vid., Pro 1:5. Regarding the “reins,” כּליות (perhaps from כּלה, to languish, Job 19:21), with which the tender and inmost affections are connected, vid., Psychologie, p. 268f.
Verses 17-18
The poet now shows how one attains unto wisdom - the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God: 17 Let not thine heart strive after sinners, But after the fear of Jahve all the day. 18 Truly there is a future, And thy hope shall not come to naught.
The lxx, Jerome, the Venet., and Luther, and the Arab. interpreters, render 17b as an independent clause: “but be daily in the fear of the Lord.” That is not a substantival clause (cf. Pro 22:7), nor can it be an interjectional clause, but it may be an elliptical clause (Fleischer: from the prohibitive אל־תקנא is to be taken for the second parallel member the v. subst. lying at the foundation of all verbs); but why had the author omitted היה dettim? Besides, one uses the expressions, to act (עשׂה), and to walk (הלך) in the fear of God, but not the expression to be (היה) in the fear of God. Thus בּיראת, like בחטּאים, is dependent on אל־תּקנּא; and Jerome, who translates: Non aemuletur cor tuum peccatores, sed in timore Domini esto tota die, ought to have continued: sed timorem Domini tota die; for, as one may say in Latin: aemulari virtutes, as well as aemulari aliquem, so also in Heb. קנּא ב, of the envying of those persons whose fortune excites to dissatisfaction, because one has not the same, and might yet have it, Pro 3:31; Pro 24:1, Pro 24:19, as well as of emulation for a thing in which one might not stand behind others: envy not sinners, envy much rather the fear of God, i.e., let thyself be moved with eager desire after it when its appearance is presented to thee. There is no O.T. parallel for this, but the Syr. tan and the Greek ζηλοτυποῦν are used in this double sense. Thus Hitzig rightly, and, among the moderns, Malbim; with Aben Ezra, it is necessary to take ביראת for באישׁ יראת, this proverb itself declares the fear of God to be of all things the most worthy of being coveted.
In Pro 23:18, Umbreit, Elster, Zöckler, and others interpret the כּי as assigning a reason, and the אם as conditioning: for when the end (the hour of the righteous judgment) has come; Bertheau better, because more suitable to the ישׁ and the אחרית: when an
