The Buyer Praises the Bargain After Leaving

Wine is given the name of a character: lets, the scorner who has been refusing correction since 1:22. “Strong drink” is shekhar, beer or other fermented drink, forbidden to priests on duty in Leviticus 10:9. “Raging” is the word for the loud woman of 7:11. “Deceived” means to reel or stagger, so the drinker is led off course on unsteady feet.

The first line reuses the lion of 19:12, but now the roar is the terror a king inspires. “Sinneth against his own soul” means forfeiting one’s life. Solomon uses the same phrase of Adonijah in 1 Kings 2:23, “if Adonijah have not spoken this word against his own life”, and has him executed the same day.

“To cease from strife” is literally “to sit away from” a quarrel, staying seated when the argument calls. Proverbs places the honour, kavod, in the not moving. The fool, by contrast, “will be meddling”: every one of them breaks out. The man who stays in his seat is the one the verse calls honourable.

The “cold” is horef, the autumn and winter season. Plowing in Israel was done precisely then, after the first rains of October and November softened ground baked hard all summer. The sluggard’s excuse is the weather of the only month the work could be done. At harvest he “shall beg”, literally ask, and there will be nothing.

The deep water of 18:4 returns, but now it is hidden in someone else’s heart. “Draw it out” is dalah, the verb for letting a bucket down a well, used of Jethro’s daughters and of Moses at the well in Exodus 2:16–19. Understanding is the rope and the bucket; counsel has to be hauled up.

“Goodness” is hesed, loyal kindness. Many people announce their own. The question “who can find?” is the same one that opens the poem of the capable wife in 31:10, “Who can find a virtuous woman?” Both times the book asks the question to mark something rare, not something impossible.

“Walketh” is the reflexive form of the verb, walking about, going through life. The same pattern appears in Psalm 37:26, where the righteous man’s “seed is blessed”. The integrity is his; the blessing lands on the next generation, who did nothing to earn it except be born to him.

“Scattereth” is the verb for winnowing, tossing grain with a fork so the chaff blows away and the heavy seed falls. The king does it “with his eyes”: his gaze alone sorts the court. Verse 26 picks up the same verb, as a wise king winnows the wicked.

A question with no one to answer it. Solomon’s prayer at the temple dedication says the same in a plain statement: “there is no man that sinneth not” (1 Kings 8:46), and Ecclesiastes 7:20 repeats it. The verbs are in the perfect tense, a finished job: “I have made clean”, as if the cleansing were complete.

The Hebrew is vivid: “a stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah”, two weights and two measures, one for buying and one for selling. The ephah was the standard dry measure for grain. Amos 8:5 condemns traders “making the ephah small, and the shekel great”, shrinking the goods and inflating the price.

“Child” is na‘ar, which covers everyone from an infant to a young man. The verb for “is known” can also mean “disguises himself”; it is the word used when Joseph “made himself strange” to his brothers in Genesis 42:7. A youth may show himself by his deeds, or try to hide behind them.

Moses objects that he cannot speak, and God answers: “who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?” (Exodus 4:11). Psalm 94:9 argues from the same fact: “He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?” The two senses by which people judge are both made things.

“Come to poverty” is the verb yarash in a passive form: to be dispossessed, to lose the inheritance. Love of sleep costs the land itself. The eyes God made in verse 12 are now told to open. 12:11 promised that “he that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread”, and the same bread is promised here.

“Naught” is ra‘, bad, repeated as a buyer repeats it at a market stall: bad, bad. “Boasteth” is the reflexive of halal, to praise, the root of hallelujah. He praises himself, and the bargain, once he is out of earshot. The verse records the haggle without adding a word of comment.

“There is gold” is a plain statement of supply: gold exists, and “rubies” too. The word may mean red coral or pearls; it is the same comparison used of wisdom in 3:15 and of the good wife in 31:10. The lips of knowledge are a “precious jewel”, literally a precious vessel, a treasured object in a house.

