CHAPTER 21

                ¹Water-streams, a king’s heart in the hand of the LORD,

                    wherever He desires, He diverts it.

                ²A man’s whole way is right in his eyes,

                    but the LORD takes the measure of hearts.

                ³Doing righteousness and justice

                    is choicer to the LORD than a sacrifice.

                ⁴Haughty eyes and overweening heart—

                    the furrow of the wicked is offense.

                ⁵The plans of the diligent—only for gain,

                    and all who hasten—only for loss.

                ⁶Attaining treasures with a lying tongue

                    is vanished breath and snares of death.

                ⁷The plunder of the wicked drags them down,

                    for they refuse to do justice.

                ⁸Perverse is the way of a stranger-man,

                    but a pure one, his deeds are straight.

                ⁹Better to dwell in the corner of a roof,

                    than with a quarrelsome wife in a spacious house.

                ¹⁰The wicked longs for evil with all his being,

                    his fellow man gets no pity from him.

                ¹¹When the scoffer is punished, the dupe gets wisdom,

                    but when a wise man is taught, he gains knowledge.

                ¹²The righteous fathoms the hearts of the wicked,

                    subverts the wicked for evil.

                ¹³Who stops up his ear to the cry of the poor,

                    he, too, will call unanswered.

                ¹⁴A gift in secret allays anger,

                    and a stealthy bribe, fierce wrath.

                ¹⁵A joy to the righteous, the doing of justice,

                    but disaster to wrongdoers.

                ¹⁶A man who strays from insight’s way

                    will repose in the assembly of shades.

                ¹⁷The lover of revels is a man in want,

                    who loves wine and oil will not grow rich.

                ¹⁸A ransom for the righteous, the wicked man,

                    and in place of the upright, the traitor.

                ¹⁹Better to dwell in a desert-land

                    than with a quarrelsome angry wife.

                ²⁰Rare treasure and oil in the wise man’s abode,

                    but a foolish man swallows them up.

                ²¹Who pursues righteousness and kindness

                    will find life, righteousness, and honor.

                ²²The wise man goes up against a town of warriors

                    and takes down its mighty stronghold.

                ²³Who guards his mouth and his tongue

                    guards his life from trouble.

                ²⁴The arrogant brazen—scoffer his name,

                    he acts in arrogant anger.

                ²⁵The sluggard’s desire will kill him,

                    for his hands refuse to act.

                ²⁶All day long he aches with desire,

                    but the righteous gives unstinting.

                ²⁷The sacrifice of the wicked is loathsome,

                    even more, as he brings it depraved.

                ²⁸A lying witness will perish,

                    but a man who listens to counsel will speak.

                ²⁹A wicked man is brazen-faced,

                    but the upright understands his own way.

                ³⁰There is no wisdom and no discernment

                    and no counsel before the LORD.

                ³¹A horse is readied for the day of battle,

                    but victory is the LORD’s.

CHAPTER 21 NOTES

Click here to advance to the next section of the text.

1. Water-streams, a king’s heart. This proverb appears to play on the idea expressed elsewhere (20:5) that there are deep waters in a man’s heart. The proverb is also cast in riddling form: What could it mean that a king’s heart is streams of water in God’s hand (or power)? That God, like an engineer, can divert the channels into whatever course He chooses.

4. the furrow of the wicked is offense. All their endeavors to reap are an offense.

5. the diligent . . . / all who hasten. The contrast is between the person who carefully plans his projects and carries them out assiduously and those who do things precipitously, without deliberation. Again, the consequences are purely pragmatic: the diligent reaps a profit; the rash end up penniless.

6. and snares of death. The Masoretic Text reads mevaqshey mawet, “seekers of death,” a problematic reading because the phrase does not accord well with “vanished breath” and the plural creates a syntactic incoherence. The translation follows a reading shown in some variant manuscripts, the Septuagint, and the Vulgate: umoqshey mawet, “and snares of death.”

8. a stranger-man. The Hebrew, literally “man and stranger,” looks suspect. Some emend ʾish wazar to ʾish kazav, “a lying man,” which reads smoothly, though it has no textual warrant.

9. Better to dwell in the corner of a roof. The “better than” proverb form here is also a kind of riddle: What could possibly be worse than to have to perch (or live) in the corner of a roof? To live with a quarrelsome wife.

a spacious house. The Hebrew beyt ḥaver would be literally “house of a friend”—perhaps a welcoming house. But a reversal of the order of consonants yields bayit raḥav, “a spacious house.”

11. dupe . . . / wise man. When the fool sees that the troublemaker has come to grief, he wises up, whereas the wise man needs only instruction to get wisdom.

12. the hearts of the wicked. The translation follows the Septuagint, which shows libot, “the hearts of,” instead of the Masoretic leveyt, “to the house of.”

14. a stealthy bribe. Literally, “a bribe in the bosom”—that is, a bribe that is slipped furtively into the bosom of the bribe taker.

16. strays from insight’s way / will repose in the assembly of shades. A miniature narrative unfolds between the two versets: a person strays from the straight way of wisdom and then finds himself in the realm of the netherworld.

17. wine and oil. In the good life of the ancient Mediterranean, rubbing the body and head with fine olive oil was a valued luxury, hence its bracketing here with wine as a metonymy for hedonism.

18. A ransom for the righteous . . . / in place of the upright. The idea is that whatever disasters might have overtaken the good person will fall instead on the wicked.

19. Better to dwell in a desert-land. This proverb is thematically and structurally parallel to verse 9, with the desert replacing the roof corner as a miserable place to live that is preferable to life with a quarrelsome wife.

20. Rare. Literally, “desired.”

26. he aches with desire. Literally, “he desires a desire.” The “he” would simply refer to the person who is slave to his own desires. The Septuagint reads “the dolt desires.”

27. depraved. Literally, “in depravity.” Fox argues for the sense of “with a scheme.”

28. a man who listens to counsel will speak. The Masoretic Text reads “a man who listens will forever [lanetsah]̣ speak,” which scarcely seems the outcome one would want from an attentive person (presumably, attentive in a court of justice). The translation adopts the emendation of leʿetsah, “to counsel.”

31. but victory is the LORD’s. This verset springs a kind of revelatory surprise on the audience of the proverb. After the image of the horse readied for battle, either saddled for its rider or hitched to its chariot, we discover in two Hebrew words, two beats, against the four words and four beats of the first verset, that the outcome of the battle is determined by God alone.