Proverbs 6:3

6:3 then, my child, do this in order to deliver yourself, ¹ 

because you have fallen into your neighbor’s power: ² 

go, humble yourself, ³ 

and appeal firmly ⁴  to your neighbor.

Proverbs 7:23

7:23 till an arrow pierces his liver ⁵  –

like a bird hurrying into a trap,

and he does not know that it will cost him his life. ⁶ 

Proverbs 19:7

19:7 All the relatives ⁷  of a poor person hate him; ⁸ 

how much more do his friends avoid him –

he pursues them ⁹  with words, but they do not respond. ¹⁰ 

Proverbs 23:5

23:5 When you gaze upon riches, ¹¹  they are gone,

for they surely make wings for themselves,

and fly off into the sky like an eagle! ¹² 

Proverbs 23:7

23:7 for he is ¹³  like someone calculating the cost ¹⁴  in his mind. ¹⁵ 

“Eat and drink,” he says to you,

but his heart is not with you;

Proverbs 24:12

24:12 If you say, “But we did not know about this,”

does not the one who evaluates ¹⁶  hearts consider?

Does not the one who guards your life know?

Will he not repay each person according to his deeds? ¹⁷ 

Proverbs 30:33

30:33 For as the churning ¹⁸  of milk produces butter

and as punching the nose produces blood,

so stirring up anger ¹⁹  produces strife. ²⁰ 

[6:3]  ¹ tn The syntactical construction of imperative followed by an imperative + vav consecutive denotes purpose: “in order to be delivered.” The verb means “to deliver oneself, be delivered” in the Niphal. The image is one of being snatched or plucked quickly out of some danger or trouble, in the sense of a rescue, as in a “brand snatched [Hophal stem] from the fire” (Zech 3:2).

[6:3]  ² tn Heb “have come into the hand of your neighbor” (so NASB; cf. KJV, ASV). The idiom using the “hand” means that the individual has come under the control or the power of someone else. This particular word for hand is used to play ironically on its first occurrence in v. 1.

[6:3]  ³ tn In the Hitpael the verb רָפַס (rafas) means “to stamp oneself down” or “to humble oneself” (cf. KJV, NASB, NIV). BDB 952 s.v. Hithp suggests “become a suppliant.” G. R. Driver related it to the Akkadian cognate rapasu, “trample,” and interpreted as trampling oneself, swallowing pride, being unremitting in effort (“Some Hebrew Verbs, Nouns, and Pronouns,” JTS 30 [1929]: 374).

[6:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “be bold.” The verb רָהַב (rahav) means “to act stormily; to act boisterously; to act arrogantly.” The idea here is a strong one: storm against (beset, importune) your neighbor. The meaning is that he should be bold and not take no for an answer. Cf. NIV “press your plea”; TEV “beg him to release you.”

[7:23]  ⁵ sn The figure of an arrow piercing the liver (an implied comparison) may refer to the pangs of a guilty conscience that the guilty must reap along with the spiritual and physical ruin that follows (see on these expressions H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament).

[7:23]  ⁶ tn The expression that it is “for/about/over his life” means that it could cost him his life (e.g., Num 16:38). Alternatively, the line could refer to moral corruption and social disgrace rather than physical death – but this would not rule out physical death too.

[19:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “brothers,” but not limited only to male siblings in this context.

[19:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “hate him.” The verb שָׂנֵא (sane’) may be nuanced “reject” here (metonymy of effect, cf. CEV). The kind of “dislike” or “hatred” family members show to a poor relative is to have nothing to do with him (NIV “is shunned”). If relatives do this, how much more will the poor person’s friends do so.

[19:7]  ¹¹ tn The direct object “them” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of smoothness.

[19:7]  ¹² tn Heb “not they.” The last line of the verse is problematic. The preceding two lines are loosely synonymous in their parallelism, but the third adds something like: “he pursues [them with] words, but they [do] not [respond].” Some simply say it is a corrupt remnant of a separate proverb and beyond restoration. The basic idea does make sense, though. The idea of his family and friends rejecting the poor person reveals how superficial they are, and how they make themselves scarce. Since they are far off, he has to look for them “with words” (adverbial accusative), that is, “send word” for help. But they “are nowhere to be found” (so NIV). The LXX reads “will not be delivered” in place of “not they” – clearly an attempt to make sense out of the cryptic phrase, and, in the process, showing evidence for that text.

[23:5]  ¹³ tc The Kethib is הֲתָעוּף (hata’uf), “do your eyes fly [light] on it?” The Qere is the Hiphil, הֲתָעִיף (hata’if) “do you cause your eyes to fly on it?” But the line is difficult. The question may be indirect: If you cast your eyes on it, it is gone – when you think you are close, it slips away.

[23:5]  ¹⁴ sn This seventh saying warns people not to expend all their energy trying to get rich because riches are fleeting (cf. Instruction of Amememope, chap. 7, 9:10-11 which says, “they have made themselves wings like geese and have flown away to heaven”). In the ancient world the symbol of birds flying away signified fleeting wealth.

[23:7]  ¹⁷ tc The line is difficult; it appears to mean that the miser is the kind of person who has calculated the cost of everything in his mind as he offers the food. The LXX has: “Eating and drinking with him is as if one should swallow a hair; do not introduce him to your company nor eat bread with him.” The Hebrew verb “to calculate” (שָׁעַר, sha’ar) with a change of vocalization and of sibilant would yield “hair” (שֵׂעָר, se’ar) – “like a hair in the throat [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh], so is he.” This would picture an irritating experience. The Instruction of Amenemope uses “blocking the throat” in a similar saying (chapt. 11, 14:7 [ANET 423]). The suggested change is plausible and is followed by NRSV; but the rare verb “to calculate” in the MT would be easier to defend on the basis of the canons of textual criticism because it is the more difficult reading.

[23:7]  ¹⁸ tn The phrase “the cost” does not appear in the Hebrew but is implied by the verb; it is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[23:7]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “soul.”

[24:12]  ²¹ tn Heb “weighs” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV) meaning “tests” or “evaluates.”

[24:12]  ²² sn The verse completes the saying by affirming that people will be judged responsible for helping those in mortal danger. The verse uses a series of rhetorical questions to affirm that God knows our hearts and we cannot plead ignorance.

[30:33]  ²⁵ tn This line provides the explanation for the instruction to keep silent in the previous verse. It uses two images to make the point, and in so doing repeats two words throughout. The first is the word מִיץ (mits), which is translated (in sequence) “churning,” “punching,” and “stirring up.” The form is a noun, and BDB 568 s.v. suggests translating it as “squeezing” in all three places, even in the last where it describes the pressure or the insistence on strife. This noun occurs only here. The second repeated word, the verb יוֹצִיא (yotsir), also occurs three times; it is the Hiphil imperfect, meaning “produces” (i.e., causes to go out).

[30:33]  ²⁶ sn There is a subtle wordplay here with the word for anger: It is related to the word for nose in the preceding colon.

[30:33]  ²⁷ sn The analogy indicates that continuously pressing certain things will yield results, some good, some bad. So pressing anger produces strife. The proverb advises people to strive for peace and harmony through humility and righteousness. To do that will require “letting up” on anger.