Proverbs 8:17

8:17 I love ¹  those who love me,

and those who seek me find me.

Proverbs 12:1

12:1 The one who loves discipline loves knowledge, ² 

but the one who hates reproof is stupid. ³ 

Proverbs 17:19

17:19 The one who loves a quarrel loves transgression; ⁴ 

whoever builds his gate high seeks destruction. ⁵ 

[8:17]  ¹ sn In contrast to the word for “hate” (שָׂנֵא, shaneh) the verb “love” (אָהֵב, ’ahev) includes within it the idea of choosing spontaneously. So in this line loving and seeking point up the means of finding wisdom.

[12:1]  ² sn Those who wish to improve themselves must learn to accept correction; the fool hates/rejects any correction.

[12:1]  ³ sn The word בָּעַר (ba’ar, “brutish; stupid”) normally describes dumb animals that lack intellectual sense. Here, it describes the moral fool who is not willing to learn from correction. He is like a dumb animal (so the term here functions as a hypocatastasis: implied comparison).

[17:19]  ³ tn Heb “the one who loves transgression the one who loves a quarrel.” There is some ambiguity in the first line. The meaning would not differ greatly if either were taken as the subject; but the parallelism suggests that the proverb is about a quarrelsome and arrogant person who loves sin and invites destruction.

[17:19]  ⁴ tn Some have taken this second line literally and interpreted it to mean he has built a pretentious house. Probably it is meant to be figurative: The gate is the mouth (the figure would be hypocatastasis) and so to make it high is to say lofty things – he brags too much (e.g., 1 Sam 2:3; Prov 18:12; 29:23); cf. NCV, TEV, NLT. C. H. Toy (Proverbs [ICC], 348) wishes to emend פִּתְחוֹ (pitkho, “his gate”) to פִּיו (piv, “his mouth”), but that is unnecessary since the idea can be obtained by interpretation.