The Feast Does Not Disclose the Host

“Consider diligently” doubles the verb in Hebrew, understand with understanding. “What is before thee” can equally be read “who is before thee”: study the ruler, not only the food. The Egyptian Amenemope gives similar table advice for eating before a noble, looking at what is set in front of you.

The word for “knife” occurs nowhere else in the Bible. “A man given to appetite” is literally a master of nefesh, a word that means appetite and also throat. The advice plays on it: the man ruled by his throat should hold a blade to it, a fierce image for stopping the next swallow.

“Dainties” is mat‘ammot, savoury dishes, the word for the savoury meat Rebekah cooked so Jacob could deceive Isaac in Genesis 27. The ruler’s table serves “deceitful meat”, literally bread of lies. A feast has been used as a tool of deception before, and the word choice may recall it.

“Labour not” means do not wear yourself out. “Thine own wisdom” is binah, understanding, the same noun as 3:5, “lean not unto thine own understanding”. The father is not asking the son to be less clever, but to stop spending his cleverness on getting rich.

The Hebrew plays on flight: “set thine eyes” is literally “make thine eyes fly” toward riches, and then the riches grow wings and fly off. The eyes dart, and so does the money. Amenemope has a close image: riches “have made themselves wings like geese and are flown to the heavens”.

The “evil eye” is the stingy eye, the opposite of the good eye praised in 22:9, and here it belongs to the host. His “dainty meats” are the same savoury dishes as the ruler’s table in verse 3, so the two meals mirror each other: one host powerful, one grudging, both serving food that is not what it seems.

“Thinketh” renders a verb found only here, probably meaning to calculate or reckon, from a root used for measures and prices. The host is working out the cost of every mouthful while he says “Eat and drink.” The line describes a mean man keeping score, not a rule about the power of thought.

“Vomit up” is the verb Leviticus 18:25–28 uses of the land that spews out its inhabitants. The meal comes back up once the guest learns what the host really thought. “Lose thy sweet words” means the compliments paid over dinner are wasted, thrown away on a man who was counting.

To speak “in the ears” is to speak directly and privately, a word meant for one person. The fool will treat that wisdom with contempt. 9:7–8 gave the same warning about reproving a scorner, and 26:4–5 will make a puzzle of whether to answer a fool at all.

The landmark returns from 22:28, now next to “the fields of the fatherless”. Written in Hebrew consonants, the word for “old” resembles the word for “widow”, and some scholars read “the widow’s boundary”, which would match 15:25 and the Egyptian Amenemope’s warning about a widow’s field. That reading is a proposed correction, not what the Hebrew text says.

“Redeemer” is go’el, the next of kin who bought back family land and defended a relative’s rights, the role Boaz takes for Ruth (Leviticus 25:25; Ruth 4). The fatherless have no such relative, so God takes the job. Jeremiah 50:34 says the same: “Their Redeemer is strong… he shall throughly plead their cause.”

“Apply” is literally “bring”: bring your heart to instruction, bring your ears to words of knowledge. The verse opens a new unit, like 22:17, and asks for the same two organs. Heart and ear keep appearing together in this section because hearing without the heart does not last.

“He shall not die” can mean that correction will not kill him, reassuring a hesitant parent, or that it will keep him from an early death, as verse 14 goes on to say. The Aramaic Words of Ahiqar, known from a papyrus of the fifth century BC, has a close parallel: “if I strike you, my son, you will not die.”

The Hebrew puts a stress on “thou”: you yourself, with the rod. The parent is not to leave it to someone else. “Deliver his soul” is to rescue his life, the verb used for snatching someone out of a predator’s grip. The rescue the verse names is from Sheol, an early grave.

“My son” opens this verse, verse 19 and verse 26, marking the sections of the chapter. The father’s heart answers the son’s heart: wise in one, glad in the other. “Even mine” is literally “I too”, an emphatic pronoun, the father putting himself into the sentence.

The “reins” are the kidneys, from the Latin renes; the Hebrew placed deep feeling there. The verses form a cross: the son’s heart gladdens the father’s heart, and the son’s lips gladden the father’s kidneys. “Right things” is meisharim, straightness, a word that returns in verse 31 for wine going down “aright”.

The verb “envy” is qana’, which also means to be zealous, and the Hebrew does not repeat it in the second line. So the sense may be: do not burn with envy for sinners, but burn with zeal for the fear of the LORD all day. 24:1 and 24:19 return to the same warning, as does Psalm 37:1.

