Proverbs 4:21

4:21 Do not let them depart ¹  from your sight,

guard ²  them within your heart; ³ 

Proverbs 8:20

8:20 I walk in the path of righteousness,

in the pathway of justice,

Proverbs 5:14

5:14 I almost ⁴  came to complete ruin ⁵ 

in the midst of the whole congregation!” ⁶ 

Proverbs 22:13

22:13 The sluggard says, “There is a lion ⁷  outside!

I will be killed in the middle of the streets!” ⁸ 

Proverbs 27:22

27:22 If you should pound ⁹  the fool in the mortar

among the grain ¹⁰  with the pestle,

his foolishness would not depart from him. ¹¹ 

[4:21]  ¹ tn The Hiphil form יַלִּיזוּ (yallizu) follows the Aramaic with gemination. The verb means “to turn aside; to depart” (intransitive Hiphil or inner causative).

[4:21]  ² tn Or “keep” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV and many others).

[4:21]  ³ sn The words “eyes” and “heart” are metonymies of subject representing the faculties of each. Cf. CEV “think about it all.”

[5:14]  ⁴ tn The expression כִּמְעַט (kim’at) is “like a little.” It means “almost,” and is used of unrealized action (BDB 590 s.v. 2). Cf. NCV “I came close to”; NLT “I have come to the brink of.”

[5:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “I was in all evil” (cf. KJV, ASV).

[5:14]  ⁶ tn The text uses the two words “congregation and assembly” to form a hendiadys, meaning the entire assembly.

[22:13]  ⁷ sn The proverb humorously describes the sluggard as making ridiculous excuses for not working – he might be eaten by a lion (e.g., 26:13). It is possible that “lion” is figurative, intended to represent someone who is like a lion, but this detracts from the humor of the exaggeration.

[22:13]  ⁸ tc The LXX changes the phrase to read “murderers in the street” to form a better parallelism, possibly because the verb רָצַח (ratsakh) is used only of humans, not wild animals. The NIV attempts to solve the problem by making the second line a separate claim by the sluggard: “or, ‘I will be murdered in the streets!’”

[27:22]  ¹⁰ tn The verb means “to pound” in a mortar with a pestle (cf. NRSV “Crush”; NLT “grind”). The imperfect is in a conditional clause, an unreal, hypothetical condition to make the point.

[27:22]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew term רִיפוֹת (rifot) refers to some kind of grain spread out to dry and then pounded. It may refer to barley groats (coarsely ground barley), but others have suggested the term means “cheeses” (BDB 937 s.v.). Most English versions have “grain” without being more specific; NAB “grits.”

[27:22]  ¹² tn The LXX contains this paraphrase: “If you scourge a fool in the assembly, dishonoring him, you would not remove his folly.” This removes the imagery of mortar and pestle from the verse. Using the analogy of pounding something in a mortar, the proverb is saying even if a fool was pounded or pulverized, meaning severe physical punishment, his folly would not leave him – it is too ingrained in his nature.