4 Who is simple? let him come hither!” Whoso wanteth understanding, to him she saith: 5 “Come, eat of my bread, And drink of the wine which I have mingled! 6 Cease, ye simple, and live, And walk straight on in the way of understanding.”
The question מי פּתי (thus with Munach, not with Makkeph, it is to be written here and at Pro 9:16; vid., Baer's Torath Emeth, p. 40), quis est imperitus, is, as Psa 25:12, only a more animated expression for quisquis est. The retiring into the background of the נערות (servants), and the immediate appearance of Wisdom herself, together with the interruption, as was to be expected, of her connected discourses by the אמרה לּו, are signs that the pure execution of the allegorical representation is her at an end. Hitzig seeks, by the rejection of Pro 9:4, Pro 9:5, Pro 9:7-10, to bring in a logical sequence; but these interpolations which he cuts out are yet far more inconceivable than the proverbial discourses in the mouth of Wisdom, abandoning the figure of a banquet, which besides are wholly in the spirit of the author of this book. That Folly invites to her, Pro 9:16, in the same words as are used by Wisdom, Pro 9:4, is not strange; both address themselves to the simple (vid., on פּתי at Pro 1:4) and those devoid of understanding (as the youth, Pro 7:7), and seek to bring to their side those who are accessible to evil as to good, and do not dully distinguish between them, which the emulating devertat huc of both imports. The fourth verse points partly backwards, and partly forwards; 4a has its introduction in the תקרא of Pro 9:3; on the contrary, 4b is itself the introduction of what follows. The setting forth of the nom. absolutus חסר־לב is conditioned by the form of 4a; the מי (cf. 4a) is continued (in 4b) without its needing to be supplied: excors (= si quis est excors) dicit ei (not dixit, because syntactically subordinating itself to the תקרא). It is a nominal clause, whose virtual predicate (the devoid of understanding is thus and thus addressed by her) as in Pro 9:16.
Verse 5
The plur. of the address shows that the simple (inexperienced) and the devoid of understanding are regarded as essentially one and the same class of men. The בּ after לחם and שׁתה proceeds neither from the idea of eating into (hewing into) anything, nor from the eating with anything, i.e., inasmuch as one makes use of it, nor of pampering oneself with anything (as ראה ב); Michaelis at last makes a right decision (cf. Lev 22:11; Jdg 13:16;
