1Hear, O sons, a father’s reproof,
and listen to discerning knowledge.
2For good learning I have given you,
do not forsake my teaching.
3For I was a son to my father,
a tender only child for my mother.
4And he taught me and said to me:
“Let your heart hold on to my words.
Keep my commands and live.
5Get wisdom, get discernment.
Do not forget nor swerve from my mouth’s sayings.
6Do not forsake her and she will guard you.
Love her and she will keep you.
7The beginning of wisdom is—get wisdom,
and in all that you get, get discernment.
8Dandle her and she will exalt you,
will honor you when you embrace her.
9She will put on your head a garland of grace,
a crown of splendor she will hand you.”
10Hear, my son, and take my sayings,
that the years of your life be many.
11In the way of wisdom I teach you,
I guide you on pathways of rightness.
12When you walk, your step is not straitened.
If you run, you will not stumble.
13Hold fast to reproof, don’t let go.
Keep it, for it is your life.
14On the wicked’s path do not enter,
and do not stride on the way of the evil.
15Shun it, don’t pass upon it,
turn away from it and pass on.
16For they do not sleep if they’ve done no evil,
and they’re robbed of sleep if they trip no one up.
17For they break the bread of wickedness,
and the wine of outrage they drink.
18But the path of the righteous is like light’s radiance,
ever brighter till day has come.
19The way of the wicked is like darkness.
They know not on what they stumble.
20My son, listen to my words,
to my sayings bend your ear.
21Let them not slip away from your eyes,
guard them within your heart.
22For they are life to those who find them,
and healing to all their flesh.
23More than anything watched guard your heart,
for from it are the ways out to life.
24Put away from you twisted speech
and lips’ contortion keep far from you.
25Let your eyes look in front,
and your gaze straight before you.
26Level the pathway of your foot,
and all your ways will be sound.
27Do not veer to the right or the left.
Keep your foot away from evil.
CHAPTER 4 NOTES
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3. For I was a son to my father. In the tradition-oriented framework of Proverbs, wisdom is a quality that age imparts to youth (a theme repeatedly struck by Job’s companions), father to son. That idea is reinforced here by the introduction of a third generation, the grandfather of the young man who is the object of instruction. Just as the Mentor was taught by his father, whose words he goes on to quote, he will teach the young man.
a tender only child. As an only child, he would have been a special object of parental attention and of solicitude for his moral education.
6. Do not forsake her. The feminine pronoun refers to wisdom, which, even without explicit personification, is imagined as a female figure.
7. The beginning of wisdom is—get wisdom. This sounds tautological, but Fox plausibly explains that it means one must acquire the precepts of wisdom even if at first it may be only by rote, with true comprehension dawning later.
8. Dandle her. There has been some exegetical dispute about the precise meaning of the verb salsel (the root probably suggests “curling”), but the manifest chiastic structure of the line argues for some physical expression of affection: dandle (a), exalt (b), honor (b’), embrace (a’). The next line exhibits a similar chiastic pattern.
10. Hear, my son. This formulaic exhortation, after the citation of the grandfather’s admonitions to embrace wisdom, marks the beginning of a new unit. The subject of this unit is the imperative need to avoid the company of the wicked, and its governing metaphor is the two paths—the way of wisdom (verses 11–13) and the way of the wicked (verses 14–19).
12. your step is not straitened. The translation picks up a hint from the King James Version, which follows the alliterative effect of the Hebrew, loʾ-yeitsar tsaʿadekha.
14. On the wicked’s path do not enter. The use of “enter” suggests that you should not even think of setting foot on that path.
17. the bread of wickedness, / and the wine of outrage. Unwilling to rest until they have done harm, they make their ill-gotten gains their daily diet.
18. like light’s radiance, / ever brighter till day has come. This translation agrees with Fox, and against many interpreters, that nekhon hayom (literally, “the establishment of day”) does not refer to noon but to the moment in the morning when the sun is fully risen and the daylight is strong. However, there is no warrant for construing ’or, the primary biblical term for light, as “dawn,” as Fox proposes, nor can one accept his understanding of the accompanying term, nogah, as a “derivative luminescence,” since there are many biblical texts in which it is clearly a bright shining.
20. My son, listen to my words. Again this formula signals the beginning of a new textual unit. In this instance it is a miscellany of moral advice, involving the need to cling to the teachings of wisdom (verses 21–23), the avoidance of duplicitous speech (verse 24), and the importance of concentrating on the goal in front of you without glancing at the temptations on all sides (verses 25–27).
23. More than anything watched guard your heart. The heart is the seat of understanding or, as we might say, the center of conscious intellection, and so it becomes the repository of the wisdom the young person will imbibe, and it needs to be zealously guarded.
the ways out to life. This expression, which has an antithetical counterpart in Psalm 68:21, “the ways out from death,” has a certain mythological resonance, reinforcing the tremendous power of the human heart.
24. twisted speech. Literally, “mouth’s twistedness.”
25. Let your eyes look in front. The burden of this and the two subsequent lines that conclude the unit is that since moral dangers and temptations swarm on all sides, one must keep looking straight ahead and also choose a safe level path on which to walk in life. This prudential advice points toward a puritanical outlook, as in the cognate injunction in the Mishnah (Avot), “He who walks on a road and says ‘How lovely this tree, how lovely this field,’ incurs mortal guilt.” The idea of looking only straight ahead of you is also the exact opposite of Qohelet’s endeavor to explore all the realms of experience in search of wisdom.
gaze. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “eyelids.” The claim of some interpreters, from Late Antiquity to the present, that the term means “eyeballs” is dubious. Because poetic parallelism requires a synonym for “eyes,” the word for “eyelids” was enlisted: though one doesn’t see with the eyelids, by metonymic extension the word becomes in poetry a stand-in for eyes.