1Cheating scales are the LORD’s loathing,
and a true weight-stone His pleasure.
2With a bold face, there comes disgrace,
but wisdom is with the humble.
3The upright’s innocence guides them,
but the falseness of traitors destroys them.
4Wealth avails not on the day of wrath,
but righteousness saves from death.
5The innocent’s righteousness makes his way smooth,
but in his wickedness the wicked man falls.
6The upright’s innocence saves them,
but in disasters are traitors ensnared.
7When a wicked man dies, hope perishes,
and the longing of villains will perish.
8The righteous is rescued from straits, 9and the wicked man comes in his stead. Through speech the tainted man ruins his fellow,
but through knowledge the righteous are rescued.
10When the righteous do well, the city exults,
and when the wicked perish—glad song.
11Through the upright’s blessing a city soars,
and by the mouth of the wicked it is razed.
12Who scorns his fellow man has no sense,
but a man of discernment keeps silent.
13The gossip lays bare secrets,
but the trustworthy conceals the matter.
14For want of designs a people falls,
but there is rescue through many councillors.
15He will surely be shattered who gives bond for a stranger,
but he who hates offering pledge is secure.
16A gracious woman holds fast to honor,
but the arrogant hold fast to wealth.
17A kindly man does good for himself,
but a cruel man blights his own flesh.
18The wicked man makes a false profit,
but who sows righteousness reaps true reward.
19A righteous son is for life,
but the pursuer of evil—for his death.
20The LORD’s loathing are the crooked of heart,
but His pleasure, whose way is blameless.
21Count on it, the evil will not go scot-free,
but the seed of the righteous escapes.
22A golden ring in the snout of a pig,
a lovely woman who lacks good sense.
23The desire of the righteous is only good.
The hope of the wicked is wrath.
24One man is spendthrift and gains all the more,
another saves honestly but comes to want.
25A benign person will flourish,
and he who slakes others’ thirst, his own thirst is slaked.
26Who holds back grain the nation will damn,
but blessing on the provider’s head.
27Who seeks out good pursues favor,
but who looks for evil, it will come to him.
28Who trusts in his wealth, he will fall,
but like a leaf the righteous will burgeon.
29Who blights his house will inherit the wind,
and the dolt is a slave to the wise of heart.
30The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
and the wise man draws in people.
31If the righteous on earth is requited,
how much more the wicked offender.
CHAPTER 11 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
1. Cheating scales . . . / a true weight-stone. Much of the wisdom of Proverbs, as in this verse, is oriented pragmatically toward the world of commerce or labor. Stones marked with a fixed weight were placed on one of the two pans of the scale and the merchandise to be sold on the other pan.
2. bold face . . . disgrace. The translation emulates the rhyme in the Hebrew of zadon (literally, “arrogance”) and qalon, “disgrace.”
3. traitors. The Hebrew bogdim is used not in a political sense but to describe treacherous or untrustworthy people.
4. righteousness saves from death. This verset is identical with the second verset of 10:2, leading one to suspect that some of these lines are modular constructs from traditional sayings.
5. makes his way smooth. The verb yasher can mean to make straight either horizontally (that is, in contrast to crooked) or vertically (in contrast to rough, uneven). Not falling into a pot-hole, like the wicked in the second verset, suggests the vertical sense.
8. The righteous is rescued from straits, / and the wicked man comes in his stead. In this instance, the two versets create a miniature narrative with an almost comical didactic effect: the just man is rescued or, more precisely, extricated (neḥelats) from a tight spot in which he was jammed, and the wicked is promptly popped into that spot. This little narrative, of course, does not readily correspond to observable reality.
9. Through speech . . . / through knowledge. There is a pointed contrast between thoughtless or perhaps devious speech (literally, “mouth”) and the knowledge of the wise, which perhaps may not involve speech.
12. but a man of discernment keeps silent. The antithesis to the first verset suggests that there are cases where a discerning person may well feel scorn toward someone but is discreet enough not to express it.
14. a people falls. Some construe the Hebrew ʿam here in the military sense that it sometimes has in narrative prose, where it can mean “troops.” In that case, “rescue,” teshuʿah, in the second verset would reflect its related meaning of “victory.”
16. honor, / . . . wealth. Elsewhere in Proverbs, these are coordinated terms, not antitheses.
18. reaps. The verb is only implied in the Hebrew.
19. A righteous son. The Masoretic Text reads ken tsedaqah, “thus righteousness,” which does not make much sense and produces a poor parallelism with the second verset in a series of proverbs where the parallelism is usually neat, even pat. This translation adopts a reading shown in some Hebrew manuscripts as well as in the Septuagint and Syriac: ben tsedaqah (literally, “son of righteousness”).
20. whose way is blameless. Literally, “the blameless of way.”
21. Count on it. Literally, “hand to hand.” This appears to be a gesture of shaking hands in order to guarantee something.
22. A golden ring in the snout of a pig. This is another proverb cast in riddle form. This first verset gives us a bizarre and rather shocking image. The second verset spells out the referent of the image, the beautiful woman devoid of sense, and thus becomes a kind of punch line.
23. The hope of the wicked is wrath. Although this clause makes a certain amount of sense as it stands in the Masoretic Text, many scholars adopt the reading of some manuscripts and of the Septuagint, ʾavdah, “perishes,” instead of ʿevrah, “wrath.” This would bring the verset in line with 10:28b, which has nearly identical wording.
25. benign person. Literally, “person of blessing.”
he who slakes. Though this is what the Hebrew verb usually means, the verset is obscure, and the second verb rendered as “slaked” looks textually suspect.
26. grain . . . / provider’s. Both these terms recall the story of Joseph as viceroy of Egypt providing grain in the famine.
28. he will fall. Some prefer to read instead of the Masoretic yipol a verb differing by one consonant, yibol, “he will wither,” which produces a neater antithesis to the burgeoning leaf in the second verset.
30. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. It is a little problematic that fruit becomes tree, but perhaps the poet was drawn into a certain slackness because “fruit” in biblical usage is so often a lexicalized metaphor for “consequences,” what one produces through his acts.