Amsal 19:17-22
Konteks19:17 The one who is gracious 1 to the poor lends 2 to the Lord,
and the Lord 3 will repay him 4 for his good deed. 5
19:18 Discipline your child, for 6 there is hope,
but do not set your heart 7 on causing his death. 8
19:19 A person with great anger bears the penalty, 9
but if you deliver him from it once, you will have to do it again. 10
19:20 Listen to advice 11 and receive discipline,
that 12 you may become wise 13 by the end of your life. 14
19:21 There are many plans 15 in a person’s mind, 16
but it 17 is the counsel 18 of the Lord which will stand.
19:22 What is desirable 19 for a person is to show loyal love, 20
and a poor person is better than a liar. 21
[19:17] 1 sn The participle חוֹנֵן (khonen, “shows favor to”) is related to the word for “grace.” The activity here is the kind favor shown poor people for no particular reason and with no hope of repayment. It is literally an act of grace.
[19:17] 2 tn The form מַלְוֵה (malveh) is the Hiphil participle from לָוָה (lavah) in construct; it means “to cause to borrow; to lend.” The expression here is “lender of the
[19:17] 3 tn Heb “he.” The referent of the 3rd person masculine singular pronoun is “the
[19:17] 4 sn The promise of reward does not necessarily mean that the person who gives to the poor will get money back; the rewards in the book of Proverbs involve life and prosperity in general.
[19:17] 5 tn Heb “and his good deed will repay him.” The word גְּמֻלוֹ (gÿmulo) could be (1) the subject or (2) part of a double accusative of the verb. Understanding it as part of the double accusative makes better sense, for then the subject of the verb is God. How “his deed” could repay him is not immediately obvious.
[19:18] 6 tn The translation understands כִּי (ki) as causal. Some prefer to take כִּי as temporal and translate, “while there is hope” (so KJV, NASB, NCV, NRSV, NLT), meaning that discipline should be administered when the child is young and easily guided. In the causal reading of כִּי, the idea seems to be that children should be disciplined because change is possible due to their youth and the fact that they are not set in their ways.
[19:18] 7 tn The expression “do not lift up your soul/life” to his death may mean (1) “do not set your heart” on his death (cf. ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV), or it may mean (2) “do not be a willing partner” (cf. NIV). The parent is to discipline a child, but he is not to take it to the extreme and destroy or kill the child.
[19:18] 8 tn The Hiphil infinitive construct הֲמִיתוֹ (hamito) means “taking it to heart” in this line. The traditional rendering was “and let not your soul spare for his crying.” This involved a different reading than “causing his death” (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 206-7).
[19:19] 9 sn The Hebrew word means “indemnity, fine”; this suggests that the trouble could be legal, and the angry person has to pay for it.
[19:19] 10 tn The second colon of the verse is very difficult, and there have been many proposals as to its meaning: (1) “If you save [your enemy], you will add [good to yourself]”; (2) “If you save [your son by chastening], you may continue [chastisement and so educate him]”; (3) “If you deliver [him by paying the fine for him once], you will have to do it again”; (4) “If you save [him this time], you will have to increase [the punishment later on].” All interpretations have to supply a considerable amount of material (indicated by brackets). Many English versions are similar to (3).
[19:20] 11 sn The advice refers in all probability to the teachings of the sages that will make one wise.
[19:20] 12 tn The proverb is one continuous thought, but the second half of the verse provides the purpose for the imperatives of the first half.
[19:20] 13 tn The imperfect tense has the nuance of a final imperfect in a purpose clause, and so is translated “that you may become wise” (cf. NAB, NRSV).
[19:20] 14 tn Heb “become wise in your latter end” (cf. KJV, ASV) which could obviously be misunderstood.
[19:21] 15 sn The plans (from the Hebrew verb חָשַׁב [khashav], “to think; to reckon; to devise”) in the human heart are many. But only those which God approves will succeed.
[19:21] 16 tn Heb “in the heart of a man” (cf. NAB, NIV). Here “heart” is used for the seat of thoughts, plans, and reasoning, so the translation uses “mind.” In contemporary English “heart” is more often associated with the seat of emotion than with the seat of planning and reasoning.
[19:21] 17 tn Heb “but the counsel of the
[19:21] 18 tn The antithetical parallelism pairs “counsel” with “plans.” “Counsel of the
[19:21] sn The point of the proverb is that the human being with many plans is uncertain, but the
[19:22] 19 tn Heb “the desire of a man” (so KJV). The noun in construct is תַּאֲוַת (ta’avat), “desire [of].” Here it refers to “the desire of a man [= person].” Two problems surface here, the connotation of the word and the kind of genitive. “Desire” can also be translated “lust,” and so J. H. Greenstone has “The lust of a man is his shame” (Proverbs, 208). But the sentence is more likely positive in view of the more common uses of the words. “Man” could be a genitive of possession or subjective genitive – the man desires loyal love. It could also be an objective genitive, meaning “what is desired for a man.” The first would be the more natural in the proverb, which is showing that loyal love is better than wealth.
[19:22] 20 tn Heb “[is] his loyal love”; NIV “unfailing love”; NRSV “loyalty.”
[19:22] 21 sn The second half of the proverb presents the logical inference: The liar would be without “loyal love” entirely, and so poverty would be better than this. A poor person who wishes to do better is preferable to a person who makes promises and does not keep them.
