mercy in his eyes, so that in these words the sympathy ruling within him expresses itself: “his eyes will not spare his friends,” vid., Isa 13:18.
Verse 11
11 When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise;
And when insight is imparted to a wise man, he receives knowledge.
The thought is the same as at Pro 19:25. The mocker at religion and virtue is incorrigible, punishment avails him nothing, but yet it is not lost; for as a warning example it teaches the simple, who might otherwise be easily drawn into the same frivolity. On the other hand, the wise man needs no punishment, but only strengthening and furtherance: if “instruction” is imparted to him, he embraces it, makes it his own דּעת; for, being accessible to better insight, he gains more and more knowledge. De Dieu, Bertheau, and Zöckler make “the simple” the subject also in 11b: and if a wise man prospers, he (the simple) gains knowledge. But השׂכּיל ל, used thus impersonally, is unheard of; wherefore Hitzig erases the ל before חכם erofeb ל eh: if a wise man has prosperity. But השׂכיל does not properly mean to have prosperity, but only mediately: to act with insight, and on that account with success. The thought that the simple, on the one side, by the merited punishment of the mocker; on the other, by the intelligent prosperous conduct of the wise, comes to reflection, to reason, may indeed be entertained, but the traditional form of the proverb does not need any correction. השׂכּיל may be used not only transitively: to gain insight, Gen 3:6; Psa 2:10, and elsewhere, but also causatively: to make intelligent, with the accus. following, Pro 16:23; Psa 32:8, or: to offer, present insight, as here with the dat.-obj. following (cf. Pro 17:26). Instead of בּענשׁ־, the Kametz of which is false, Codd. and good Edd. have, rightly, בּענשׁ־. Hitzig, making “the wise” the subject to בהשׂכיל (and accordingly “the scorner” would be the subject in 11a), as a correct consequence reads בּענשׁ = בּהענשׁ. For us, with that first correction, this second one also fails. “Both infinitivi constr.,” Fleischer remarks, “are to be taken passively; for the Semitic infin., even of transitive form, as it has no designation of gender, time, and person, is an indeterminate modus, even in regard to the generis verbi (Act. and
