body, here like Pro 18:20, as that which receives the nourishment and changes it in succum et sanguinem. That God richly nourishes the righteous, and on the contrary brings the godless to want and misery, is indeed a rule with many exceptions, but understood in the light of the N.T., it has deep inward everlasting truth.
Chap. 14
Verse 1
Pro 14:1 1 The wisdom of the woman buildeth her house, And folly teareth it down with its own hands.
Were it חכמות נשׁים, after Jdg 5:29, cf. Isa 19:11, then the meaning would be: the wise among women, each of them buildeth her house. But why then not just אשּׁה חכמה, as 2Sa 14:2, cf. Exo 35:25? The Syr., Targum, and Jerome write sapiens mulier. And if the whole class must be spoken of, why again immediately the individualizing in בּנתה? The lxx obliterates that by its ᾠκοδόμησαν. And does not אוּלת [folly] in the contrasted proverb (1b) lead us to conclude on a similar abstract in 1a? The translators conceal this, for they translate אולת personally. Thus also the Venet. and Luther; אוּלת is, says Kimchi, an adj. like עוּרת, caeca. But the linguistic usage does not point אויל with אוילי to any אוּל. It is true that a fem. of אויל does not occur; there is, however, also no place in which אולת may certainly present itself as such. Thus also חכמות must be an abstr.; we have shown at Pro 1:20 how חכמות, as neut. plur., might have an abstr. meaning. But since it is not to be perceived why the poet should express himself so singularly, the punctuation חכמות is to be understood as proceeding from a false supposition, and is to be read חכמות, as at Pro 9:1 (especially since this passage rests on the one before us). Fleischer says: “to build the house is figuratively equivalent to, to regulate well the affairs of a house, and to keep them in a good condition; the contrary, to tear down the house, is the same contrast as the Arab. 'amârat âlbyt and kharab albyt. Thus e.g., in Burckhardt's Sprüchw. 217, harrt ṣabrt bythâ 'amârat, a good woman (ein braves Weib) has patience (with her husband), and thereby she builds up her house (at the same time an example of the use of the preterite in like general sentences for individualizing);
