Proverbs 20:13

20:13 Do not love sleep, ¹  lest you become impoverished;

open your eyes so that ²  you might be satisfied with food. ³ 

Proverbs 25:8

25:8 Do not go out hastily to litigation, ⁴ 

or ⁵  what will you do afterward

when your neighbor puts you to shame?

Proverbs 26:4

26:4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly, ⁶ 

lest you yourself also be like him. ⁷ 

Proverbs 30:9

30:9 lest I become satisfied and act deceptively ⁸ 

and say, “Who is the Lord?”

Or lest I become poor and steal

and demean ⁹  the name of my God.

Proverbs 31:5

31:5 lest they drink and forget what is decreed,

and remove ¹⁰  from all the poor ¹¹  their legal rights. ¹² 

[20:13]  ¹ sn The proverb uses antithetical parallelism to teach that diligence leads to prosperity. It contrasts loving sleep with opening the eyes, and poverty with satisfaction. Just as “sleep” can be used for slothfulness or laziness, so opening the eyes can represent vigorous, active conduct. The idioms have caught on in modern usage as well – things like “open your eyes” or “asleep on the job.”

[20:13]  ² tn The second line uses two imperatives in a sequence (without the vav [ו]): “open your eyes” and then (or, in order that) you will “be satisfied.”

[20:13]  ³ tn Heb “bread” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV), although the term often serves in a generic sense for food in general.

[25:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “do not go out hastily to strive”; the verb “to strive” means dispute in the legal context. The last clause of v. 7, “what your eyes have seen,” does fit very well with the initial clause of v. 8. It would then say: What you see, do not take hastily to court, but if the case was not valid, he would end up in disgrace.

[25:8]  ⁵ tn The clause begins with פֶּן (pen, “lest”) which seems a bit out of place in this line. C. H. Toy suggests changing it to כִּי (ki, “for”) to make a better connection, instead of supplying an ellipsis: “lest it be said what…” (Proverbs [ICC], 461).

[26:4]  ⁷ sn One should not answer a fool’s foolish questions in line with the fool’s mode of reasoning (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 274).

[26:4]  ⁸ sn The person who descends to the level of a fool to argue with him only looks like a fool as well.

[30:9]  ¹⁰ tn The verb כָּחַשׁ (kakhash) means “to be disappointing; to deceive; to fail; to grow lean.” In the Piel stem it means “to deceive; to act deceptively; to cringe; to disappoint.” The idea of acting deceptively is illustrated in Hos 9:2 where it has the connotation of “disowning” or “refusing to acknowledge” (a meaning very close to its meaning here).

[30:9]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew verb literally means “to take hold of; to seize”; this produces the idea of doing violence to the reputation of God.

[31:5]  ¹³ tn The verb means “change,” perhaps expressed in reversing decisions or removing rights.

[31:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “all the children of poverty.” This expression refers to the poor by nature. Cf. KJV, NASB, NRSV “the afflicted”; NIV “oppressed.”

[31:5]  ¹⁵ sn The word is דִּין (din, “judgment”; so KJV). In this passage it refers to the cause or the plea for justice, i.e., the “legal rights.”