Proverbs 18:9

18:9 The one who ¹  is slack ²  in his work

is a brother ³  to one who destroys. ⁴ 

Proverbs 18:24

18:24 A person who has friends ⁵  may be harmed by them, ⁶ 

but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

[18:9]  ¹ tn Heb “Also, the one who.” Many commentators and a number of English versions omit the word “also.”

[18:9]  ² tn The form מִתְרַפֶּה (mitrappeh) is the Hitpael participle, “showing oneself slack.” The verb means “to sink; to relax,” and in the causative stem “to let drop” the hands. This is the lazy person who does not even try to work.

[18:9]  ³ sn These two troubling types, the slacker and the destroyer, are closely related.

[18:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “possessor of destruction.” This idiom means “destroyer” (so ASV); KJV “a great waster”; NRSV “a vandal.”

[18:24]  ⁵ tc The construction is “a man of friends” (cf. NASB) meaning a man who has friends (a genitive of the thing possessed). C. H. Toy, however, suggests reading יֵשׁ (yesh) instead of אִישׁ (’ish), along with some of the Greek mss, the Syriac, and Tg. Prov 18:24. It would then say “there are friends” who are unreliable (Proverbs [ICC], 366); cf. NLT. However, the MT should be retained here.

[18:24]  ⁶ tn The text simply has לְהִתְרֹעֵעַ (lÿhitro’ea’), which means “for being crushed” or “to be shattered” (but not “to show oneself friendly” as in the KJV). What can be made of the sentence is that “a man who has [many] friends [may have them] for being crushed” – the infinitive giving the result (i.e., “with the result that he may be crushed by them”).