Proverbs 6

Translator Notes

1. Aravta ('you have become surety, you have pledged') describes the act of guaranteeing another person's debt. Taqa'ta kappekha ('you have struck your hands') is the ancient equivalent of a handshake or contract — the physical gesture that seals a financial commitment. The urgency of what follows suggests that this pledge was impulsive and dangerous.

Translator Notes

1. Noqashta ('you have been ensnared') and nilkadta ('you have been caught, captured') describe the pledge-maker as a trapped animal. The trap is imre fikha ('the words of your mouth') — your own speech has bound you. The repetition of the phrase emphasizes that the son's own words are the cage.

Translator Notes

1. The escape plan requires two actions: hitrappes ('humble yourself, prostrate yourself, trample on your own pride') and rehav ('press urgently, storm, importune'). The first demands the surrender of dignity; the second demands aggressive persistence. Both are preferable to remaining trapped in a bad financial commitment.

Translator Notes

1. The urgency forbids rest: no shenah ('sleep') and no tenumah ('slumber, dozing'). The financial trap must be resolved immediately — every hour of delay increases the danger.

Translator Notes

1. The escape metaphors — tsevi ('gazelle') and tsippor ('bird') — emphasize speed and desperation. Both animals survive only by immediate, total flight. The yaqush ('fowler, bird-catcher') is the one who sets traps; the surety-giver has walked into one and must escape with the same urgency as prey fleeing a predator.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The atsel ('sluggard') is a distinctive Proverbs character who appears repeatedly (6:6, 9; 10:26; 13:4; 15:19; 19:24; 20:4; 21:25; 22:13; 24:30-34; 26:13-16). The sluggard is not merely tired but characterized by a particular kind of self-deception: always having a reason not to act.

Translator Notes

1. Three terms of authority — qatsin ('commander, chief'), shoter ('overseer, officer'), and moshel ('ruler') — are absent from the ant's life. She needs no external management. The implied rebuke is sharp: the sluggard has father, teacher, and wisdom tradition — far more guidance than the ant — and still does less.

Translator Notes

1. The ant's two actions — takhin ('she prepares, she establishes') in summer and agrah ('she gathers, she stores') at harvest — demonstrate foresight. She works when conditions allow in order to survive when they do not. The sluggard fails precisely at this point: he cannot connect present effort to future need.

Translator Notes

1. The ad matay ('how long?') directed at the sluggard echoes Wisdom's own ad matay in 1:22. The question implies that the sluggard's sleep is not rest but evasion — he lies in bed to avoid the demands of the day.

Translator Notes

1. The sluggard's own voice appears in quotation: me'at shenot ('a little sleep'), me'at tenumot ('a little slumber'), me'at chibbuq yadayim ('a little folding of the hands'). The triple me'at ('a little, just a bit') is the sluggard's self-deception — each delay is small, but they accumulate into destruction. The charm of the passage is that the sluggard never asks for much; he just asks for it perpetually.

Translator Notes

1. Poverty (reshekha, 'your poverty') arrives kimhalekh ('like a traveler, like a prowler') — it approaches gradually, on foot, then suddenly it is at the door. Need (machsorekha, 'your lack') arrives ke-ish magen ('like a man with a shield, like an armed man') — by then it is a warrior you cannot fight off. The progression from quiet approach to armed assault captures how poverty works: it creeps before it conquers.

Translator Notes

1. Adam beliyya'al ('a person of worthlessness, a person of Belial') and ish aven ('a man of iniquity, a man of trouble'). Beliyya'al may derive from beli ('without') and ya'al ('profit, worth') — a person of no value. The troublemaker's primary tool is iqqeshut peh ('crookedness of mouth') — perverted, twisted speech.

Translator Notes

1. Three body parts used for covert communication: eyes that qorets ('wink, pinch shut'), feet that molel ('scrape, shuffle, signal'), and fingers that moreh ('point, teach, direct'). The troublemaker communicates through a private language of gestures — he conspires in plain sight using signals his targets cannot read.

Translator Notes

1. Tahpukhot ('perversities, things turned upside down') are in his lev ('heart') — the command center is corrupted. He choresh ra ('plows evil, devises harm') at all times and yeshalle'ach midyanim ('sends out, dispatches strife'). The verb shalach ('send') with midyanim ('conflicts, disputes') presents discord as something deliberately launched, not accidentally caused.

Translator Notes

1. Pit'om ('suddenly') and peta ('in an instant') — the same suddenness the troublemaker used against others now strikes him. His eido ('his disaster, his calamity') arrives without warning, and he yisshaver ('will be shattered, broken') ve-ein marpe ('and there is no healing, no remedy'). The sowing of discord produces a harvest of irreversible destruction.

Translator Notes

1. The ascending numerical pattern (x... x+1) is found throughout the ancient Near East, from Ugaritic poetry to Amos's oracles against the nations. It creates anticipation: the hearer knows the final item will be the most important.

Translator Notes

1. The list begins with three body parts: eynayim ramot ('eyes that are high, haughty, arrogant'), leshon shaqer ('a tongue of falsehood'), and yadayim shofkhot dam naqi ('hands pouring out innocent blood'). Eyes, tongue, hands — perception, speech, action, each corrupted. The dam naqi ('innocent blood') echoes the gratuitous violence of 1:11.

Translator Notes

1. The list continues with heart (lev choresh machshevot aven, 'a heart plowing wicked plans') and feet (raglayim memaharot laruts lara'ah, 'feet hastening to run to evil'). The inward source (heart devising) produces the outward result (feet running). The verb charah ('to plow, to devise') applied to the heart shows that evil is cultivated, not accidental.

