in this connection is so obscure, that one must question the translators what its import is. Therefore we adhere to the other rendering, “fulness of strength,” and interpret אונים as the opposite of אין אונים, Isa 40:29, for it signifies, per metonymiam abstracti pro concr., those who are full of strength; and we gain the meaning that there is a sudden end to the expectation of those who are in full strength, and build their prospects thereon. The two synonymous lines complete themselves, in so far as אונים gains by אדם רשׁע the associated idea of self-confidence, and the second strengthens the thought of the first by the transition of the expression from the fut. to the preterite (Fl.). ותוחלת has, for the most part in recent impressions, the Mugrash; the correct accentuation, according to codices and old impressions, is ותוחלת אונים (vid., Baer's Torath Emeth, p. 10, §4).
Verse 8
Pro 11:8 8 The righteous is delivered from trouble, And the godless comes in his stead.
The succession of the tenses gives the same meaning as when, periodizing, we say: while the one is delivered, the other, on the contrary, falls before the same danger. נחלץ (vid., under Isa 58:11) followed by the historical tense, the expression of the principal fact, is the perfect. The statement here made clothes itself after the manner of a parable in the form of history. It is true there are not wanting experiences of an opposite kind (from that here stated), because divine justice manifests itself in this world only as a prelude, but not perfectly and finally; but the poet considers this, that as a rule destruction falls upon the godless, which the righteous with the help of God escapes; and this he realizes as a moral motive. In itself תּחתּיו may also have only the meaning of the exchange of places, but the lxx translate αντ ̓ αὐτοῦ, and thus in the sense of representation the proverb appears to be understood in connection with Pro 21:18 (cf. the prophetico-historical application, Isa 43:4). The idea of atonement has, however, no application here, for the essence of atonement consists in the offering up of an innocent one in the room of the guilty, and its force lies in the offering up of self; the meaning is only, that if the divinely-ordained linking together of cause and effect in the realms of nature and of history brings with it evil, this brings to the godless destruction, while it opens the way of deliverance for the righteous, so that the godless becomes for the righteous the כּפר,
