Amsal 9:6

9:6 Abandon your foolish ways ¹  so that you may live, ² 

and proceed ³  in the way of understanding.”

Amsal 9:13

9:13 The woman called Folly ⁴  is brash, ⁵ 

she is naive ⁶  and does not know ⁷  anything. ⁸ 

Amsal 9:16-18

9:16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here,”

she says to those who lack understanding. ⁹ 

9:17 “Stolen waters ¹⁰  are sweet,

and food obtained in secret ¹¹  is pleasant!”

9:18 But they do not realize ¹²  that the dead ¹³  are there,

that her guests are in the depths of the grave. ¹⁴ 

[9:6]  ¹ tn There are two ways to take this word: either as “fools” or as “foolish ways.” The spelling for “foolishness” in v. 13 differs from this spelling, and so some have taken that as an indicator that this should be “fools.” But this could still be an abstract plural here as in 1:22. Either the message is to forsake fools (i.e., bad company; cf. KJV, TEV) or forsake foolishness (cf. NAB, NASB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

[9:6]  ² tn The two imperatives are joined with vav; this is a volitive sequence in which result or consequence is expressed.

[9:6]  ³ tn The verb means “go straight, go on, advance” or “go straight on in the way of understanding” (BDB 80 s.v. אָשַׁר).

[9:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “a woman of foolishness.” This could be translated as “foolish woman,” taking the genitive as attributive (cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV). But in view of the contrast with the personification of wisdom, this word probably also represents a personification and so can be taken as a genitive of apposition, the woman who is folly, or “the woman, Folly” (cf. NIV). For clarity and stylistic reasons the word “called” has been supplied in the translation.

[9:13]  ⁵ tn The meaning of the word comes close to “riotous.” W. McKane describes her as restless and rootless (Proverbs [OTL], 366).

[9:13]  ⁶ tn The noun means “foolishness” (cf. KJV “simple”; NAB “inane”). Here it could be classified as a metonymy of adjunct, or as a predictive apposition (when a substantive is used in place of a noun; see R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 15, §67).

[9:13]  ⁷ tn The ignorance here in Proverbs must be moral ignorance. But see D. W. Thomas for the idea that the verb means “become still,” “be at rest,” yielding here the idea of restless (“A Note on בַל־יָדְעָה in Proverbs 9¹³,” JTS 4 [1953]: 23-24).

[9:13]  ⁸ tc The text of v. 13 has been difficult for translators. The MT has, “The foolish woman is boisterous, simplicity, and knows not what.” The LXX reads, “A foolish and impudent woman comes to lack a morsel, she who knows not shame.” The Syriac has, “a woman lacking in discretion, seductive.” Tg. Prov 9:13 translates it, “a foolish woman and a gadabout, ignorant, and she knows not good.” The Vulgate has, “a woman foolish and noisy, and full of wiles, and knowing nothing at all.”

[9:16]  ⁹ tn This expression is almost identical to v. 4, with the exception of the addition of conjunctions in the second colon: “and the lacking of understanding and she says to him.” The parallel is deliberate, of course, showing the competing appeals for those passing by.

[9:17]  ¹⁰ sn The offer is not wine and meat (which represented wisdom), but water that is stolen. The “water” will seem sweeter than wine because it is stolen – the idea of getting away with something exciting appeals to the baser instincts. In Proverbs the water imagery was introduced earlier in 5:15-19 as sexual activity with the adulteress, which would seem at the moment more enjoyable than learning wisdom. Likewise bread will be drawn into this analogy in 30:20. So the “calling out” is similar to that of wisdom, but what is being offered is very different.

[9:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “bread of secrecies.” It could mean “bread [eaten in] secret places,” a genitive of location; or it could mean “bread [gained through] secrets,” a genitive of source, the secrecies being metonymical for theft. The latter makes a better parallelism in this verse, for bread (= sexually immoral behavior) gained secretly would be like stolen water.

[9:18]  ¹² tn Heb “he does not know.”

[9:18]  ¹³ sn The “dead” are the Rephaim, the “shades” or dead persons who lead a shadowy existence in Sheol (e.g., Prov 2:18-19; Job 3:13-19; Ps 88:5; Isa 14:9-11). This approximates an “as-if” motif of wisdom literature: The ones ensnared in folly are as good as in Hell. See also Ptah-hotep’s sayings (ANET 412-414).

[9:18]  ¹⁴ tc The LXX adds to the end of v. 18: “But turn away, linger not in the place, neither set your eye on her: for thus will you go through alien water; but abstain from alien water, drink not from an alien fountain, that you may live long, that years of life may be added to you.”

[9:18]  sn The text has “in the depths of Sheol” (בְּעִמְקֵי שְׁאוֹל, bÿ’imqe shÿ’ol). The parallelism stresses that those who turn to this way of life are ignorant and doomed. It may signal a literal death lying ahead in the not too distant future, but it is more likely an analogy. The point is that the life of folly, a life of undisciplined, immoral, riotous living, runs counter to God’s appeal for wisdom and leads to ruin. That is the broad way that leads to destruction.