Proverbs 6:25

6:25 Do not lust ¹  in your heart for her beauty,

and do not let her captivate you with her alluring eyes; ² 

Proverbs 11:22

11:22 Like a gold ring ³  in a pig’s snout ⁴ 

is ⁵  a beautiful woman who rejects ⁶  discretion. ⁷ 

Proverbs 11:2

11:2 When pride ⁸  comes, ⁹  then comes disgrace, ¹⁰ 

but with humility ¹¹  comes ¹²  wisdom.

Proverbs 14:25

14:25 A truthful witness ¹³  rescues lives, ¹⁴ 

but the one who breathes lies brings ¹⁵  deception. ¹⁶ 

Esther 1:11-12

1:11 to bring Queen Vashti into the king’s presence wearing her royal high turban. He wanted to show the people and the officials her beauty, for she was very attractive. ¹⁷  1:12 But Queen Vashti refused ¹⁸  to come at the king’s bidding ¹⁹  conveyed through the eunuchs. Then the king became extremely angry, and his rage consumed ²⁰  him.

Ezekiel 16:15

16:15 “‘But you trusted in your beauty and capitalized on your fame by becoming a prostitute. You offered your sexual favors to every man who passed by so that your beauty ²¹  became his.

James 1:11

1:11 For the sun rises with its heat and dries up the meadow; the petal of the flower falls off and its beauty is lost forever. ²²  So also the rich person in the midst of his pursuits will wither away.

James 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From James, ²³  a slave ²⁴  of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes dispersed abroad. ²⁵  Greetings!

James 1:24

1:24 For he gazes at himself and then goes out and immediately forgets ²⁶  what sort of person he was.

[6:25]  ¹ tn The negated jussive gives the young person an immediate warning. The verb חָמַד (khamad) means “to desire,” and here in the sense of lust. The word is used in the Decalogue of Deut 5:21 for the warning against coveting.

[6:25]  ² tn Heb “her eyelids” (so KJV, NASB); NRSV “eyelashes”; TEV “flirting eyes”). This term is a synecdoche of part (eyelids) for the whole (eyes) or a metonymy of association for painted eyes and the luring glances that are the symptoms of seduction (e.g., 2 Kgs 9:30). The term “alluring” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarification.

[11:22]  ³ tn Heb “a ring of gold.” The noun זָהָב (zahav, “gold”) is a genitive of material; the ring is made out of gold.

[11:22]  ⁴ tn Heb “in a snout of a swine.” A beautiful ornament and a pig are as incongruous as a beautiful woman who has no taste or ethical judgment.

[11:22]  ⁵ tn The verb “is” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.

[11:22]  ⁶ tn Heb “turns away [from].”

[11:22]  ⁷ tn Heb “taste.” The term can refer to physical taste (Exod 16:31), intellectual discretion (1 Sam 25:33), or ethical judgment (Ps 119:66). Here it probably means that she has no moral sensibility, no propriety, no good taste – she is unchaste. Her beauty will be put to wrong uses.

[11:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “presumptuousness.” This term is from the root זִיד, zid (or זוּד, zud) which means “to boil; to seethe; to act proudly; to act presumptuously.” The idea is that of boiling over the edge of the pot, signifying overstepping the boundaries (e.g., Gen 25:29).

[11:2]  ⁹ tn The verbs show both the sequence and the correlation. The first is the perfect tense of בּוֹא (bo’, “to enter; to come”); it is followed by the preterite with vav consecutive from the same verb, showing that one follows or comes with the other. Because the second verb in the colon is sequential to the first, the first may be subordinated as a temporal clause.

[11:2]  ¹⁰ sn This proverb does not state how the disgrace will come, but affirms that it will follow pride. The proud will be brought down.

[11:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “modesty”; KJV, ASV “the lowly.” The adjective צְנוּעִים (tsÿnu’im, “modest”) is used as a noun; this is an example of antimeria in which one part of speech is used in the place of another (see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 491-506), e.g., “Let the dry [adjective] appear!” = dry land (Gen 1:9). The root צָנַע (tsana’, “to be modest; to be humble”) describes those who are reserved, retiring, modest. The plural form is used for the abstract idea of humility.

[11:2]  ¹² tn The term “comes” does not appear in the Hebrew, but is supplied in the translation from parallelism.

[14:25]  ¹³ tn Heb “a witness of truth”; cf. CEV “an honest witness.”

[14:25]  ¹⁴ tn The noun נְפָשׁוֹת (nÿfashot) often means “souls,” but here “lives” – it functions as a metonymy for life (BDB 659 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 3.c).

[14:25]  ¹⁵ tn The term “brings” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity. Also possible, “is deceitful.”

[14:25]  ¹⁶ tc Several commentators suggest emending the text from the noun מִרְמָה (mirmah, “deception”) to the participle מְרַמֶּה (mÿrameh, “destroys”). However, this revocalization is not necessary because the MT makes sense as it stands: A false witness destroys lives.

[1:11]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “was good of appearance”; KJV “was fair to look on”; NAB “was lovely to behold.”

[1:12]  ¹⁸ sn Refusal to obey the king was risky even for a queen in the ancient world. It is not clear why Vashti behaved so rashly and put herself in such danger. Apparently she anticipated humiliation of some kind and was unwilling to subject herself to it, in spite of the obvious dangers. There is no justification in the biblical text for an ancient Jewish targumic tradition that the king told her to appear before his guests dressed in nothing but her royal high turban, that is, essentially naked.

[1:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “at the word of the king”; NASB “at the king’s command.”

[1:12]  ²⁰ tn Heb “burned in him” (so KJV).

[16:15]  ²¹ tn Heb “it” (so KJV, ASV); the referent (the beauty in which the prostitute trusted, see the beginning of the verse) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:11]  ²² tn Or “perishes,” “is destroyed.”

[1:1]  ²³ tn Grk “James.” The word “From” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

[1:1]  ²⁴ tn Traditionally, “servant” or “bondservant.” Though δοῦλος (doulos) is normally translated “servant,” the word does not bear the connotation of a free individual serving another. BDAG notes that “‘servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to Biblical transl. and early American times…in normal usage at the present time the two words are carefully distinguished” (BDAG 260 s.v.). The most accurate translation is “bondservant” (sometimes found in the ASV for δοῦλος), in that it often indicates one who sells himself into slavery to another. But as this is archaic, few today understand its force.

[1:1]  ²⁵ tn Grk “to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora.” The Greek term διασπορά (diaspora, “dispersion”) refers to Jews not living in Palestine but “dispersed” or scattered among the Gentiles.

[1:24]  ²⁶ tn Grk “and he has gone out and immediately has forgotten.”