Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

The address of Wisdom now takes another course. Between Pro 1:23 and Pro 1:24 there is a pause, as between Isa 1:20 and Isa 1:21. In vain Wisdom expects that her complaints and enticements will be heard. Therefore she turns her call to repentance into a discourse announcing judgment. 24 Because I have called, and ye refused; Stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; 25 And ye have rejected all my counsel And to my reproof have not yielded: 26 Therefore will I also laugh at your calamity, Will mock when your terror cometh; 27 When like a storm your terror cometh, And your destruction swept on like a whirlwind; When distress and anguish cometh upon you. Commencing with יען (which, like מען, from ענה, to oppose, denotes the intention, but more the fundamental reason or the cause than, as למען, the motive or object), the clause, connected with גּם־אני, ego vicissim, turns to the conclusion. As here יען קראתי (as the word of Jahve) are connected by גּם־אני to the expression of the talio in Isa 66:4, so also מאם, with its contrast אבה, Isa 1:19. The construction quoniam vocavi et renuistis for quoniam quum vocarem renuistis (cf. Isa 12:1) is the common diffuse (zerstreute) Semitic, the paratactic instead of the periodizing style. The stretching out of the hand is, like the "spreading out" in Isa 65:2, significant of striving to beckon to the wandering, and to bring them near. Regarding הקשׁיב, viz., אזנו, to make the ear still (R. קש), arrigere, incorrectly explained by Schultens, after the Arab ḳashab, polire, by aurem purgare, vid., Isaiah, p. 257, note. Pro 1:25 פּרע is synonymous with נטשׁ, Pro 1:8; cf. Pro 4:15 פּרעהוּ, turn from it. Gesenius has inaccurately interpreted the phrase פרע ראש of the shaving off of the hair, instead of the letting it fly loose. פרע means to loosen (= to lift up, syn. החל), to release, to set free; it combines the meanings of loosening and making empty, or at liberty, which is conveyed in Arab. by fr' and frg. The latter means, intrans., to be set free, therefore to be or to become free from occupation or business; with mn of an object, to be free from it, i.e., to have accomplished it, to have done with it (Fl.). Thus: since ye have dismissed (missum fecistis) all my counsel (עצה as לדה, from יעץ, Arabic w'd), i.e., what I always would advise to set you right. אבה combines in itself the meanings of consent, Pro 1:10, and compliance, Pro 1:30 (with ל), and, as here, of acceptance. The principal clause begins like an echo of Psa 2:4 (cf. Jer 20:7). Pro 1:26-27 שׂחק, as Pro 31:25 shows, is not to be understood with בּ; בּ is that of the state or time, not of the object. Regarding איד, calamitas opprimens, obruens (from אוּד = Arabic âda, to burden, to oppress), see at Psa 31:12. בא is related to יאתה as arriving to approaching; פחדּכם is not that for which they are in terror - for those who are addressed are in the condition of carnal security - but that which, in the midst of this, will frighten and alarm them. The Chethı̂b שאוה is pointed thus, שׁאוה (from שׁאו = שׁאה, as ראוה, זעוה after the form אהבה, דּאבה); the Kerı̂ substitutes for this infinitive name the usual particip. שׁאה (where then the Vav is יתיר, "superfluous"), crashing (fem. of שׁאה), then a crash and an overthrow with a crash; regarding its root-meaning (to be waste, and then to sound hollow), see under Psa 35:8. סוּפה (from סוּף = ספה), sweeping forth as a (see Pro 10:25) whirlwind. The infinitive construction of 27a is continued in 27b in the finite. "This syntactical and logical attraction, by virtue of which a modus or tempus passes by ו or by the mere parallel arrangement (as Pro 2:2) from one to another, attracted into the signification and nature of the latter, is peculiar to the Hebr. If there follows a new clause or section of a clause where the discourse takes, as it were, a new departure, that attraction ceases, and the original form of expression is resumed; cf. 1:22, where after the accent Athnach the future is returned to, as here in 27c the infinitive construction is restored" (Fl.). The alliterating words צרה וצוּקה, cf. Isa 30:6; Zep 1:15, are related to each other as narrowness and distress (Hitzig); the Mashal is fond of the stave-rhyme. (Note: Jul. Ley, in his work on the Metrical Forms of Hebrew Poetry, 1866, has taken too little notice of these frequently occurring alliteration staves; Lagarde communicated to me (8th Sept. 1846) his view of the stave-rhyme in the Book of Proverbs, with the remark, "Only the Hebr. technical poetry is preserved to us in the O.T. records; but in such traces as are found of the stave-rhyme, there are seen the echoes of the poetry of the people, or notes passing over from it.")