one should not afford him any support, any refuge, any covering or security against the vengeance which pursues him; that one should not rescue him from the arm of justice, and thereby invade and disturb the public administration of justice, which rests on moral foundations; on the other side, the Book of Prov; Pro 24:11., has uttered its exhortation to save a human life whenever it is possible to do so. The proverb lying before us cannot thus mean anything else than that no one should give to the murderer, as such, any assistance; that no one should save him clandestinely, and thereby make himself a partaker of his sin. Grace cannot come into the place of justice till justice has been fully recognised. Human sympathy, human forbearance, under the false title of grace, do not stand in contrast to this justice. We must, however, render אל־יתמכו־בו not directly as an admonition against that which is immoral; it may also be a declaration of that which is impossible: only let no one support him, let no one seek to deliver him from the unrest which drives him from place to place. This is, however, in vain; he is unceasingly driven about to fulfil his lot. But the translation: nemine eum sustinente (Fleischer), is inadmissible; a mere declaration of a fact without any subjective colouring is never אל reven si g seq. fut.
Verse 18
Pro 28:18 18 He who walketh blamelessly is helped, And he who is perverse in a double way suddenly perisheth.
The lxx translate תמים by δικαίως (as the accusative of manner), Aquila and Theodotion by τέλειος; but it may also be translated τέλειον or τελειότητα, as the object accus. of Pro 2:7. Instead of עקּשׁ דּרכים, Pro 28:6, there is here נעקּשׁ דּרכים, obliquely directed in a double way, or reflex bending himself. At Pro 28:6 we have interpreted the dual דּרכים rightly, thus בּאחת cannot refer back to one of these two ways; besides, דּרך as fem. is an anomaly, if not a solecism. בּאחת signifies, like the Aram. כּחרא, either all at once (for which the Mish. כּאחת, Aram. כּחרא), or once (= בּפּעם אחת), and it signifies in the passage before us, not: once, aliquando, as Nolde, with Flacius, explains, but: all at once, i.e., as Geier explains: penitus, sic ut pluribus casibus porro non sit opus. Schultens compares:
“Procubuit moriens et humum semel ore momordit.”[1]
- ↑ Aeneid, xi. 418.
