Correct thy son, for yet there is hope;
But go not too far to kill him.
That כּי tahT is meant relatively, as at Pro 11:15, is seen from Job 11:18; Job 14:7; Jer 31:16.; כּי־ישׁ תּקוה is the usual expression for etemin spes est. Though a son show obstinacy, and manifest a bad disposition, yet there is hope in the training of the youth of being able to break his self-will, and to wean him from his bad disposition; therefore his education should be carried forward with rigorous exactness, but in such a way that wisdom and love regulate the measure and limits of correction: ad eum interficiendum animam ne tollas (animum ne inducas). נפשׁך is not the subject, for in that case the word would have been תּשּׁאך (2Ki 14:10). It is the object: To raise the soul to something is equivalent to, to direct his desire to it, to take delight in it. The teacher should not seek correction as the object, but only as the means; he who has a desire after it, to put the child to death in the case of his guilt, changes correction into revenge, permits himself to be driven by passion from the proper end of correction, and to be pushed beyond its limits. The lxx translates freely εἰς δὲ ὕβρις, for ὕβρις is unrestrained abuse, מוסר אכזרי as Immanuel glosses. Besides, all the ancients and also the Venet. translate המיתו as the inf. of המית. But Oetinger (for he translates: lift not thy soul to his cry, for which Euchel: let not his complaining move thy compassion) follows the derivation from המה suggested by Kimchi, Meîri, and Immanuel, and preferred by Ralbag, so that המיתו after the from בּכית is equivalent to המיתו. But leaving out of view that המה means strepere, not lamentari, and that נשׂא נפשׁו means attention, not desire, Pro 23:13 points out to us a better interpretation.
Verse 19
Another proverb with נשׂא:
A man of excessive wrath must suffer punishment;
For if thou layest hold of it, hindering it, thou makest it only worse.
The lxx, Syr., and Targ. translate as if the words were גּבר חמה (as בּעל חמה, Pro 29:22). Theodotion, the Venet., and Luther render the Kerı̂ גּדל־; Jerome's impatiens is colourless. The Chethı̂b גרל gives no appropriate meaning. The Arab. jaril means lapidosus (whence גּורל, cf. Aram. פּסּא = ψῆφος), and Schultens translates accordingly aspere scruposus iracundiae, which is altogether after the manner of his own heavy style. Ewald
