Amsal 5:5

5:5 Her feet go down to death;

her steps lead straight to the grave. ¹ 

Amsal 7:27

7:27 Her house is the way to the grave, ² 

going down ³  to the chambers ⁴  of death.

Amsal 20:29-30

20:29 The glory ⁵  of young men is their strength,

and the splendor ⁶  of old men is gray hair. ⁷ 

20:30 Beatings and wounds cleanse away ⁸  evil,

and floggings cleanse ⁹  the innermost being. ¹⁰ 

Amsal 21:5

21:5 The plans of the diligent ¹¹  lead ¹²  only to plenty, ¹³ 

but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. ¹⁴ 

Amsal 23:14

23:14 If you strike ¹⁵  him with the rod,

you will deliver him ¹⁶  from death. ¹⁷ 

[5:5]  ¹ tn The term שְׁאוֹל (she’ol, “grave”) is paralleled to “death,” so it does not refer here to the realm of the unblessed.

[5:5]  sn The terms death and grave could be hyperbolic of a ruined life, but probably refer primarily to the mortal consequences of a life of debauchery.

[7:27]  ² tn The noun “Sheol” in parallelism to “the chambers of death” probably means the grave. The noun is a genitive of location, indicating the goal of the road(s). Her house is not the grave; it is, however, the sure way to it.

[7:27]  sn Her house is the way to the grave. The young man’s life is not destroyed in one instant; it is taken from him gradually as he enters into a course of life that will leave him as another victim of the wages of sin. The point of the warning is to prevent such a course from starting. Sin can certainly be forgiven, but the more involvement in this matter the greater the alienation from the healthy community.

[7:27]  ³ tn The Qal active participle modifies “ways” to Sheol. The “road,” as it were, descends to the place of death.

[7:27]  ⁴ tn “Chambers” is a hypocatastasis, comparing the place of death or the grave with a bedroom in the house. It plays on the subtlety of the temptation. Cf. NLT “Her bedroom is the den of death.”

[20:29]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew term תִּפְאֶרֶת (tif’eret) means “beauty; glory”; in a context like this it means “honor” in the sense of glorying or boasting (BDB 802 s.v. 3.b).

[20:29]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew term הֲדַר (hadar), the noun in construct, means “splendor; honor; ornament.” The latter sense is used here, since grey hair is like a crown on the head.

[20:29]  ⁷ sn “Grey hair” is a metonymy of adjunct; it represents everything valuable about old age – dignity, wisdom, honor, experience, as well as worry and suffering of life. At the very least, since they survived, they must know something. At the most, they were the sages and elders of the people.

[20:30]  ⁸ tc The verb מָרַק (maraq) means “to polish; to scour”; in the Hiphil it means “to cleanse away,” but it is only attested here, and that in the Kethib reading of תַּמְרִיק (tamriq). The Qere has תַּמְרוּק (tamruq, “are a means of cleansing”). The LXX has “blows and contusions fall on evil men, and stripes penetrate their inner beings”; the Latin has “the bruise of a wound cleanses away evil things.” C. H. Toy suggests emending the text to read “stripes cleanse the body, and blows the inward parts” or “cosmetics purify the body, and blows the soul” (Proverbs [ICC], 397). Cf. CEV “can knock all of the evil out of you.”

[20:30]  ⁹ tn The term “cleanse” does not appear in this line but is supplied in the translation in the light of the parallelism.

[20:30]  ¹⁰ sn Physical punishment may prove spiritually valuable. Other proverbs say that some people will never learn from this kind of punishment, but in general this may be the only thing that works for some cases.

[21:5]  ¹¹ tn The word “diligent” is an adjective used substantivally. The related verb means “to cut, sharpen, decide”; so the adjective describes one who is “sharp” – one who acts decisively. The word “hasty” has the idea of being pressed or pressured into quick actions. So the text contrasts calculated expeditiousness with unproductive haste. C. H. Toy does not like this contrast, and so proposes changing the latter to “lazy” (Proverbs [ICC], 399), but W. McKane rightly criticizes that as unnecessarily forming a pedestrian antithesis (Proverbs [OTL], 550).

[21:5]  ¹² tn The term “lead” is supplied in the translation.

[21:5]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew noun translated “plenty” comes from the verb יָתַר (yatar), which means “to remain over.” So the calculated diligence will lead to abundance, prosperity.

[21:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “lack; need; thing needed”; NRSV “to want.”

[23:14]  ¹⁵ tn Or “punish” (NIV). The syntax of these two lines suggests a conditional clause (cf. NCV, NRSV).

[23:14]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “his soul.” The term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “soul”) functions as a synecdoche of part (= soul) for the whole (= person); see BDB 660 s.v. 4.

[23:14]  ¹⁷ tn The term שְׁאוֹל (shÿ’ol, “Sheol”) in this context probably means “death” (so NIV, NCV, NLT) and not the realm of the departed (wicked) spirits (cf. NAB “the nether world”). In the wisdom of other lands, Ahiqar 6:82 says, “If I strike you, my son, you will not die.” The idea is that discipline helps the child to a full life; if the child dies prematurely, it would be more than likely a consequence of not being trained by discipline. In the book of Proverbs the “death” mentioned here could be social as well as physical.