵ tn The comparative “like” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is implied by the metaphor; it is supplied for the sake of clarity.

[18:4]  ⁶ sn The point of this metaphor is that the wisdom is a continuous source of refreshing and beneficial ideas.

[21:1]  ⁷ sn “Heart” is a metonymy of subject; it signifies the ability to make decisions, if not the decisions themselves.

[21:1]  ⁸ sn “Hand” in this passage is a personification; the word is frequently used idiomatically for “power,” and that is the sense intended here.

[21:1]  ⁹ tn “Channels of water” (פַּלְגֵי, palge) is an adverbial accusative, functioning as a figure of comparison – “like channels of water.” Cf. NAB “Like a stream”; NIV “watercourse”; NRSV, NLT “a stream of water.”

[25:25]  ¹³ tn Heb “a weary [or, faint] soul” (so NASB, NIV); KJV, ASV, NRSV “a thirsty soul,” but “soul” here refers to the whole person.

[25:25]  ¹⁴ sn The difficulty of getting news of any kind from a distant land made its reception all the more delightful when it was good (e.g., Gen 45:27; Prov 15:30).

[30:16]  ¹⁹ tn The term שְׁאוֹל (she’ol, “Sheol”) refers here to the realm of the dead: “the grave” (so KJV, NIV, NLT); cf. TEV, CEV “the world of the dead”; NAB “the nether world.”

[30:16]  ²⁰ tn Heb “the closing of the womb,” a situation especially troubling for one who is consumed with a desire for children (e.g., Gen 16:2; 30:1).

[30:16]  ²¹ sn There is no clear lesson made from these observations. But one point that could be made is that greed, symbolized by the leech, is as insatiable as all these other things. If that is the case, the proverb would constitute a warning against the insatiable nature of greed.