scene here described is not that of the last quarter of the moon (Ewald), in which it rises at midnight, but that of the new moon (Hitzig), when the night is without moonlight. Since the derivation of the word from כסא (כסה), to cover, gives the satisfactory idea of the covering or filling of the moon's disk, we do not seek after any other; Dietrich fixes on the root-idea of roundness, and Hitzig of vision (כסא = סכה, שׂכה, vid., on the contrary, under Psa 143:9). The ל is that of time at which, in which, about which, anything is done; it is more indefinite than בּ would be. He will not return for some fourteen days.
Verse 21
The result: - 21 She beguiled him by the fulness of her talking, By the smoothness of her lips she drew him away.
Here is a climax. First she brought him to yield, overcoming the resistance of his mind to the last point (cf. 1Ki 11:3); then drove him, or, as we say, hurried him wholly away, viz., from the right path or conduct (cf. Deu 13:6, Deu 13:11). With הטּתּוּ (= הטּתהוּ) as the chief factum, the past imperf. is interchanged, 21b. Regarding לקח, see above, p. 56. Here is the rhetoric of sin (Zöckler); and perhaps the לקח of 20a has suggested this antiphrastic לקח to the author (Hitzig), as חלק (the inverted לקח, formed like שׁפל, which is the abstr. of שׁפל as that is of חלק) and תּדּיחנּוּ are reciprocally conditioned, for the idea of the slippery (Psa 73:18) connects itself with חלק.
Verses 22-23
What followed: - 22 So he goes after her at once As an ox which goeth to the slaughter-house, And as one bereft of reason to the restraint of fetters, 23 As a bird hastens to the net, Without knowing that his life is at stake - Till the arrow pierces his liver.
The part. הולך (thus to be accentuated according to the rule in Baer's Torath Emeth, p. 25, with Mercha to the tone-syllable and Mahpach to the preceding open syllable) preserves the idea of the fool's going after her. פּתאם (suddenly) fixes the point, when he all at once resolves to betake himself to the rendezvous in the house of the adulteress, now a κεπφωθείς, as the lxx translates, i.e., as we say, a simpleton who has gone on the lime-twig. He follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter-house, unconscious that