Exodus 22:26–27 required a creditor to return a poor man’s cloak by sundown, because it was his blanket. Here the verse tells the lender to take it anyway from someone who stood surety for a stranger; the fool deserves no leniency. The written text reads “strangers”, the traditional reading “a strange woman”. 27:13 repeats the saying.

Folly’s invitation in 9:17 said “stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant”. This verse reports what that bread becomes: gravel, grit and small stones in the mouth. Lamentations 3:16 uses the same word, “he hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones”.

“Good advice” is tahbulot, steering, a word from the helmsman’s trade, used for guidance in 1:5 and 11:14. Wars were steered by counsel; 24:6 says “by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war”. “Purpose” is the same word for plans as in 19:21, where they must still yield to the LORD’s counsel.

The “talebearer” is rakhil, a word related to the travelling trader who goes from house to house; Leviticus 19:16 forbids going “up and down as a talebearer”. The flatterer is literally one who opens his lips wide, a blabbermouth. “Meddle not” means do not mix with him, do not keep his company.

The law’s penalty for cursing father or mother was death (Exodus 21:17). The lamp going out is the family line ending. “Obscure darkness” is literally the pupil of darkness, the black centre of the eye; the same word describes “the black and dark night” when the young man walks to the strange woman’s house in 7:9.

The Hebrew has a variant spelling of “hastily” that gives “gotten greedily”. Placed after verse 20, the saying may picture an heir who grabs the estate before his father’s death, perhaps by driving the parents out as in 19:26; that link is an inference from the arrangement of the verses. The start is quick; the end is unblessed.

“Say not thou” forbids the sentence before it forms, the vow a man makes to himself. “Wait” is qavah, the root of the “hope” of 19:18, a word for being stretched taut. What is promised is not that the LORD will get revenge on the man’s behalf, but that he “shall save thee”. 24:29 repeats the ban on tit for tat.

Crooked weights are condemned four times in Proverbs (11:1, 16:11, 20:10 and here). A “false balance” is literally scales of deceit. Set right after the ban on personal revenge, the verse can be read as closing a back door: the man who is forbidden to pay himself back with his fists may try it on the scale.

“Goings” are the steps of a gever, a man at full strength. Psalm 37:23 uses almost the same words: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD.” Jeremiah 10:23 gives the conclusion: “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” The question at the end expects no answer.

“Devoureth that which is holy” means blurting out “It is holy!”, dedicating something to God on impulse. The verb means to speak rashly or to gulp. Jephthah is the Bible’s grim example, vowing whatever came out of his door first (Judges 11:30–35). Ecclesiastes 5:5 says it is better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

The threshing wheel was a cart wheel or sledge driven over the harvested grain to break the husks. Isaiah 28:27–28 describes how the farmer uses it on some crops and not others, adjusting the force to the grain. The king first winnows, then threshes: the wicked are separated before they are crushed.

“Spirit” here is neshamah, breath, the “breath of life” God breathed into Adam’s nostrils in Genesis 2:7. That breath is the LORD’s lamp, the small clay oil lamp carried into dark rooms. Zephaniah 1:12 has God say he will “search Jerusalem with candles”. The inner chambers of the belly are from 18:8.

“Preserve” is the verb for sentries keeping guard. Mercy and truth stand as the king’s bodyguard. Psalm 61:6–7 prays for the king in the same terms: “O prepare mercy and truth, which may preserve him.” The throne is “upholden”, propped up, and the prop is mercy again, named twice in one verse.

“Glory” is tif’eret, splendour; “beauty” is hadar, majesty, the dignity of kings. Young men have their strength, which is spent in the using. Old men have grey hair, which cannot be bought or faked. The verse gives each age its own honour and does not rank them.

“Blueness of a wound” uses havurah, the welt left by a lash, the same word as Isaiah 53:5, “with his stripes we are healed”. “Cleanseth” is from a root used for the cosmetic scrubbing of Esther 2:3, “things for purification”. The inner chambers of the belly appear again from verse 27; the lamp searches them, and here the blow reaches them.