The Poor Person's Words Find No Welcome

A near twin of 28:6, where the poor man of integrity is set against one “perverse in his ways, though he be rich”. Here the other man is “perverse in his lips, and is a fool”, which makes an uneven pair, poverty against folly. The unevenness may be the point: a poor man is not a fool, and a smooth talker may well be one.

“Soul” can mean appetite or desire, so the first line may read “desire without knowledge is not good”. “Sinneth” is hata’, to miss the mark, the verb used of the Benjamite slingers who could hit a hair “and not miss” in Judges 20:16. Hasty feet overshoot the target.

“Perverteth” is the verb for overturning or twisting, used in Exodus 23:8 of the bribe that “perverteth the words of the righteous”. “Fretteth” is za‘af, to rage, the word used of the storming sea in Jonah 1:15. A man wrecks his own road and then storms at God about the wreckage.

“Separated” is the verb of 18:1, where a man “separated himself”. The poor man does not choose his isolation; it is done to him. The first line says wealth “adds” friends, many of them, as money adds interest. The friendships multiply with the balance.

A false witness is literally a “witness of lies”, and the ninth commandment forbade bearing one (Exodus 20:16). Deuteronomy 19:19 sets the penalty: whatever he schemed against his neighbour is done to him. “Shall not escape” is the verb for slipping away, as a bird slips from a snare. The next occurrence of this saying, in verse 9, ends more severely.

To “intreat the favour” is literally to stroke or soften someone’s face, the phrase used when Moses “besought the LORD” in Exodus 32:11. The “prince” is nadiv, a word that also means generous, so the crowd queues at the door of the open-handed man. The second line calls him “a man of gifts”, and everyone is his friend.

The only three-line verse in the chapter, and the third line is broken in the Hebrew; the Greek has extra lines here. The written text says “they are not”, the traditional reading “they are his”, which the King James blends as “wanting to him”. “Hate” can mean reject or put second, as when Leah was “hated” in Genesis 29:31.

“Getteth wisdom” is literally “acquires a heart”. To do so is to love one’s own soul. The line answers Wisdom’s warning at the end of chapter 8: “he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death” (8:36). Keeping understanding is self-preservation, not self-denial.

The saying from verse 5 returns with its last verb changed: the liar no longer merely fails to escape, he “shall perish”. The two copies bracket verses 6 to 8, where gifts and friends are traded, as if to remind the one who lies for advantage where the lying leads.

“Delight” is ta‘anug, luxury, dainty living. “Seemly” is the word for what is fitting, as in 17:7. A servant ruling princes is among the four things that make the earth tremble in 30:21–22, and Ecclesiastes 10:7 saw “servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth”.

“Discretion” is sekhel, insight, the kind that sees what lies behind an insult. “Deferreth his anger” is literally makes it long. “To pass over a transgression” uses the very words Micah 7:18 uses of God, who “passeth by the transgression”. The man who lets an offence go is doing something God does, and the verse calls it his glory.

The lion’s “roaring” is the deep growl of a lion over its prey, and 20:2 repeats the image for the dread of a king. Dew mattered in Israel’s rainless summer, carried in by the sea breezes and keeping crops alive; Hosea 14:5 has God promise to be “as the dew unto Israel”.

“Calamity” is plural in Hebrew, destructions, the same word as the “naughty tongue” of 17:4. The “continual dropping” is a leaking roof: houses had flat roofs of packed earth, and in the winter rains they dripped. 27:15 returns to it, “a continual dropping in a very rainy day”.

“Prudent” is maskelet, the feminine of the word for the “wise servant” of 17:2. Fathers usually arranged a son’s marriage, so it may be significant that the verse credits the wife to the LORD rather than to the father who negotiated it; that is an inference from the custom. House and wealth can be passed down; the wife is given.

