and in approbation of true balances, are found, Pro 20:10; Pro 16:11; similar predicates, but connected with other subjects, are found at Pro 12:22; Pro 15:8. “An abomination to Jahve” is an expression we have already twice met with in the introduction, Pro 3:32; Pro 6:16, cf. Pro 8:7; תּועבה is, like תּועה, a participial noun, in which the active conception of abhorring is transferred to the action accomplished. רצון is in post-biblical Hebr. the designation of the arbitrium and the voluntas; but here רצונו signifies not that which God wishes, but that which He delights in having. “מרמה (here for the first time in Proverbs), from רמה, the Piel of which means (Pro 26:19) aliquem dolo et fraude petere. אבן, like the Pers. sanak, sanakh, Arab. ṣajat, a stone for weight; and finally, without any reference to its root signification, like Zec 5:8, אבן העופרת, a leaden weight, as when we say: a horseshoe of gold, a chess-man of ivory.”
Verse 2
Now follows the Solomonic “Pride goeth before a fall.”
There cometh arrogance, so also cometh shame;
But with the humble is wisdom.
Interpreted according to the Hebr.: if the former has come, so immediately also comes the latter. The general truth as to the causal connection of the two is conceived of historically; the fact, confirmed by many events, is represented in the form of a single occurrence as a warning example; the preterites are like the Greek aoristi gnomici (vid., p. 32); and the perf., with the fut. consec. following, is the expression of the immediate and almost simultaneous consequence (vid., at Hab 3:10): has haughtiness (זדון after the form לצון, from זיד, to boil, to run over) appeared, then immediately also disgrace appeared, in which the arrogant behaviour is overwhelmed. The harmony of the sound of the Hebr. זדון and קלון cannot be reproduced in German [nor in English]; Hitzig and Ewald try to do so, but such a quid pro quo as “Kommt Unglimpf kommt an ihn Schimpf” [there comes arrogance, there comes to him disgrace] is not a translation, but a distortion of the text. If, now, the antithesis says that with the humble is wisdom, wisdom is meant which avoids such disgrace as arrogance draws along with it; for the צנוּע thinks not more highly of himself than he ought to think (R. צן, subsidere, demitti, Deutsch. Morgenl. Zeitsch. xxv. 185).
Verse 3
Pro 11:3 3 The integrity of the upright guideth them; But the perverseness of the ungodly destroyeth them.
To the upright, ישׁרים, who keep the line of rectitude without turning
