Proverbs 13:2–3

Footnotes

1. 4 Heb “lips” (so ); “mouth.” The term “lips” is a metonymy of cause for what the lips produce: speech.
2. 5 Heb “he eats [what is] good.”
3. 6 Heb “the desire of the faithless.” The noun “faithless” is a subjective genitive: “the faithless desire.…”
4. 7 The noun נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, traditionally “soul”) has a broad range of meanings, and here denotes “appetite” (e.g., Ps 17:9; Prov 23:3; Eccl 2:24; Isa 5:14; Hab 2:5; 660 5.c) or (2) “desire” (e.g., Deut 12:20; Prov 13:4; 19:8; 21:10; 660 6.a).
5. 8 Heb “violence.” The phrase “the fruit of” does not appear in the Hebrew but is implied by the parallelism. The term “violence” is probably a metonymy of cause: “violence” represents what violence gains—ill-gotten gains resulting from violent crime. The wicked desire what does not belong to them. The reads “the souls of the wicked perish untimely.” The makes sense as it stands.
6. 9 Heb “mouth” (so , ). The term פֶּה (peh, “mouth”) functions as a metonymy of cause for speech.
7. 10 The term “but” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.
8. 11 Heb “opens wide his lips.” This is an idiom meaning “to be talkative” ( 832 פָּשַׂק Qal). Cf. “speaks rashly”; “a careless talker”; “talk too much.”
9. 12 Tight control over what one says prevents trouble (e.g., Prov 10:10; 17:28; Jas 3:1–12; Sir 28:25). Amenemope advises to “sleep a night before speaking” (5:15; 422, n. 10). The old Arab proverb is appropriate: “Take heed that your tongue does not cut your throat” (O. Zockler, Proverbs, 134).