Proverbs 5:15-16

5:15 Drink water from your own cistern

and running water from your own well. ¹ 

5:16 Should your springs be dispersed ²  outside,

your streams of water in the wide plazas?

Proverbs 9:17

9:17 “Stolen waters ³  are sweet,

and food obtained in secret ⁴  is pleasant!”

Proverbs 8:24

8:24 When there were no deep oceans ⁵  I was born, ⁶ 

when there were no springs overflowing ⁷  with water;

Proverbs 17:14

17:14 Starting a quarrel ⁸  is like letting out water; ⁹ 

stop it before strife breaks out! ¹⁰ 

Proverbs 20:5

20:5 Counsel ¹¹  in a person’s heart ¹²  is like ¹³  deep water, ¹⁴ 

but an understanding person ¹⁵  draws it out.

Proverbs 27:19

27:19 As in water the face is reflected as a face, ¹⁶ 

so a person’s heart ¹⁷  reflects the person.

Proverbs 8:29

8:29 when he gave the sea his decree

that the waters should not pass over his command, ¹⁸ 

when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

Proverbs 18:4

18:4 The words of a person’s mouth are like ¹⁹  deep waters, ²⁰ 

and ²¹  the fountain of wisdom ²²  is like ²³  a flowing brook. ²⁴ 

Proverbs 21:1

21:1 The king’s heart ²⁵  is in the hand ²⁶  of the Lord like channels of water; ²⁷ 

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, ²⁸ 

so is good news from a distant land. ²⁹ 

Proverbs 30:16

30:16 the grave, ³⁰  the barren womb, ³¹ 

land that is not satisfied with water,

and fire that never says, “Enough!” ³² 

Proverbs 30:4

30:4 Who has ascended into heaven, and then descended? ³³ 

Who has gathered up the winds in his fists? ³⁴ 

Who has bound up the waters in his cloak? ³⁵ 

Who has established all the ends of the earth? ³⁶ 

What is his name, and what is his son’s name? ³⁷  – if you know!

[5:15]  ¹ sn Paul Kruger develops this section as an allegory consisting of a series of metaphors. He suggests that what is at issue is private versus common property. The images of the cistern, well, or fountain are used of a wife (e.g., Song 4:15) because she, like water, satisfies desires. Streams of water in the street would then mean sexual contact with a lewd woman. According to 7:12 she never stays home but is in the streets and is the property of many (P. Kruger, “Promiscuity and Marriage Fidelity? A Note on Prov 5:15-18,” JNSL 13 [1987]: 61-68).

[5:16]  ² tn The verb means “to be scattered; to be dispersed”; here the imperfect takes a deliberative nuance in a rhetorical question.

[9:17]  ³ sn The offer is not wine and meat (which represented wisdom), but water that is stolen. The “water” will seem sweeter than wine because it is stolen – the idea of getting away with something exciting appeals to the baser instincts. In Proverbs the water imagery was introduced earlier in 5:15-19 as sexual activity with the adulteress, which would seem at the moment more enjoyable than learning wisdom. Likewise bread will be drawn into this analogy in 30:20. So the “calling out” is similar to that of wisdom, but what is being offered is very different.

[9:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “bread of secrecies.” It could mean “bread [eaten in] secret places,” a genitive of location; or it could mean “bread [gained through] secrets,” a genitive of source, the secrecies being metonymical for theft. The latter makes a better parallelism in this verse, for bread (= sexually immoral behavior) gained secretly would be like stolen water.

[8:24]  ⁴ sn The summary statements just given are now developed in a lengthy treatment of wisdom as the agent of all creation. This verse singles out “watery deeps” (תְּהֹמוֹת, tÿhomot) in its allusion to creation because the word in Genesis signals the condition of the world at the very beginning, and because in the ancient world this was something no one could control. Chaos was not there first – wisdom was.

[8:24]  ⁵ tn The third parallel verb is חוֹלָלְתִּי (kholalti), “I was given birth.” Some (e.g., KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV) translate it “brought forth” – not in the sense of being presented, but in the sense of being “begotten, given birth to.” Here is the strongest support for the translation of קָנָה (qanah) as “created” in v. 22. The verb is not literal; it continues the perspective of the personification.

[8:24]  ⁶ tn Heb “made heavy.”

[17:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “the beginning of a quarrel”; TEV, CEV “The start of an argument.”

