Amsal 14:20

14:20 A poor person is disliked ¹  even by his neighbors,

but those who love the rich are many.

Amsal 19:7

19:7 All the relatives ²  of a poor person hate him; ³ 

how much more do his friends avoid him –

he pursues them ⁴  with words, but they do not respond. ⁵ 

Amsal 22:22-23

22:22 Do not exploit ⁶  a poor person because he is poor

and do not crush the needy in court, ⁷ 

22:23 for the Lord will plead their case ⁸ 

and will rob those who are robbing ⁹  them.

Mikha 2:1-2

Land Robbers Will Lose their Land

2:1 Those who devise sinful plans are as good as dead, ¹⁰ 

those who dream about doing evil as they lie in bed. ¹¹ 

As soon as morning dawns they carry out their plans, ¹² 

because they have the power to do so.

2:2 They confiscate the fields they desire,

and seize the houses they want. ¹³ 

They defraud people of their homes, ¹⁴ 

and deprive people of the land they have inherited. ¹⁵ 

[14:20]  ¹ tn Heb “hated.” The verse is just a statement of fact. The verbs “love” and “hate” must be seen in their connotations: The poor are rejected, avoided, shunned – that is, hated; but the rich are sought after, favored, embraced – that is, loved.

[19:7]  ² tn Heb “brothers,” but not limited only to male siblings in this context.

[19:7]  ³ tn Heb “hate him.” The verb שָׂנֵא (sane’) may be nuanced “reject” here (metonymy of effect, cf. CEV). The kind of “dislike” or “hatred” family members show to a poor relative is to have nothing to do with him (NIV “is shunned”). If relatives do this, how much more will the poor person’s friends do so.

[19:7]  ⁴ tn The direct object “them” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of smoothness.

[19:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “not they.” The last line of the verse is problematic. The preceding two lines are loosely synonymous in their parallelism, but the third adds something like: “he pursues [them with] words, but they [do] not [respond].” Some simply say it is a corrupt remnant of a separate proverb and beyond restoration. The basic idea does make sense, though. The idea of his family and friends rejecting the poor person reveals how superficial they are, and how they make themselves scarce. Since they are far off, he has to look for them “with words” (adverbial accusative), that is, “send word” for help. But they “are nowhere to be found” (so NIV). The LXX reads “will not be delivered” in place of “not they” – clearly an attempt to make sense out of the cryptic phrase, and, in the process, showing evidence for that text.

[22:22]  ⁶ tn Two negated jussives form the instruction here: אַל־תִּגְזָל (’al-tigzal, “do not exploit”) and וְאַל־תְּדַכֵּא (ve’al-tÿdakke’, “do not crush”).

[22:22]  sn Robbing or oppressing the poor is easy because they are defenseless. But this makes the crime tempting as well as contemptible. What is envisioned may be in bounds legally (just) but out of bounds morally.

[22:22]  ⁷ tn Heb “in the gate” (so KJV); NAB, NASB, NRSV “at the gate.” The “gate” of the city was the center of activity, the place of business as well as the place for settling legal disputes. The language of the next verse suggests a legal setting, so “court” is an appropriate translation here.

[22:23]  ⁸ tn The construction uses the verb יָרִיב (yariv) with its cognate accusative. It can mean “to strive,” but here it probably means “to argue a case, plead a case” (cf. KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV). How the Lord will do this is not specified – either through righteous people or by direct intervention.

[22:23]  ⁹ tn The verb קָבַע (qava’, “to rob; to spoil; to plunder”) is used here in both places to reflect the principle of talionic justice. What the oppressors did to the poor will be turned back on them by the Lord.

[2:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Woe to those who plan sin.” The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe”; “ah”) was a cry used in mourning the dead.

[2:1]  ¹¹ tn Heb “those who do evil upon their beds.”

[2:1]  ¹² tn Heb “at the light of morning they do it.”

[2:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “they desire fields and rob [them], and houses and take [them] away.”

[2:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and they oppress a man and his home.”

[2:2]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and a man and his inheritance.” The verb עָשַׁק (’ashaq, “to oppress”; “to wrong”) does double duty in the parallel structure and is understood by ellipsis in the second line.