Amsal 19:22-23

19:22 What is desirable ¹  for a person is to show loyal love, ² 

and a poor person is better than a liar. ³ 

19:23 Fearing the Lord ⁴  leads ⁵  to life, ⁶ 

and one who does so will live ⁷  satisfied; he will not be afflicted ⁸  by calamity.

[19:22]  ¹ tn Heb “the desire of a man” (so KJV). The noun in construct is תַּאֲוַת (ta’avat), “desire [of].” Here it refers to “the desire of a man [= person].” Two problems surface here, the connotation of the word and the kind of genitive. “Desire” can also be translated “lust,” and so J. H. Greenstone has “The lust of a man is his shame” (Proverbs, 208). But the sentence is more likely positive in view of the more common uses of the words. “Man” could be a genitive of possession or subjective genitive – the man desires loyal love. It could also be an objective genitive, meaning “what is desired for a man.” The first would be the more natural in the proverb, which is showing that loyal love is better than wealth.

[19:22]  ² tn Heb “[is] his loyal love”; NIV “unfailing love”; NRSV “loyalty.”

[19:22]  ³ sn The second half of the proverb presents the logical inference: The liar would be without “loyal love” entirely, and so poverty would be better than this. A poor person who wishes to do better is preferable to a person who makes promises and does not keep them.

[19:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “the fear of the Lord.” This expression features an objective genitive: “fearing the Lord.”

[19:23]  ⁵ tn The term “leads” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and style.

[19:23]  ⁶ tn Here “life” is probably a metonymy of subject for “blessings and prosperity in life.” The plural form often covers a person’s “lifetime.”

[19:23]  ⁷ tn The subject of this verb is probably the one who fears the Lord and enjoys life. So the proverb uses synthetic parallelism; the second half tells what this life is like – it is an abiding contentment that is not threatened by calamity (cf. NCV “unbothered by trouble”).

[19:23]  ⁸ tn Heb “he will not be visited” (so KJV, ASV). The verb פָּקַד (paqad) is often translated “visit.” It describes intervention that will change the destiny. If God “visits” it means he intervenes to bless or to curse. To be “visited by trouble” means that calamity will interfere with the course of life and change the direction or the destiny. Therefore this is not referring to a minor trouble that one might briefly experience. A life in the Lord cannot be disrupted by such major catastrophes that would alter one’s destiny.