17:18 The one who lacks wisdom 1 strikes hands in pledge, 2
and puts up financial security 3 for his neighbor. 4
17:19 The one who loves a quarrel loves transgression; 5
whoever builds his gate high seeks destruction. 6
1 tn Heb “heart”; KJV, ASV “a man void of understanding”; NIV “a man lacking in judgment.”
2 tn The phrase “in pledge” is supplied for the sake of clarification.
3 tn The line uses the participle עֹרֵב (’orev) with its cognate accusative עֲרֻבָּה (’arubah), “who pledges a pledge.”
4 sn It is foolish to pledge security for someone’s loans (e.g., Prov 6:1-5).
5 tn Heb “the one who loves transgression the one who loves a quarrel.” There is some ambiguity in the first line. The meaning would not differ greatly if either were taken as the subject; but the parallelism suggests that the proverb is about a quarrelsome and arrogant person who loves sin and invites destruction.
6 tn Some have taken this second line literally and interpreted it to mean he has built a pretentious house. Probably it is meant to be figurative: The gate is the mouth (the figure would be hypocatastasis) and so to make it high is to say lofty things – he brags too much (e.g., 1 Sam 2:3; Prov 18:12; 29:23); cf. NCV, TEV, NLT. C. H. Toy (Proverbs [ICC], 348) wishes to emend פִּתְחוֹ (pitkho, “his gate”) to פִּיו (piv, “his mouth”), but that is unnecessary since the idea can be obtained by interpretation.