Proverbs 7:7

7:7 and I saw among the naive –

I discerned among the youths ¹  –

a young man ²  who lacked wisdom. ³ 

Proverbs 9:4-6

9:4 “Whoever is naive, let him turn in here,”

she says ⁴  to those ⁵  who lack understanding. ⁶ 

9:5 “Come, eat ⁷  some of my food,

and drink some of the wine I have mixed. ⁸ 

9:6 Abandon your foolish ways ⁹  so that you may live, ¹⁰ 

and proceed ¹¹  in the way of understanding.”

Proverbs 9:16-18

9:16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here,”

she says to those who lack understanding. ¹² 

9:17 “Stolen waters ¹³  are sweet,

and food obtained in secret ¹⁴  is pleasant!”

9:18 But they do not realize ¹⁵  that the dead ¹⁶  are there,

that her guests are in the depths of the grave. ¹⁷ 

Psalms 94:8

94:8 Take notice of this, ¹⁸  you ignorant people! ¹⁹ 

You fools, when will you ever understand?

Matthew 9:13

9:13 Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ ²⁰  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 11:29-30

11:29 Take my yoke ²¹  on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 11:30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry.”

Matthew 23:37

Judgment on Israel

23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, ²²  you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! ²³  How often I have longed ²⁴  to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but ²⁵  you would have none of it! ²⁶ 

Luke 19:42

19:42 saying, “If you had only known on this day, ²⁷  even you, the things that make for peace! ²⁸  But now they are hidden ²⁹  from your eyes.

Revelation 22:17

22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say: “Come!” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge.

[7:7]  ¹ tn Heb “sons.”

[7:7]  ² tn Heb “lad” or “youth.”

[7:7]  ³ tn Heb “heart.”

[9:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “lacking of heart she says to him.” The pronominal suffix is a resumptive pronoun, meaning, “she says to the lacking of heart.”

[9:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “him.”

[9:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “heart”; cf. NIV “to those who lack judgment.”

[9:5]  ⁷ tn The construction features a cognate accusative (verb and noun from same root). The preposition בּ (bet) has the partitive use “some” (GKC 380 §119.m).

[9:5]  ⁸ tn The final verb actually stands in a relative clause although the relative pronoun is not present; it modifies “wine.”

[9:6]  ⁹ tn There are two ways to take this word: either as “fools” or as “foolish ways.” The spelling for “foolishness” in v. 13 differs from this spelling, and so some have taken that as an indicator that this should be “fools.” But this could still be an abstract plural here as in 1:22. Either the message is to forsake fools (i.e., bad company; cf. KJV, TEV) or forsake foolishness (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

[9:6]  ¹⁰ tn The two imperatives are joined with vav; this is a volitive sequence in which result or consequence is expressed.

[9:6]  ¹¹ tn The verb means “go straight, go on, advance” or “go straight on in the way of understanding” (BDB 80 s.v. אָשַׁר).

[9:16]  ¹² tn This expression is almost identical to v. 4, with the exception of the addition of conjunctions in the second colon: “and the lacking of understanding and she says to him.” The parallel is deliberate, of course, showing the competing appeals for those passing by.

[9:17]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ 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.

[9:18]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “he does not know.”

[9:18]  ¹⁶ sn The “dead” are the Rephaim, the “shades” or dead persons who lead a shadowy existence in Sheol (e.g., Prov 2:18-19; Job 3:13-19; Ps 88:5; Isa 14:9-11). This approximates an “as-if” motif of wisdom literature: The ones ensnared in folly are as good as in Hell. See also Ptah-hotep’s sayings (ANET 412-414).

[9:18]  ¹⁷ tc The LXX adds to the end of v. 18: “But turn away, linger not in the place, neither set your eye on her: for thus will you go through alien water; but abstain from alien water, drink not from an alien fountain, that you may live long, that years of life may be added to you.”

[94:8]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “understand.” The verb used in v. 7 is repeated here for rhetorical effect. The people referred to here claim God is ignorant of their actions, but the psalmist corrects their faulty viewpoint.

[94:8]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “[you] brutish among the people.”

[9:13]  ²⁰ sn A quotation from Hos 6:6 (see also Matt 12:7).

[11:29]  ²¹ sn A yoke is a wooden bar or frame that joins two animals like oxen or horses so that they can pull a wagon, plow, etc. together. Here it is used figuratively of the restrictions that a teacher or rabbi would place on his followers.

[23:37]  ²² sn The double use of the city’s name betrays intense emotion.

[23:37]  ²³ tn Although the opening address (“Jerusalem, Jerusalem”) is direct (second person), the remainder of this sentence in the Greek text is third person (“who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her”). The following sentences then revert to second person (“your… you”), so to keep all this consistent in English, the third person pronouns in the present verse were translated as second person (“you who kill… sent to you”).

[23:37]  ²⁴ sn How often I have longed to gather your children. Jesus, like a lamenting prophet, speaks for God here, who longed to care tenderly for Israel and protect her.

[23:37]  ²⁵ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but” to indicate the contrast present in this context.

[23:37]  ²⁶ tn Grk “you were not willing.”

[19:42]  ²⁷ sn On this day. They had missed the time of Messiah’s coming; see v. 44.

[19:42]  ²⁸ tn Grk “the things toward peace.” This expression seems to mean “the things that would ‘lead to,’ ‘bring about,’ or ‘make for’ peace.”

[19:42]  ²⁹ sn But now they are hidden from your eyes. This becomes an oracle of doom in the classic OT sense; see Luke 13:31-35; 11:49-51; Jer 9:2; 13:7; 14:7. They are now blind and under judgment (Jer 15:5; Ps 122:6).