“Deep sleep” is tardemah, the heavy sleep God cast upon Adam in Genesis 2:21 and upon Abram in Genesis 15:12. Laziness “casteth” the same kind of sleep, but without the divine purpose. The “idle soul” is literally a slack one, the word for a bow gone loose, and it ends up hungry.

The same verb is used twice: the one who keeps the commandment keeps his soul. “Despiseth his ways” means being careless of how one walks. The written Hebrew can be read “shall be put to death”, the formula of the law codes, while the traditional reading gives “shall die”.

Elsewhere Proverbs says “the borrower is servant to the lender” (22:7). Here the LORD takes the borrower’s place. “Lendeth” is the ordinary word for making a loan, and “that which he hath given” means his good deed, which will be repaid in full. The poor cannot sign the note, so God signs it.

“Hope” is tiqvah, which also means a cord, the word for the scarlet line Rahab hung from her window in Joshua 2:18. The father is told to act while that line still holds. “Chasten” is yasser, the verb of musar, instruction; correction and teaching come from the same root throughout the book.

“Suffer punishment” is literally “bear a fine”, the word for a penalty paid in the law of Exodus 21:22. “Deliver him” means rescuing him from the consequences, and “thou must do it again” is literally “thou wilt add”. A hothead is a debt that keeps coming due, and every bailout invites the next one.

The address turns to “thou”, as the first nine chapters did, in the middle of a collection mostly spoken about third persons. Two verbs, hear and receive, lead to one purpose. The payoff is placed at the “latter end”, late in life, so the verse asks for patience with instruction that does not repay at once.

“Devices” are plans, many of them, jostling in one heart. The counsel of the LORD is singular, and the Hebrew adds an emphatic pronoun: “the counsel of the LORD, it shall stand.” Psalm 33:11 says “the counsel of the LORD standeth for ever”, and Isaiah 46:10 has God say “my counsel shall stand”.

The first line is obscure. The word for “kindness”, hesed, occasionally means disgrace, as in Leviticus 20:17, where it is rendered “a wicked thing”. So the line may say “a man’s greed is his shame” rather than “a man’s desire is his kindness”. The second line is plain: an honest pauper beats a liar.

“Abide satisfied” is literally to lodge overnight full: the one who fears the LORD goes to bed fed. “Visited” is paqad, the verb for inspection and for a visit of judgment. Harm does not come calling on that house. The verse promises a quiet night, not a spectacular fortune.

The verse returns almost exactly at 26:15, where bringing the hand back “grieveth him”. The King James “bosom” renders a word that elsewhere means a dish, as in 2 Kings 21:13, “as a man wipeth a dish”. The picture is of a man with his hand already in the common bowl at dinner, too idle to lift it.

“Beware” is the verb for becoming shrewd: the simple onlooker learns from watching someone else get struck. 21:11 makes the same point. The law uses punishment as a public lesson in the same way, “all Israel shall hear, and fear” (Deuteronomy 13:11). The understanding man needs only words.

“Wasteth” is shadad, a violent word for plundering or devastating, used of raiders who strip a land. The picture seems to be a grown son stripping his ageing parents of property and turning his mother out of the house. The law put striking or cursing a parent under the death penalty (Exodus 21:15, 17).

The only place in the long collection from 10:1 to 22:16 where the father breaks in with “my son”, the address of chapters 1 to 9. The King James reads the verse as a warning against misleading instruction. Its form, “cease to hear”, is so blunt that some take it as irony: go on, stop listening, and wander.

An “ungodly witness” is a witness of Belial, the phrase used of the two false witnesses hired against Naboth in 1 Kings 21:10 and 13. He mocks justice itself. The wicked mouth “devoureth” iniquity, swallows it whole, like the man in Job 15:16 who “drinketh iniquity like water”.

“Judgments” here are penalties, sentences made ready in advance. “Prepared” means fixed, set in place, already waiting. The scorner and the fool are paired, and the stripes waiting for them point forward to 26:3, “a rod for the fool’s back”. The chapter that began with a poor man of integrity ends with the fool’s back.