“An end” and “expectation” are the same pair of words as Jeremiah 29:11, “to give you an expected end”. “Cut off” is the verb used of a thread cut from the loom, as in Hezekiah’s prayer, “I have cut off like a weaver my life” (Isaiah 38:12). The verse repeats almost exactly in 24:14.

“Guide” is the verb ‘ashar, to walk straight on, from the same root as ashrei, blessed or happy. The son is told to make his heart step forward on the road. “Be wise” comes after “hear”: listening is the door, and the heart then has to walk through it.

The two nouns, drunkard and glutton, are the exact pair used in Deuteronomy 21:20, where parents bring a rebellious son to the elders: “he is a glutton, and a drunkard.” “Winebibbers” is the old English word for heavy drinkers, the insult thrown at Jesus in Matthew 11:19. “Riotous eaters of flesh” are squanderers of meat.

“Drowsiness” renders a word found only here, the heaviness after a feast. “Rags” is qera‘im, torn pieces, the word for the twelve pieces of the garment Ahijah tears in 1 Kings 11:30. The end of the banquet is a man dressed in scraps, sleeping through the day he needed for work.

The two lines bracket a life. The father is named at its beginning, “that begat thee”, and the mother at its end, “when she is old”. The command to honour both parents comes from Exodus 20:12, and the verse tests it at the point where a mother has become frail and easiest to overlook.

The Greek Septuagint does not have this verse at all. The four goods named, truth, wisdom, instruction and understanding, are the vocabulary of the book’s opening lines in 1:2–3. The command not to sell is the unusual part: what is bought here is never to be traded back, whatever the price offered.

“Greatly rejoice” doubles the verb, which is gil, a word for spinning or dancing with joy. The father of a righteous son does more than approve; he dances. The second line uses the ordinary word for gladness, and together they cover both the outburst and the lasting pleasure.

The verse is a wish in Hebrew: let your father and mother be glad, let her that bore you rejoice. The son is told that he can give them this. The mother is named twice in the chapter (verses 22 and 25), both times by her role in his birth or by her age.

The Hebrew text has two readings for “observe”: the written form means “delight in” my ways, the traditional reading “keep” or “watch” them. The request comes before the warning about the harlot, as if the father must hold the son’s heart and eyes before someone else tries to.

A cistern in Israel was often bottle-shaped, with a narrow mouth cut in the rock and a wide chamber below. Once inside, there was no climbing out; Jeremiah was let down into one and sank in the mire (Jeremiah 38:6). The “narrow pit” is such a cistern, and the “deep ditch” recalls 22:14.

“Lieth in wait” is the verb for setting an ambush. “As for a prey” may mean “like a robber”, from a rare word for snatching. She “increaseth the transgressors”, adds to the number of the faithless: men who break faith with their own wives. The ambush has more victims than one.

Six questions, each beginning “to whom?”. The second cry, avoy, is found nowhere else, a groan like “alas”. “Redness of eyes” is from the rare root used in Jacob’s blessing of Judah, “his eyes shall be red with wine” (Genesis 49:12). The riddle is posed so that the reader guesses before verse 30 answers.

“Tarry long” means staying late, the last to leave. “Mixed wine” is wine blended with spices to strengthen it, the drink Wisdom herself mixes for her guests in 9:2. The drinkers “go to seek” it with the verb for searching something out, investigating the new blend like connoisseurs.

“Giveth his colour” is literally “gives its eye”, the sparkle in the cup. “Moveth itself aright” means goes down smoothly, and it is the word meisharim, the “right things” the son’s lips were to speak in verse 16. Song of Solomon 7:9 uses the same phrase of the best wine, “that goeth down sweetly”.

“At the last” turns the sequence around: first the colour and the smooth swallow, then the bite. The “adder” is tsif‘oni, a venomous viper, the “cockatrice” whose den the child plays by in Isaiah 11:8. The verse names two snakes, as if one bite were not enough.

The Hebrew zarot can mean “strange women” or simply “strange things”, and many translations read the second: the drunk begins to see things. The heart “utters” perverse things, literally things turned upside down. The eyes lose their hold on what is there and the mouth loses its hold on sense.

Israel was not a seafaring people, and the sea is usually a picture of danger. The word for “mast” occurs only here. Psalm 107:27 describes sailors in a storm who “reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man”; this verse turns the comparison around and makes the drunk a man lying down in the swell.

“I was not sick” is literally “I did not know it”. The attackers are an unnamed “they”; he cannot say who hit him. His first question on waking is not what happened but when he can get up. “I will seek it yet again” is literally “I will add, I will seek it”, the verb for doing something one more time.