increases them by her laborious and prudent management, so that there is not wanting to him gain, which he properly did not acquire, but which the confidence he is justified in reposing in his wife alone brings to him. She is to him a perpetual spring of nothing but good.
Verse 12
Pro 31:12 12 ג She doeth good to him, and not evil, All the days of her life; or, as Luther translates:
“Sie thut jm liebs und kein leids.” [She does him good, and no harm.]
She is far from ever doing him evil, she does him only good all her life long; her love is not dependent on freaks, it rests on deep moral grounds, and hence derives its power and purity, which remain ever the same. גּמל signifies to accomplish, to perform. To the not assimilated form גּמלתהוּ, cf. יסּרתּוּ, 1b.
Verse 13
The poet now describes how she disposes of things: 13 ד She careth for wool and flax, And worketh these with her hands' pleasure.
The verb דּרשׁ proceeds, as the Arab. shows,[1] from the primary meaning terere; but to translate with reference thereto: tractat lanam et linum (lxx, Schultens, Dathe, Rosemüller, Fleischer), is inadmissible. The Heb. דרשׁ does not mean the external working at or manufacturing of a thing; but it means, even when it refers to this, the intention of the mind purposely directed thereto. Thus wool and flax come into view as the material of work which she cares to bring in; and ותּעשׂ signifies the work itself, following the creation of the need of work. Hitzig translates the second line: she works at the business of her hands. Certainly ב after עשׂה may denote the sphere of activity, Exo 31:4; 1 Kings 5:30, etc.; but if חפץ had here the weakened signification business, πρᾶγμα, - which it gains in the same way as we say business, affair, of any object of care - the scarcely established meaning presents itself, that she shows herself active in that which she has made the business of her hands. How much more beautiful, on the contrary, is the thought: she is active with her hands' pleasure! חפץ is, as Schultens rightly explains, inclinatio flexa et propensa in aliquid, and pulchre manibus diligentissimis attribuitur lubentia cum oblectatione
- ↑ The inquirer is there called (Arab.) daras, as libros terens.