Translator Notes

1. The verb yafiach ('breathes out, blows') applied to lies makes falsehood involuntary and constant — the false witness does not decide to lie; he exhales lies. The placement of the discord-sower at the climax of a list that includes murder reveals Proverbs' communal priorities: fracturing brotherhood is worse than shedding blood.

Translator Notes

1. The instruction from 1:8 returns nearly verbatim, reopening the parental instruction format for the adultery warning. The mother's torah stands in equal authority with the father's mitsvah.

Translator Notes

1. The binding imagery from 3:3 continues the Deuteronomic echo (Deuteronomy 6:8). The instructions must be physically attached — tamid ('continually, always') — to the heart and neck. The repetition of this imagery throughout the opening chapters creates a cumulative insistence: wear wisdom like clothing.

Translator Notes

1. Three life-moments — walking, sleeping, waking — are all covered by parental instruction personified. It tancheh ('will lead, will guide'), tishmor ('will guard, will watch over'), and tesichekha ('will speak with you, will converse with you'). The instruction becomes a companion that is never absent — a guide on the road, a guardian in sleep, a conversation partner at dawn.

Translator Notes

1. Mitsvah as ner ('lamp') and torah as or ('light') connect to the dawn imagery of 4:18. Instruction illuminates what darkness hides. The tokhechot musar ('reproofs of discipline') — the corrections that hurt — are derekh chayyim ('the way of life'). The road to life runs through correction, not around it.

Translator Notes

1. The lamp/light of instruction (v23) serves a specific protective function: guarding from the eshet ra ('evil woman, woman of harm') and from chelqat leshon nokhriiyyah ('the smoothness of the tongue of the foreign woman'). The same chelqah ('smoothness') from 5:3 returns — her weapon is always her speech.

Translator Notes

1. The verb tachmod ('desire, covet') is the same verb from the tenth commandment (Exodus 20:17). The adultery warning is grounded in the Decalogue — to desire the forbidden woman is to covet. Her af'appeiha ('her eyelids,' poetic for her glances) are the instruments of capture. Desire begins in the heart (bilevavekha) before it reaches the body.

Translator Notes

1. Two categories are distinguished: the ishah zonah ('prostitute') costs you economically — she reduces a man ad kikkar lachem ('to a round of bread,' that is, to poverty). But the eshet ish ('wife of a man, married woman') does something worse: she tatsud ('hunts, stalks') a nefesh yeqarah ('a precious life, a valuable soul'). The prostitute takes your money; the adulteress takes your life.

Translator Notes

1. The first of two rhetorical questions with obvious answers. Fire (esh) against the cheq ('chest, bosom, lap') will burn the begadav ('his garments'). The question expects no answer because the answer is self-evident. Adultery is like carrying fire — the burning is not a possibility but a certainty.

Translator Notes

1. The second question intensifies: gechalim ('hot coals, embers') under the raglav ('his feet'). The answer, again, is obvious. The fire metaphor makes adultery a question of physics, not merely morality — consequences follow as inevitably as burns follow fire.

Translator Notes

1. The application is direct: haba el eshet re'ehu ('the one who goes to his neighbor's wife') will lo yinnaqeh ('not be held innocent, not go unpunished'). The verb naqah ('to be clean, to be innocent, to be acquitted') in the negative means there is no escape from consequences. Kol hanoge'a bah ('everyone who touches her') extends the warning to any degree of involvement.

Translator Notes

1. A surprising comparison begins: theft from hunger receives understanding, not contempt. The lo yavuzu ('they do not despise') shows that the community recognizes the mitigating force of genuine need.

Translator Notes

1. Even the understood thief faces consequences: shiv'atayim ('sevenfold') restitution, potentially kol hon beito ('all the wealth of his house'). The sevenfold payment exceeds the Mosaic requirement (Exodus 22:1-4 specifies four- or fivefold) and may represent a general idiom for complete restitution.

Translator Notes

1. The comparison's point: theft from hunger is understandable but still costly. Adultery is not even understandable — it is chasar lev ('lacking heart, lacking sense'). There is no mitigating circumstance. The no'ef ('adulterer') is mashchit nafsho ('destroying his own soul, ruining himself'). The destruction is self-inflicted.

Translator Notes

1. Nega ('wound, blow, plague') and qalon ('disgrace, shame') — physical and social consequences. The cherpato ('his reproach, his disgrace') lo timmacheh ('will not be blotted out, erased'). Unlike the thief who can repay and restore his standing, the adulterer's reputation is permanently damaged.

Translator Notes

1. Qin'ah ('jealousy, zeal, passionate anger') is chamat gaver ('the rage of a man, a husband's fury'). The gaver is the offended husband whose wife has been taken. His jealousy will not yachmol ('show mercy, spare, have compassion') on the yom naqam ('day of vengeance, day of retribution'). The social consequences of adultery include facing the wrath of a man with every reason to destroy you.

Translator Notes

1. Unlike the thief's debt, which can be repaid (v31), the adulterer's offense is beyond financial resolution. Lo yissa pene khol kofer ('he will not lift the face of any ransom') — no payment will satisfy the husband. Lo yoveh ki tarbeh shochad ('he will not consent though you multiply the bribe'). Money cannot purchase forgiveness for this offense. The adultery sequence ends where it began: with consequences that are as certain as fire and as inescapable as debt.