The First Account Is Not the Whole Hearing

“Intermeddleth” is the same verb as “meddled with” in 17:14, to break out in a quarrel. On that reading the loner bursts out against “all wisdom”, and the word here is tushiyyah, sound judgment or practical success. The Hebrew also puts “desire” first as the thing the separated man pursues: the one who cuts himself off chases his own craving.

In 1611 “discover” meant to uncover or lay bare. The Hebrew verb is galah, used in Leviticus 18 for exposing nakedness. The fool takes his pleasure in airing what is inside him, and the word choice hints that his self-display is a kind of indecent exposure.

“Ignominy” is qalon, lightness, the opposite of kavod, honour, whose root means weight. Where the wicked arrive, contempt and disgrace follow as a retinue. A small change of vowels gives “wickedness” instead of “the wicked”, and several modern translations read it that way: when wickedness comes, contempt comes with it.

The “flowing brook” uses the gushing verb that described the fool’s mouth pouring out folly in 15:2 and 15:28; here at last it is wisdom that bubbles up. The two lines may be synonyms, or a contrast between dark depths and a clear stream. 20:5 returns to the deep water in a man’s heart that understanding must draw out.

“Accept the person” is literally “lift up the face”, the legal idiom for partiality: raising the chin of a defendant to favour him. Leviticus 19:15 forbids respecting the person of the poor or honouring the person of the mighty. Here the favoured face belongs to the wicked, and the cost falls on the righteous.

Verses 6 and 7 are a matched pair: lips and mouth, then mouth and lips. The fool’s lips walk into a quarrel as if entering a room, and his mouth “calleth for strokes”, practically asking for a beating. 19:29 names the stripes that are prepared “for the back of fools”.

The “snare” is a fowler’s trap, the kind that springs shut on a bird. The fool is trapper and bird at once: his own lips set the snare for his own life. 10:14 already said that “the mouth of the foolish is near destruction”; here the destruction has arrived.

The “innermost parts of the belly” are literally its chambers, the inner rooms of a house, as if gossip were a guest shown into the private quarters. This verse returns word for word at 26:22. The King James “wounds” renders a rare word; the belly’s rooms are where the words settle and stay.

The “great waster” is literally a “master of destruction”. The word is mashhit, the “destroyer” that passed through Egypt on the night of the Passover in Exodus 12:23. The idle workman is kin to a demolisher; one lets a building fall and the other knocks it down.

A “strong tower” stood inside a walled city as the last refuge; at Thebez the whole town fled into one in Judges 9:51. “Safe” is nisgav, set high, lifted out of reach, a word from the same root as the “high tower” God is called in Psalm 18:2. The righteous run, and the running is the whole of their part.

The first half repeats 10:15. “Conceit” is maskit, imagination, a word used elsewhere for carved images, the idol “pictures” of Numbers 33:52. The rich man’s wall is “high”, the same word as the “safe” of verse 10: two towers, one real and one imagined, set side by side.

The thread of height runs through verses 10 to 12: a high tower, a high wall, and now a heart that is high, which is what “haughty” means. The heart that climbs precedes destruction. The second line was already the last word of chapter 15, and here it answers the rising heart with the low one.

“Answereth a matter” is literally “returns a word”, to reply. The verse applies to courtroom and conversation alike: a judge who rules before the evidence is in, a friend who replies before the sentence is finished. The folly and shame belong to him; the premature answer becomes his own disgrace.

“Sustain” is kul, to hold or contain, as a vessel holds what is put into it; in 1 Kings 8:27 the heavens cannot contain God. A man’s spirit can hold his sickness. But the “wounded” spirit, the same broken spirit of 15:13 and 17:22, has become the thing that needs carrying, and there is no one inside to lift it.

Knowledge is named in both lines, and each time a different organ goes after it. The heart “getteth”, the verb for buying, and the ear “seeketh”, the verb for hunting down. The discerning person pays for knowledge and goes looking for more, even after he has some.

The “gift” here is mattan, a present, a different word from the shohad, the bribe, condemned in 17:23. It “maketh room”, widens a space, as in a crowded court where a present clears a path to the great. Joseph’s brothers carry such a present to the governor of Egypt in Genesis 43:11.

“Cause” is riv, a lawsuit. “Searcheth” is haqar, to examine or cross-examine, the same verb used in 25:2 of kings who search out a matter. The neighbour’s arrival turns a speech into a trial. Deuteronomy’s rule of two or three witnesses (19:15) rests on the same instinct.

The lot returns from 16:33, now as a legal instrument. It “parteth between the mighty”, separating strong parties who might otherwise settle things by force. Israel’s land was divided among the tribes by lot (Numbers 26:55), which may be the kind of dispute between powerful parties the verse has in mind.

“Offended” comes from pesha‘, rebellion or breach of faith, so the brother has been betrayed, not merely annoyed. The “bars of a castle” are the heavy bolts of a citadel gate. The Greek Septuagint reads the verse quite differently, “a brother helped by a brother is like a strong city”, which suggests the Hebrew was hard even for its early translators.

The belly from verse 8 returns, this time fed by its own mouth. “Increase” is tevu’ah, the yield of a harvest, as in 15:6. Speech is pictured as a crop: what a man sows with his lips he eats with his stomach, whether it grows sweet or bitter. 12:14 and 13:2 use the same image.

The Hebrew says death and life are “in the hand of the tongue”, a picture of a limb that is all mouth and yet can hold things. “They that love it” are those who love to use the tongue, the talkers. They will eat its fruit, and the verse does not say which of the two fruits that will be.

The verse borrows Lady Wisdom’s own words from 8:35: “whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD.” The verbs “find” and “obtain favour” are the same, so the good wife is spoken of in the language used for wisdom herself. The Greek adds a line against keeping an adulteress.

“Intreaties” are pleas for grace, from the root of hen, favour. “Roughly” is literally “hard things”. The verse records without comment how rank shapes speech: the poor must ask, the rich may snap. Like 14:20, it states an observed fact and leaves the judgment to the verses around it.

The two kinds of friend have different names: re‘im, companions, in the first line and ohev, one who loves, in the second. “Sticketh” is davaq, to cleave, the verb of Genesis 2:24, “shall cleave unto his wife”, and of Ruth 1:14, where Ruth “clave unto” Naomi. It is the strongest word for attachment the Hebrew has.