after the manner of a substantival clause, the following sentence as its virtual predicate: “one has fondled his servant from his youth up, and his (that of the one who fondles) end is: he will become a place of increase.” The master of the house is thought of along with his house; and the servant as one who, having become a man, presents his master with ילידי בּית, who are spoilt scapegraces, as he himself has become by the pampering of his master. There was used in the language of the people, נין for בּן, in the sense on which we name a degenerate son a “Schönes Früchtchen” [pretty little fruit]; and מנון is a place (house) where many נינים are; and a man (master of a house) who has many of them is one whose family has increased over his head. One reaches the same meaning if מנון is rendered more immediately as the place or state of growing, increasing, luxuriating. The sense is in any case: he will not be able, in the end, any more to defend himself against the crowd which grows up to him from this his darling, but will be merely a passive part of it.
Verse 22
The following group begins with a proverb which rhymes by מדון, with מנון of the foregoing, and extends on to the end of this Hezekiah collection: 22 A man of anger stirreth up strife; And a passionate man aboundeth in transgression.
Line first is a variation of Pro 15:18 and Pro 28:25. אישׁ and בּעל as here, but in the reverse order at Pro 22:24.[1] אף here means anger, not the nose, viz., the expanded nostrils (Schultens). In רב־פּשׁע the פשׁע is, after Pro 14:29; Pro 28:16; Pro 20:27, the governed genitive; Hitzig construes it in the sense of פשׁע רב, Psa 19:2, with יגרה, but one does not say גּרה פשׁע; and that which is true of רבּים, that, after the manner of a numeral, it can precede its substantive (vid., under Ps. 7:26; Psa 89:51), cannot be said of רב. Much (great) in wickedness denotes one who heaps up many wicked actions, and burdens himself with greater guilt (cf. פשׁע, Pro 29:16). The wrathful man stirreth up (vid., under Pro 15:18) strife, for he breaks through the mutual relations of men, which rest on mutual esteem and
- ↑ For אישׁ־אף (Löwenstein after Norzi) is to be written, with Baer (Thorath Emeth, p. 19), אישׁ אף ,)91. Thus also in Cod. Jaman.
