CHAPTER 24
1Do not envy evil men,
and do not desire to be with them.
2For their heart ponders plunder,
and their lips speak trouble.
3Through wisdom a house is built,
and through discernment it is firm-founded.
4And through knowledge rooms are filled
with all precious and pleasant wealth.
5A wise man is mightier than a strong one,
and a man of knowledge than one of great power.
6For through designs you should make war,
and victory comes from abundant counsel.
7Wisdom is too high for the dolt,
he won’t open his mouth in the gate.
8Who plots to do evil,
they will call him a master of cunning.
9The foulness of foolishness is an offense,
the scoffer is loathed by people.
10Should you be slack on the day of distress,
your strength will be constrained.
11Save those who are taken to death,
and from those stumbling to slaughter do not hold back.
12Should you say, “Why, we did not know of this.”
Will not the Weigher of Hearts discern,
and the Watcher of your life not know,
and pay back a man by his deeds?
13Eat honey, my son, for it is good,
and honeycomb, sweet on your palate.
14Thus know wisdom for yourself,
if you find it, there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.
15Do not enter the home of the righteous
nor plunder the place where he beds his flock.
16For seven times a righteous man falls and gets up but the wicked stumble in evil.
17When your enemy falls, do not rejoice,
and when he stumbles, let your heart be not gladdened,
18lest the LORD see and it be evil in His eyes,
and He deflect His wrath from him.
19Do not be provoked by evildoers,
do not envy the wicked.
20For there is no future for the evil man,
the lamp of the wicked will gutter.
21Fear the LORD, my son, and the king,
neither one nor the other vex.
22For ruin from them rises suddenly;
Who can know the disaster wreaked by both?
23These, too, are from the wise:
showing favor in justice cannot be good.
24Who says to the guilty, “You are innocent,”
peoples will curse him,
nations will damn him.
25But for the rebukers it will be pleasant,
upon them the blessing of good will come.
26With lips does he kiss
who answers in forthright words.
27Prepare your task outside
and ready it for yourself in the field.
After, you will build your house.
28Do not be a witness for no cause against your neighbor,
that you should seduce with your lips.
29Do not say, “As he did to me I will do to him,
I will pay back the man by his deeds.”
30I passed by the field of the lazy man
and by the vineyard of one without sense,
31and, look, it had all sprouted thorns,
its surface was covered with thistles,
and its stone wall was in ruins.
32And I beheld and I paid mind,
33a bit more sleep, a bit more slumber,
a bit more lying with folded arms,
34and your privation will come like a wayfarer,
your want like a shield-bearing man.
CHAPTER 24 NOTES
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4. with all precious and pleasant wealth. In this verset the poet diverges from the prevalent pattern of neat semantic parallelism between the two halves of the line, which is emphatically evident in the three preceding lines, to stipulate, in a little surprise, with what the rooms of the house are filled.
5. mightier than the strong one, / . . . than one of great power. The Masoretic Text reads gever ḥakham baʿoz, “a wise man in [the?] strength,” and meʾamets-koah,̣ “summons up power.” The second phrase is intelligible though a poor parallelism; the first phrase is not intelligible. The translation follows the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Targum, all of which seem to have read gavar ḥakham meiʿaz and meiʾamits-koah,̣ readings that yield the translation offered here.
7. he won’t open his mouth in the gate. As elsewhere, the gate is where judicial discussions were conducted. The dolt, lacking all wisdom, will have no idea what to say in such deliberations.
9. loathed by people. More literally, “people’s loathing.”
11. slaughter. Or “a killing.”
12. we did not know of this. These words refer back to the previous line: when people are about to be slaughtered, don’t pretend that you had no notion of what was happening.
the Watcher of your life not know. The “not” is unstated in the Hebrew but carried over from the previous clause.
13. Eat honey, my son. Though the urging to eat something that tastes sweet may sound momentarily superfluous, the equation between honey and wisdom was a familiar one, and it is promptly spelled out in the next verse, which is clearly bracketed with this one.
15. Do not enter the home of the righteous. The Masoretic Text reads, “Do not lie in wait, wicked man, for the home of the righteous,” ʾal teʾerov rashaʿ leneweh tsadiq. This is odd because “lie in wait” is something done to a person, not to a place, and because vocatives addressed to the wicked are not part of the rhetorical strategy of Proverbs. This translation adapts an emendation proposed by Fox, based in part on the Septuagint: tavoʾ, “enter,” for teʾerov, “lie in wait,” and the deletion of rashaʿ, “wicked man,” as a probable gloss.
21. neither one nor the other vex. The Masoretic Text reads, “And don’t mix in [titʿarav] with shonim.” The meaning of shonim is in doubt. Some think it means “dissidents”; the King James Version guesses, desperately, “them that are given to change.” There is no evidence that this verbal root, which can mean “to repeat” or “to be different,” had either of these senses in the Bible. The translation follows the Septuagint, which reads sheneyhem, “the two of them,” for shonim, and titʿabar (or perhaps teʿaber), a root having to do with anger, instead of titʿarav, “mix in.” This two-line proverb, then, follows a recurring theme of the book in warning against provoking those in power, who can have a short fuse and a heavy hand.
23. These, too, are from the wise. This is the brief formal introduction of a new selection of proverbs from a different source.
showing favor in justice. This second verset in fact begins the sequence on impartiality in justice that takes up the next two versets.
26. kiss / . . . forthright words. The line flaunts a paradox: he who speaks straightforwardly—probably words of justified criticism—is as one who kisses, however harsh the words.
27. Prepare your task outside. This is another piece of purely pragmatic wisdom: first, a person must shore up his substance by working in the field, and then he will be in a position to build a house. This proverb is a pointed antithesis to the satiric portrait at the end of the chapter of the lazy man letting his possessions sink into ruin.
30. I passed by the field of the lazy man. The miniature first-person narrative that begins here is relatively rare in this part of the book, where hortatory second-person address predominates.
32. I took reproof. In this context, the recurring idiom has the sense of “I learned a lesson.”
33–34. These two lines duplicate 6:10–11. See the comments there for an elucidation of the language.