Job 22:2: not profitable to God, but to thyself (Hitzig), is scarcely intended, although, so far as the accentuation is antithetic, it is the nearest. The perf. ולצתּ is the hypothetical; Gesen. §126, 1. To bear anything, viz., anything sinful (חטא or עון), is equivalent to, to atone for it, Job 34:2, cf. Num 9:13; Eze 23:35. Also 12b is a contrast scarcely aimed at. Wisdom is its own profit to man; libertinism is its own disgrace. Man decides, whenever he prefers to be wise, or to be a mocker of religion and of virtue, regarding his own weal and woe. With this nota bene the discourse of Wisdom closes.
Verses 13-15
The poet now brings before us another figure, for he personifies Folly working in opposition to Wisdom, and gives her a feminine name, as the contrast to Wisdom required, and thereby to indicate that the seduction, as the 13th proverbial discourse (chap. 7) has shown, appears especially in the form of degraded womanhood: 13 The woman Folly [Frau Thorheit] conducts herself boisterously, Wantonness, and not knowing anything at all; 14 And hath seated herself at the door of her house, On a seat high up in the city, 15 To call to those who walk in the way, Who go straight on their path.
The connection of אשת כּסילוּת is genitival, and the genitive is not, as in אשׁת רע, Pro 6:24, specifying, but appositional, as in בת־ציון (vid., under Isa 1:8). הומיּה [boisterous] is pred., as Pro 7:11 : her object is sensual, and therefore her appearance excites passionately, overcoming the resistance of the mind by boisterousness. In 13b it is further said who and how she is. פּתיּוּת she is called as wantonness personified. This abstract פּתיּוּת, derived from פּתי, must be vocalized as אכזריּוּת; Hitzig thinks it is written with a on account of the following u sound, but this formation always ends in ijjûth, not ajjûth. But as from חזה as well חזּיון = חזיון as חזון is formed, so from פּתה as well פּתוּת like חזוּת or פּתוּת like לזוּת, רעוּת, as פּתיוּת (instead of which פּתיּוּת is preferred) can be formed; Kimchi rightly (Michlol 181a) presents the word under the form פּעלוּת. With וּבל (Pro 14:7) poetic, and stronger than לאו, the designation of the subject is continued; the words וּבל־ידעה מּה (thus with Mercha and without Makkeph following, ידעה is to be written, after Codd. and old editions) have the value of an adjective: and not knowing anything at all (מה = τὶ, as Num 23:3; Job 13:13, and here in the negative clause, as in prose מאוּמה), i.e., devoid of
