It is thus asked whether “a poor man and an oppressor of the lowly” may be two properties united in the person of one master. This is certainly possible, for he may be primarily a poor official or an upstart (Zöckler), such as were the Roman proconsuls and procurators, who enriched themselves by impoverishing their provinces (cf. lxx Pro 28:15); or a hereditary proprietor, who seeks to regain what he has lost by extorting it from his relatives and workmen. But רשׁ (poor) is not sufficient to give this definite feature to the figure of the master; and what does this feature in the figure of the master at all mean? What the comparison 3b says is appropriate to any oppressive ruler, and one does not think of an oppressor of the poor as himself poor; he may find himself in the midst of shattered possessions, but he is not poor; much rather the oppressor and the poor are, as e.g., at Pro 29:13, contrasted with each other. Therefore we hold, with Hitzig, that רשׁ of the text is to be read rosh, whether we have to change it into ראשׁ, or to suppose that the Jewish transcriber has here for once slipped into the Phoenician writing of the word;[1] we do not interpret, with Hitzig, גּבר ראשׁ in the sense of ἄνθρωπος δυνάστης, Sir. 8:1, but explain: a man (or master = גּביר) is the head (cf. e.g., Jdg 11:8), and oppresses the helpless. This rendering is probable, because גּבר רשׁ, a poor man, is a combination of words without a parallel; the Book of Proverbs does not once use the expression אישׁ רשׁ, but always simply רשׁ (e.g., Pro 28:6; Pro 29:13); and גּבר is compatible with חכם and the like, but not with רשׁ. If we stumble at the isolated position of ראשׁ, we should consider that it is in a certain measure covered by דלים; for one has to think of the גבר, who is the ראשׁ, also as the ראשׁ of these דלים, as one placed in a high station who numbers poor people among his subordinates. The lxx translates ἀνδρεῖος ἐν ἀσεβείαις as if the words of the text were גּבּור רשׁע (cf. the interchange of גּבר and גּבּור in both texts of Psa 18:26), but what the lxx read must have been גּבּור להרשׁיע (Isa 5:22); and what can גּבּור here mean? The statement here made refers to the ruinous conduct of a גּבר, a man of standing, or גּביר, a high lord, a “wicked ruler,” Pro 28:15. On the
- ↑ The Phoen. writes רש (i.e., רשׁ, rus); vid., Schröder's Phönizische Gram. p. 133; cf. Gesen. Thes. under ראשׁ.
