the substantive verb, or, more correctly, in which the logical copula resulting from the connection of the clause itself remains unexpressed. Accordingly, 'שׂנא ה is a relative clause, and is therefore so accentuated here, as at Pro 30:15 and elsewhere: sex (sunt) ea quae Deus odit, et septem (sunt) abominatio animae ejus. Regarding the statement that the soul of God hates anything, vid., at Isa 1:14. תועבות, an error in the writing occasioned by the numeral (vid., Pro 26:25), is properly corrected by the Kerı̂; the poet had certainly the singular in view, as Pro 3:32; Pro 11:1, when he wrote תועבת. The first three characteristics are related to each other as mental, verbal, actual, denoted by the members of the body by means of which these characteristics come to light. The virtues are taken all together as a body (organism), and meekness is its head. Therefore there stands above all, as the sin of sins, the mentis elatae tumor, which expresses itself in elatum (grande) supercilium: עינים רמות, the feature of the רם, haughty (cf. Psa 18:28 with 2Sa 22:28), is the opposite of the feature of the שׁח עינים, Job 22:29; עין is in the O.T. almost always (vid., Sol 4:9) fem., and adjectives of course form no dual. The second of these characteristics is the lying tongue, and the third the murderous hands. דּם־נקי is innocent blood as distinguished from דּם הנּקי, the blood of the innocent, Deu 19:13.[1]
Verse 18
The fourth characteristic is a deceitful heart. On חרשׁ, vid., Pro 6:14, Pro 3:29, and on אין, Pro 6:12. The fifth: feet running with haste to evil; לרעה as לרע in Isa 59:7, echoing the distich Pro 1:16, as here, 17b and 18b. The connection מהר לרוּץ, propere cucurrit (contrast אחר ל), is equivalent to רץ מהר.
Verse 19
The sixth: “A speaker of lies, a tongue of falsehood,” is hateful to God. It is one subject which is thus doubly characterized. כּזבים are fictions, and שׁקר is the disfiguring (deformatio) of the actual facts. They are purposely placed together in this connection. The derivations of these synonyms are obscure; Fürst gives to the former the root-idea of spinning (properly knotting together), and to the latter that of painting. כזבים is introduced
- ↑ The writing דּם follows the Masoretic rule, vid., Kimchi, Michlol 205b, and Heidenheim under Deu 19:10, where in printed editions of the text (also in Norzi's) the irregular form דּם נקי is found. Besides, the Metheg is to be given to דּם־, so that one may not read it dom, as e.g., שׁשׁ־מאות, Gen 7:11, that one may not read it שׁשׁ־.
