Proverbs 25:16-18

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Proverbs 25:16 tn Most translations render the verse as a question (“Have you found honey?” so KJV, NASB, ASV) or as a condition (“if/when you find honey,” so NIV, ESV, Holman). But the Hebrew has a perfect verb form (מָצָאתָ, matsaʾta) without an interrogative or conditional marker. Hebrew proverbs can use the past tense to set the topic or opening premise of a proverb (to present a case, e.g. “take this situation where X occurred”), and then comment on it in the second half of the proverb. English translators of proverbial sayings tend to want to make the past time verbs in Hebrew into present tense in English. But this convention is difficult with second person verb forms, so the translations tend to take the tactic of changing the nature of the sentence to interrogative or conditional. We could also add “Let’s say [you have found honey].” See B. Webster “The Perfect Verb and the Perfect Woman in the Book of Proverbs” in Windows to the Ancient World of the Hebrew Bible, eds. B. Arnold, N. Erickson, J. Walton (Eisenbrauns, 2014).
2. Proverbs 25:16 tn The verb means “to be satisfied; to be sated; to be filled.” Here it means more than satisfied, since it describes one who overindulges and becomes sick. The English verb “stuffed” conveys this idea well.
3. Proverbs 25:16 sn The proverb warns that anything overindulged in can become sickening. The verse uses formal parallelism to express first the condition and then its consequences. It teaches that moderation is wise in the pleasures of life.
4. Proverbs 25:17 tn Heb “make your foot rare.” The verb is הֹקַר (hoqar), the Hiphil imperative of יָקַר (yaqar, “to be rare; to be precious”). To “make one’s foot rare” would mean to keep the visits to a minimum as well as making them valuable—things increase in value, according to the nuances of this word, when they are rare.
5. Proverbs 25:17 tn Heb “gets full.” This verb means “to be sated; to be satisfied; to be filled.” It is often used with reference to food, but here it refers to frequent visits that wear out one’s welcome (cf. NLT).
6. Proverbs 25:18 sn The first line identifies the emblem of the proverb: False witnesses are here compared to deadly weapons because they can cause the death of innocent people (e.g., Exod 20:16; Deut 5:20; Prov 14:5).
7. Proverbs 25:18 tn The verb עָנָה (ʿanah) followed by the preposition ב (bet) with its object means “to testify against” (answer against someone). With the preposition ל (lamed) it would mean “to testify for” someone. Here the false witness is an adversary, hence the comparison with deadly weapons.
8. Proverbs 25:18 tn While עֵד (ʿed) could be interpreted as “evidence” (a meaning that came from a metonymy—what the witness gives in court), its normal meaning is “witness.” Here it would function as an adverbial accusative, specifying how he would answer in court.