The Nearby Friend and the Well-Kept Flock

“Bring forth” is yalad, to give birth: a day is pregnant, and nobody knows what it will deliver. “Boast thyself” is the reflexive verb Ahab uses in 1 Kings 20:11, “Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.” James 4:13–14 takes up the same warning about tomorrow.

Verses 1 and 2 share one root: “boast” is to praise oneself, and here another is to do the praising. The two words for outsider, zar and nokhri, are the pair used for the strange woman in 2:16 and 5:20. Praise is worth most when it comes from someone with no reason to give it.

Job 6:3 uses the weight of sand for grief: “it would be heavier than the sand of the sea.” The fool’s “wrath” is ka‘as, vexation, and the word can mean the anger the fool feels or the provocation he causes others. Either way, a stone can be set down, and this cannot.

“Outrageous” in 1611 meant beyond all bounds; the Hebrew word is a flood, anger overflowing its banks. Wrath is cruel and anger is a torrent, and envy is worse, because a flood recedes. 6:34 has already said “jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.”

A single line. “Open” is literally uncovered, and “secret” is hidden: love that never says the hard thing. Leviticus 19:17 joins the two ideas: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour.” Keeping silent can be a failure of love.

“Faithful” is ne’emanim, from the root of amen, reliable, trustworthy. The word behind “deceitful” probably means profuse or lavish: the enemy’s kisses are too many. Christian readers have long heard in the second line the kiss with which Judas greeted Jesus in Matthew 26:49.

“Loatheth” is literally tramples: the full man treads honey underfoot. The “honeycomb” here is the dripping comb of 24:13. Honey appears for the third time in three chapters (24:13, 25:16, 25:27), and here its value depends entirely on whether the one offered it is hungry.

The bird is “wandering”, the verb of Isaiah 16:2, where the daughters of Moab are “as a wandering bird cast out of the nest”. It is also the root of Cain’s sentence, “a fugitive and a vagabond” (Genesis 4:12). A man away from his place has left the nest that kept him safe.

Oil and incense were the luxuries of a feast, poured on guests and burned in the room. The second line is difficult in Hebrew, literally “and the sweetness of his friend from counsel of the soul”. The King James reads it as heartfelt advice; the Greek reads something quite different, about the soul torn by misfortune.

Rehoboam is the history that fits: he “forsook the counsel of the old men”, who had stood before Solomon his father, and listened to his young companions, and lost ten tribes (1 Kings 12:8). The verse runs to three lines and ends with a comparison that can be tested in any village: help next door beats kin a week away.

The father speaks about himself: a teacher is judged by his pupil. If the son turns out wise, the father can answer anyone who mocks him. Psalm 119:42 uses the same words: “So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me.” The son’s wisdom becomes the father’s defence.

The saying of 22:3 again, with the Hebrew here dropping its connecting words so that the second line runs abruptly: the simple pass on, are punished. Its placement is new: after the father’s plea in verse 11, the prudent son is the one who sees trouble coming and does not walk into it.

Repeated from 20:16, the pledge taken from a man who stood surety for a stranger. Here the Hebrew text itself has “strange woman”, where 20:16 had that reading only as the traditional correction. The repetition between the two collections again shows the sayings circulating separately before being set in one book.

“Blesseth” is barakh, which also means to greet, as in 2 Kings 4:29, “if thou meet any man, salute him not.” So the scene is a hearty greeting bellowed at dawn. The friend, woken up, will count it as a curse. Excessive public praise may also invite suspicion of what it is trying to cover.

The “continual dropping” of 19:13 returns, now on “a very rainy day”, a word found only here for a day of steady downpour. On such a day the leak cannot be escaped and the rain outside cannot be escaped either. The Hebrew says the two “are alike”, exactly equal.

Trying to restrain her is trying to hold the wind. Oil in the right hand cannot be gripped; it runs out between the fingers, and its scent announces it. “Bewrayeth” in 1611 meant betrays or reveals, as in Matthew 26:73, where Peter is told “thy speech bewrayeth thee.”

The Hebrew says a man sharpens “the face” of his friend, and the word for face, panim, is also the word for the edge of a blade, as in Ecclesiastes 10:10, “If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge.” The friend’s face is honed like the cutting edge of an axe.

A fig tree needs years of tending before it bears; the owner in Luke 13:7 had waited three years for fruit. The two verbs are both guarding verbs: the one who “keepeth” the tree eats from it, and the one who “waiteth on”, keeps watch over, his master is honoured by him.

The Hebrew has no verb at all: “as water, face to face, so the heart of man to man.” Still water was the common mirror. The line may mean that another person reflects your heart back to you, or that your own heart shows you who you are. The compression allows both.

Sheol and Abaddon again, the pair of 15:11, now as mouths that are never full. Habakkuk 2:5 describes the arrogant man who “enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied”. Ecclesiastes 1:8 says “the eye is not satisfied with seeing”. 30:16 lists the grave among four things that never say “Enough”.

The first line is the crucible and furnace of 17:3. The second is compressed: “a man according to his praise”. It may mean a man is tested by how he handles praise, or that he is assayed by what people praise him for. Either way praise is the heat, and what comes out shows what the metal was.

In 1611 “bray” meant to pound or crush, not the sound of a donkey. The “mortar” is a hollow bowl for pounding grain, and the “wheat” is crushed grain, groats, pounded to separate husk from kernel. Even that process, which strips grain to its core, will not separate a fool from his folly.

“Be thou diligent to know” doubles the verb: know, really know. “The state” is literally “the face” of the flock: the shepherd is to know each animal’s look. “Look well” is literally “set thy heart”. Jesus uses the same picture of a shepherd who knows his own in John 10:14.

The “crown” is nezer, the diadem put on the head of Joash at his crowning in 2 Kings 11:12, and the word for the high priest’s holy crown. The turn from flocks to crowns suggests the advice is aimed at a noble or a king, whose wealth was largely livestock; David had royal herdsmen over his flocks (1 Chronicles 27:29–31).

“Appeareth” renders galah, which can mean to be revealed or to go away, the verb also used for going into exile. Many translations read the first line as “the grass is gone”, followed by new growth appearing. The cycle of the seasons is the point: the pasture comes back when a crown may not.

Lambs give wool for clothing, and goats can be sold to buy land. The flock pays for the field, and the field feeds the flock: a self-renewing kind of wealth set against the riches of verse 24 that are “not for ever”. Jacob’s wealth in Genesis 30:43 is counted the same way, in flocks.

Goat’s milk was the everyday milk of Israel, more common than cow’s. “Maintenance” is literally hayyim, life: “life for thy maidens”. The chapter that began by warning about tomorrow ends with its last word being life, supplied daily from a well-kept flock to the whole household, servants included.