first. To curse one's parents is, after Exo 21:17, cf. Pro 20:10, a crime worthy of death; “not to bless,” is here, per litoten, of the same force as קלּל to curse. The second characteristic, Pro 30:12, is wicked blindness as to one's judgment of himself. The lxx coarsely, but not bad: τὴν δ ̓ ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἀπένιψεν. Of such darkness one says: sordes suas putat olere cinnama. רחץ is not the abbreviated part. (Stuart), as e.g., Exo 3:2, but the finite, as e.g., Hos 1:6.
In 13a the attributive clause forms itself, so as to express the astonishing height of arrogance, into an exclamation: a generation, how lofty are their eyes (cf. e.g., Pro 6:17, עינים רמות)! to which, as usual, it is simply added: and his eyelids (palpebrae) lift themselves up; in Lat., the lifting up of the eyebrow as an expression of haughtiness is described by elatum (superbum) supercilium.
The fourth characteristic is insatiable covetousness, which does not spare even the poor, and preys upon them, the helpless and the defenceless: they devour them as one eats bread, Psa 14:4. The teeth, as the instruments of eating, are compared to swords and knives, as at Psa 57:4 to spears and arrows. With שׁנּיו there is interchanged, as at Job 29:17; Jon 1:6, מתלּעתיו (not 'מת, as Norzi writes, contrary to Metheg-Setzung, §37, according to which Gaja, with the servant going before, is inadmissible), transposed from מלתּעתיו, Psa 58:7, from לתע, to strike, pierce, bite. The designation of place, מארץ, “from the earth” (which also, in pausa, is not modified into מארץ), and מאדם, “from the midst of men,” do not belong to the obj.: those who belong to the earth, to mankind (vid., Psa 10:18), for thus interpreted they would be useless; but to the word of action: from the earth, out from the midst of men away, so that they disappear from thence (Amo 8:4). By means of fine but cobweb combinations, Hitzig finds Amalek in this fourfold proverb. But it is a portrait of the times, like Psa 14:1-7, and certainly without any national stamp.
Verses 15-16
With the characteristic of insatiableness Pro 30:11-14 closes, and there follows an apophthegma de quatuor insatiabilibus quae ideo comparantur cum sanguisuga (C. B. Michaelis). We translate the text here as it lies before us:
