of the Book of Proverbs. The plur. means here and at viii. 12 (placing itself with ni and nin, vid. p. 68) the reflection and deliberation which is the presupposition of well-considered action, and is thus not otherwise than at xix. 8, and everywhere so meant, where it has that which is obligatory as its object: the youth is summoned to careful observation and persevering exemplification of the quidquid agas, prudenter agas et respice finem. In 26 the Rebia Mugrash forbids the genitive connection of the two words ' ny; we translate: et ut scientiam labia tua tueantur. Lips which preserve knowledge are such as permit nothing to escape from them (Ps. xvii. 36) which proceeds not from the knowledge of God, and in Him of that which is good and right, and aims at the working out of this knowledge; vid. Köhler on Mal. ii. 7. 7 (from , Arab. shafat, edge, lip, properly that against which one rubs, and that which rubs itself) is fem., but the usage of the language presents the word in two genders (cf. 3a with xxvi. 23). Regarding the pausal for 7, vid. under iii. 1, ii. 11. The lips which distil the honey of enticement stand opposite to the lips which distil knowledge; the object of the admonition is to furnish a protection against the honey-lips.

Ver. 3. denotes the wife who belongs to another, or who does not belong to him to whom she gives herself or who goes after her (vid. ii. 16). She appears here as the betrayer of youth. The poet paints the love and amiableness which she feigns with colours from the Canticles, iv. 11, cf. v. 16. n denotes the honey flowing of itself from the combs (DDY), thus the purest and sweetest; its root-word is not , which means to shake, vibrate, and only mediately (when the object is a fluid) to scatter, sprinkle, but, as Schultens has observed, a verb ♫ = Arab. nafat, to bubble, to spring up, nafath, to blow, to spit out, to pour out. Parchon places the word rightly under n (while Kimchi places it under

חלות דבש היצאים מן הכוורת and explains it by ,(בּשֶׁת after the form should have been used): the honey דבש היוצא the words) קודם ריסוק

which flows from the cells before they are broken (the so-called virgin honey). The mouth, Arab. hink (from 7, Arab. hanak, imbuere, e.g., after the manner of Beduins, the mouth of the newly-born infant with date-honey), comes into view here, as at viii. 7, etc., as the instrument of speech: smoother than oil (cf. Ps. lv. 22), it shows itself when it gives forth amiable, gentle, impressive words (ii. 16, vi. 24); also our "schmeicheln" (=to

flatter, caress) is equivalent to to make smooth and fair; in the language of weavers it means to smooth the warp.

is translated by Jerome after the חֶרֶב פִּיּוֹת

Vers. 4, 5. In verse 4 the reverse of the sweet and smooth external is placed opposite to the attraction of the seducer, by whose influence the inconsiderate permits himself to be carried away: her end, i.e. the last that is experienced of her, the final consequence of intercourse with her (cf. xxiii. 32), is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. The O. T. language regards bitterness and poison as related both in meaning and in reality; the word my (Aq. divotov = wormwood) means in Arab. the curse. LXX., gladius biceps; but ni means double-edged, and nie (Judg. iii. 16) means a double-edged sword. Here the plur. will thus poetically strengthen the meaning, like ξίφος πολύστομον, that which devours, as if it had three or four edges (Fl.). The end in which the disguised seduction terminates is bitter as the bitterest, and cutting as that which cuts the most: self-condemnation and a feeling of divine anger, anguish of heart, and destructive judgment. The feet of the adulteress go downward to death. In Hebr. this descendentes ad mortem is expressed by the genitive of connection; is the genitive, as in ii, i. 12; elsewhere the author uses nii, vii. 27, ii. 18. Death, (so named from the stretching of the corpse after the stiffness of death), denotes the condition of departure from this side as a punishment, with which is associated the idea of divine wrath. In bis (sinking, abyss, from, R. Sw, xaλâv, vid. under Isa. v. 14), lie the ideas of the grave as a place of corruption, and of the under-world as the place of incorporeal shadow-life. Her steps hold fast to Hades is equivalent to, they strive after Hades and go straight to it; similar to this is the Arab. expression, hdhâ âldrb yâkhdh ály álbld: this way leads straight forward to the town (Fl.).

Ver. 6. If we try to connect the clause beginning with with 56 as its principal sentence: she goes straight to the abyss, so that by no means does she ever tread the way of life (thus e.g. Schultens), or better, with 66: never more to walk in the way of life, her paths fluctuate hither and thither (as Gr. Venet. and Kamphausen in Bunsen's Bibelwerk, after Bertheau and Ewald, translate); then in the former case more than in the latter the difference of the subject opposes itself, and in the latter, in addition, the vn, only disturbing in this negative clause. Also by the arrangement of

the words, 6a appears as an independent thought. But with Jewish expositors (Rashi, Aben-Ezra, Ralbag, Malbim, etc.) to interpret D, after the Talmud (b. Moëd katan 9a) and Midrash, as an address is impracticable; the warning: do not weigh the path of life, affords no meaning suitable to this connection-for we must, with Cartwright and J. H. Michaelis, regard 6a as the antecedent to 6b: ne forte semitam vitæ ad sequendum eligas, te per varios deceptionum mæandros abripit ut non noveris, ubi locorum sis; but then the continuation of the address is to be expected in 66. No, the subject to Dan is the adulteress, and is an intensified S. Thus the LXX., Jerome, Syr., Targ., Luther, Geier, Nolde, and among Jewish interpreters Heidenheim, who first broke with the tradition sanctioned by the Talmud and the Midrash, for he interpreted 6a as a negative clause spoken in the tone of a question. But is not suitable for a question, but for a call. Accordingly, Böttcher explains: viam vitæ ne illa complanare studeat! the meaning complanando operam dare). But the adulteress as such, and the striving to come to the way of life, stand in contradiction: an effort to return must be meant, which, because the power of sin over her is too great, fails; but the words do not denote that, they affirm the direct contrary, viz. that it does not happen to the adulteress ever to walk in the way of life. As in the warning the independent may be equivalent to cave ne (Job xxxii. 13), so also in the declaration it may be equivalent to absit ut, for 1 (from

of

, after the forms 12= Arab. banj, ry=Arab. 'asj) means turning away, removal. Thus: Far from taking the course of the way life (which has life as its goal and reward)-for D, to open, to open a road (Ps. lxxviii. 50), has here the meaning of the open road itself-much rather do her steps wilfully stagger (Jer. xiv. 10) hither and thither, they go without order and without aim, at one time hither, at another time thither, without her observing it; i.e. without her being concerned at this, that she thereby runs into the danger of falling headlong into the yawning abyss. The unconsciousness which the clause in expresses, has as its object s not the falling (Ps. xxxv. 8), of which there is here nothing directly said, but just this staggering, vacillation, the danger of which she does not watch against. iy has Mercha under the y with Zinnorith preceding; it is Milra [an oxytone] (Michlol 1116); the punctuation varies in the accentuation of the form without evident reason:

Olsh. § 233, p. 285. The old Jewish interpreters (and recently also Malbim) here, as also at ii. 16, by the [strange woman] understand heresy (m), or the philosophy that is hostile to revelation; the ancient Christian interpreters understood by it folly (Origen), or sensuality (Procopius), or heresy (Olympiodorus), or false doctrine (Polychronios). The LXX., which translates, ver. 5, nba by τns åþpoσúvns oi πódes, looks toward this allegorical interpretation. But this is unnecessary, and it is proved to be false from v. 15-20, where the n is contrasted with the married wife.

EIGHTH INTRODUCTORY MASHAL DISCOURSE, V. 7–23.

WARNING AGAINST ADULTERY AND COMMENDATION OF

MARRIAGE.

With v. 1-6, which like iv. 20 commences it once more, the seventh discourse is brought to a conclusion. The address is three times repeated in similar connections, iv. 10, 20, v. 1. There is no reason for breaking off the fatherly admonition (introduced with the words, " And he said to me," iv. 4), which was addressed to the author in the period of his youth, earlier than here, where the author again resumes the Dwy with which he had begun (iv. 1) this seventh narrative address. That after the father has ceased speaking he does not express himself in a rounded manner, may be taken as a sign that toward the end he had become more and more unmindful of the role of the reporter, if this D following, with which he realizes for his circle of hearers the admonition which had been in part addressed to himself, does not prove the contrary.

Vers. 7-11. The eighth discourse springs out of the conclusion of the seventh, and connects itself by its reflective hy so closely with it that it appears as its continuation; but the new beginning and its contents included in it, referring only to social life, secures its relative independence. The poet derives the warning against intercourse with the adulteress from the preceding discourse, and grounds it on the destructive consequences.

7 And now, ye sons, hearken unto me,

And depart not from the words of my mouth.

8 Hold thy path far from her neighbourhood,

And come not to the door of her house!

9 That thou mayest not give the freshness of thy youth to another, Nor thy years to the cruel one;

10 That strangers may not sate themselves with thy possessions, And the fruit of thy toils come into the house of a stranger, 11 And thou groanest at the end,

When thy flesh and thy body are consumed.

Neither here nor in the further stages of this discourse is there any reference to the criminal punishment inflicted on the adulterer, which, according to Lev. xx. 10, consisted in death, according to Ezek. xvi. 40, cf. John viii. 5, in stoning, and according to a later traditional law, in strangulation (P). Ewald finds in ver. 14 a play on this punishment of adultery prescribed by law, and reads from ver. 9 f. that the adulterer who is caught by the injured husband was reduced to the state of a slave, and was usually deprived of his manhood. But that any one should find pleasure in making the destroyer of his wife his slave is a far-fetched idea, and neither the law nor the history of Israel contains any evidence for this punishment by slavery or the mutilation of the adulterer, for which Ewald refers to Grimm's Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer. The figure which is here sketched by the poet is very different. He who goes into the net of the wanton woman loses his health and his goods. She stands not alone, but has her party with her, who wholly plunder the simpleton who goes into her trap. Nowhere is there any reference to the husband of the adulteress. The poet does not at all think on a married woman. And the word chosen directs our attention rather to a foreigner than to an Israelitish woman, although the author may look upon harlotry as such as heathenish rather than Israelitish, and designate it accordingly. The party of those who make prostitutes of themselves consists of their relations and their older favourites, the companions of their gain, who being in league with her exhaust the life-strength and the resources of the befooled youth (Fl.). This discourse begins with ny, for it is connected by this concluding application (cf. vii. 24) with the preceding.

Vers. 8, 9. In verse 8, one must think on such as make a gain of their impurity. S, Schultens remarks, with reference to Ezek. xxiii. 18, crebrum in rescisso omni commercio: denotes the departure, and by the nearness, from which one must remove himself to a distance. Regarding in (ver. 9), which primarily, like our