[17:14]  ⁶ tn The verse simply begins with “letting out water.” This phrase is a metaphor, but most English versions have made it a simile (supplying “like” or “as”). R. N. Whybray takes it literally and makes it the subject of the clause: “stealing water starts a quarrel” (Proverbs [CBC], 100). However, the verb more likely means “to let out, set free” and not “to steal,” for which there are clearer words.

[17:14]  ⁷ tn The temporal clause is formed with the prepositional “before,” the infinitive construct, and the following subjective genitive. The verb גָּלַע (gala’) means “to expose; to lay bare,” and in the Hitpael “to disclose oneself; to break out.”

[20:5]  ⁶ sn The noun means “advice, counsel”; it can have the connotation of planning or making decisions. Those with understanding can sort out plans.

[20:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “in the heart of a man”; NRSV “in the human mind.”

[20:5]  ⁸ 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.

[20:5]  ⁹ sn The motives or plans of a person are “difficult to fathom”; it takes someone with understanding to discover and surface them (the verb in the last colon continues the figure with the sense of bringing the plans to the surface and sorting them out).

[20:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “a man of understanding”; TEV “someone with insight”; NLT “the wise.”

[27:19]  ⁷ tn The verse is somewhat cryptic and so has prompted many readings. The first line in the MT has “As water the face to the face.” The simplest and most probable interpretation is that clear water gives a reflection of the face (cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). One creative but unconvincing suggestion is that of L. Kopf, who suggests the idea is “water of face” (a construct) and that it means shame or modesty, i.e., a face is not really human without shame, and a man without a heart is not human (“Arabische Etymologien und Parallelen zum Bibelwörterbuch,” VT 9 [1959]: 260-61).

[27:19]  ⁸ tn The second line has “so the heart of a man to a man” (cf. KJV, ASV). The present translation (along with many English versions) supplies “reflects” as a verb in the second line to emphasize the parallelism.

[8:29]  ⁸ tn Heb “his mouth.”

[18:4]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ sn The metaphor “deep waters” indicates either that the words have an inexhaustible supply or that they are profound.

[18:4]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ sn The point of this metaphor is that the wisdom is a continuous source of refreshing and beneficial ideas.

[21:1]  ¹⁰ sn “Heart” is a metonymy of subject; it signifies the ability to make decisions, if not the decisions themselves.

[21:1]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ 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.

[30:4]  ¹³ sn To make his point Agur includes five questions. These, like Job 38–41, or Proverbs 8:24-29, focus on the divine acts to show that it is absurd for a mere mortal to think that he can explain God’s work or compare himself to God. These questions display mankind’s limitations and God’s incomparable nature. The first question could be open to include humans, but may refer to God alone (as the other questions do).

[30:4]  ¹⁴ sn The questions are filled with anthropomorphic language. The questioner is asking what humans have ever done this, but the meaning is that only God has done this. “Gathering the wind in his fists” is a way of expressing absolute sovereign control over the forces of nature.

[30:4]  ¹⁵ sn The question is comparing the clouds of the heavens to garments (e.g., Job 26:8). T. T. Perowne writes, “Men bind up water in skins or bottles; God binds up the rain-floods in the thin, gauzy texture of the changing clouds, which yet by his power does not rend under its burden of waters.”

[30:4]  ¹⁶ sn The ends of the earth is an expression often used in scripture as a metonymy of subject referring to the people who live in the ends of the earth, the far off and remote lands and islands. While that is possible here as well, this may simply be a synecdoche saying that God created the whole world, even the most remote and distant places.

[30:4]  ¹⁷ sn The reference to “son” in this passage has prompted many suggestions down through the years: It was identified as Israel in the Jewish Midrashim, the Logos or demiurge by some of the philosophers and allegorical writers, as simple poetic parallelism without a separate identity by some critical scholars, and as Jesus by Christian commentators. Parallels with Ugaritic are interesting, because Baal is referred to as a son; but that is bound up within the pantheon where there was a father god. Some of the Jewish commentators exhibit a strange logic in expressing what Christians would say is only their blindness to the full revelation: There is little cogency in this being a reference to Jesus because if there had been such a person at any time in the past he would have left some tradition about it through his descendants (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 317). But Judaism has taught from the earliest times that Messiah was preexistent (especially in view of Micah 5 and Daniel 7); and the claims of Jesus in the Gospels bear this out. It seems best to say that there is a hint here of the nature of the Messiah as Son, a hint that will later be revealed in full through the incarnation.