20
Why is Wisdom personified as a woman?
That's a straightforward question that admits of no simple answer. Nor is it possible to answer it from within the Hebrew Bible itself. And, it must be added, all answers to this "why?" question contain an element of speculation.
It is important to identify the kind of question this is. Behind the "why" there lurks a ...
14
I think the thing which is causing you to see a contradiction is the use of the imperative. Rephrase using conditionals:
If you answer a fool according to his folly, you risk becoming like him.
If you refrain from answering a fool according to his folly, he may become wise in his own conceit.
and the problem disappears. Instead you're left with a ...
13
Great question! I had never thought about that before, so I dug in a little. And as I examined the passage, I found a very significant literary device that I had never previously noticed:
Set Proverbs 7 and 8 side-by-side and you will notice several remarkable similarities/parallels between the two passages. Both present a long speech by a woman. Both women ...
10
TL;DR: Bribes that pervert justice are condemned, but gifts which curry favour are allowed and sometimes even a sign of wisdom.
שׁחד
The Hebrew word for 'bribe' in these verses is the root שׁחד (except for 15:27 which has מַתָּנָה 'gift' - I'm not sure why most translations render it as 'bribe' when 'gift' seems to fit the context just as well.) שׁחד only ...
9
The contradiction is intended, and rhetorical—and present in the Hebrew. However, there may be a slight play on the use of the preposition כ which means "according to, like" as in "according to his folly." If taken to mean "in the way he is foolish," it could refer to not being like him, "lest you become even as he is." But if taken in the "in his folly" ...
8
The books of the Septuagint (= LXX, here not the Septuagint "proper", which is limited to the Pentateuch, but the whole of the Jewish scriptures in Greek) were produced by different translators; the various books thus exhibit vastly different styles and approaches to the task. LXX-Proverbs is well known for being among the most "free" in making the Hebrew ...
7
The phrase in Hebrew is אֵשֶׁת נְעוּרֶךָ, "the wife of your youth".
The entire second line of the verse is וּשְׂמַח מֵאֵשֶׁת נְעוּרֶךָ, which is usually translated "rejoice in the wife of your youth".
The use of "rejoice" for this translation is probably the closest English gets to the meaning of the Hebrew imperative שְׂמַח (smach), but "rejoice" lacks ...
7
Does Proverbs 15:16 really say that great wealth brings with it the anxiety of possibly losing it?
No. It is possible to have great wealth with the fear of the Lord as Abraham had.
Genesis 13:2
Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.
Genesis 22:12
"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him....
7
Better to be:
monetarily poor and have the peace of mind which comes from fearing the Lord
than to:
have great monetary wealth but be in emotional turmoil trying to manage life on your own because you don't think you need the Lord.
IOW, better to be poor in money, but rich in spirit than to be rich in money but poor in spirit.
This foreshadows Matt. 19:...
6
Shift of Emphasis and Focus
The same Hebrew word (שֶׁ֫קֶר; shěqěr)1 is used for both "lying" and "false" in those verses from the ESV, so there is a definite relationship between them, but also a difference of emphasis.
Note how the first five abominations relate to things done with the body (eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet). These focus on "parts" of a ...
6
This has been called "The Most Obscure Verse in Proverbs". Textual and/or translational uncertainties involve nearly every word in the verse1 and they are to some extent inseparable if we want to end up with a coherent proverb. However, the OP has specifically asked about the translation "archer", so I'll focus on that and only briefly mention some of the ...
6
From "The Songs of the Witnesses" :
From everlasting was I poured, from when all did begin,
or ever earth was. When there were no depths to be within -
Then was I brought forth, when no founts with water did abound;
before the mountains were set down, before the hills were found.
I was brought forth before he made the earth or did it dress.
Before ...
6
The Pauline dictum about the "killing letter" and "vivifying Spirit" is appropriate to first think about the principles of exegesis, for a theologian should not be enslaved by the letter of any text, but adhere to the spirit, logos, to philosophy: even the revelation cannot bypass philosophy and there is a difficult, heartrendingly so, "marital" relationship ...
6
The idea of the verses 18-20 speaks about things that won't leave any "tracks" after they act: the eagle in the sky, the snake on the rocks, the ship in the water and relations between man and woman ( not a virgin one - עלמה so it won't leave tracks):
NIV Proverbs 30:
18“There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not ...
6
The questions in Proverbs 30:4 are rhetorical and not intended to be answered, because the reader already knows the answers.
You need to read the questions in context. The context is the eastern wiseman Agur ben-Yakeh's preface to his proverbs. The preface is verses 2, 3 and four.
In this preface, Agur ben-Yakeh disclaims any divine knowledge and presents ...
6
The phrase "eyes of the LORD" in the OT is frequent and denotes several things including:
God's omniscience; Prov 22:12, 2 Chron 16:9
God's righteous judgement of actions; Amos 9:8, 1 Kings 15:5, Judges 3:12, 2 Chron 27:2, 29:6, 2 Chron 34:2
God's watch care of His people; Deut 11:12, Prov 15:3, Judges 6:1, 13:1
Fascinatingly, Zechariah contains ...
5
The Idea in Brief
The Masoretic Text for this passage contains marginalia written in Palestinian Aramaic which will cue the reader to understand the verse according to how the Masoretic scholars understood the text. Based on this marginalia, the following translation is how the Masoretic scholars understood this verse.
Proverbs 22:6
6 [The example of] ...
5
The Hebrew word used in Psalm 16:33 is גּוֹרָל, which refers to stones which were cast to get a decision. Garments were also used sometimes. The word can also be used as a metaphor for 'destiny.'1 The IVP commentary explains that casting lots "is a form of divination in which the assumption is that God will determine the cast and thus provide the answer (...
4
The verse is not Proverbs 18:8, but Proverbs 8:8, which states
Proverbs 8:8 (NASB)
8 All the utterances of my mouth are in righteousness;
There is nothing crooked or perverted in them.
The Hebrew word for "crooked" is Hebrew verb פָּתַל, which means "to twist." That is, this word is the Niphal participle, which means "twisted" (or crooked), and is ...
4
In English we have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter - "he", "she", and "it". Hebrew only has masculine and feminine. So just as a German would call a house a "he" because the word "house" in German is masculine in gender, so Hebrew calls wisdom "she" because it is feminine in gender. So when personified, wisdom becomes a woman.
Short ...
4
With above sentences the writer (not sure if this is Agur or the son of Jakeh) is talking about the 7th and 4th item. For example: 3 things amazes him and there is even a 4th thing that amazes him even more.
The book of Proverbs is completely in poetic form.
It contains different variations and combinations of basic forms of parallelism, a distinguishing ...
4
I am seeing parallelism here. There is a two-fold disobedience; one in disobeying the father by mocking and the other in disobeying the mother by disregarding her direction. I lean towards your thought on emphasis. The parallelism in the second part of the proverb gives a two-fold response to the two-fold disobedience. That being said, the particular ...
4
The phrases "put up security" and to "hold it in pledge" both have to due with the system of credit in ancient Israel. Their system was similar to the modern one with one major difference. Today we go to a bank(a business that provides loans), but banking had not been 'invented' yet so a person would have to obtain a loan from someone they knew. Giving ...
4
Is "possessed me" the proper translation... Or is "made me" the correct translation... ?
Believe it or not, there is little difference between (ancient) Greek (the language of the Septuagint) and (modern) English (or even Romanian, for that matter). In all these three (Indo-European) languages,
people have children, and make babies (see James 1:18, where ...
4
To understand this important instruction it is necessary to recall how ancient Israelite land and property was delineated.
Each family/clan had an allocated piece of land to work and from which to collect harvests. Only rarely were fences used, instead, "boundary stones" were used to mark corners and edges of property.
If an unscrupulous adjacent ...
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Prov 4:18 should not be separated from the previous and subsequent verse which forms a literary contrast. The thought begins in V14 as follows:
14 Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of
evildoers.
15 Avoid it; do not travel on it. Turn from it and pass on by.
16 For they cannot sleep unless they do evil; they are deprived of
...
3
The parallelism is clearer in the original than in the translation you quoted. A literal, wooden translation would be something like this:
Apples of gold in carvings of silver - A word spoken in its
circumstances
Word is parallel to apples of gold, while the [appropriate] circumstances is parallel to the carvings of silver.
Waltke in NICOT comments:
...
3
Proverbs 18:24
KJV: A man that hath friends must show himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
NIV/ESV: A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
There is another possible way to view the Hebrew here in that the key Hithpael-stem verb may mean "broken" in an ...
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