Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

There now follows a Priamel, (Note: Cf. vol. i. p. 13. The name (from praeambulum) given to a peculiar form of popular gnomic poetry which prevailed in Germany from the 12th (e.g., the Meistersinger or Minstrel Sparvogel) to the 16th century, but was especially cultivated during the 14th and 15th centuries. Its peculiarity consisted in this, that after a series of antecedents or subjects, a briefly-expressed consequent or predicate was introduced as the epigrammatic point applicable to all these antecedents together. Vid., Erschenburg's Denkmlern altdeutscher Dichtkinst, Bremen 1799.) the first line of which is, by יקלל, connected with the יקללך of the preceding distich: 11 A generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother; 12 A generation pure in their own eyes, And yet not washed from their filthiness; 13 A generation - how haughty their eyes, And their eyelids lift themselves up; 14 A generation whose teeth are swords and their jaw teeth knives To devour the poor from the earth and the needy from the midst of men. Ewald translates: O generation! but that would have required the word, 13a, הדּור (Jer 2:31), and one would have expected to have found something mentioned which the generation addressed were to take heed to; but it is not so. But if "O generation!" should be equivalent to "O regarding the generation!" then הוי ought to have introduced the sentence. And if we translate, with Luther: There is a generation, etc., then ישׁ is supplied, which might drop out, but could not be omitted. The lxx inserts after ἔκγονον the word κακόν, and then renders what follows as pred. - a simple expedient, but worthless. The Venet. does not need this expedient, for it renders γενεὰ τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ βλασφημέσει; but then the order of the words in 11a would have been דור יקלל אביו; and in 12a, after the manner of a subst. clause, דור טהור בעיניו הוא, one sees distinctly, from Pro 30:13 and Pro 30:14, that what follows דור is to be understood, not as a pred., but as an attributive clause. As little can we interpret Pro 30:14, with Lwenstein, as pred. of the three subj., "it is a generation whose teeth are swords;" that would at least have required the words דור הוא; but Pro 30:14 is not at all a judgment valid for all the three subjects. The Targ. and Jerome translate correctly, as we above; (Note: The Syr. begins 11a as if הוי were to be supplied.) but by this rendering there are four subjects in the preamble, and the whole appears, since the common pred. is wanting, as a mutilated Priamel. Perhaps the author meant to say: it is such a generation that encompasses us; or: such is an abomination to Jahve; for דור is a Gesamtheit = totality, generation of men who are bound together by contemporary existence, or homogeneity, or by both, but always a totality; so that these Pro 30:11-14, might describe quatuor detestabilia genera hominum (C. B. Michaelis), and yet one generatio, which divide among themselves these four vices, of blackest ingratitude, loathsome self-righteousness, arrogant presumption, and unmerciful covetousness. Similar is the description given in the Mishna Sota ix. 14, of the character of the age in which the Messiah appeared. "The appearance of this age," thus it concludes, "is like the appearance of a dog; a son is not ashamed before his father; to whom will we then look for help? To our Father in heaven!" (Note: Cf. also Ali b. Abi Tleb's dark description, beginning with hadha alzman (this age), Zur allg. Char. der arab. Poesie (1870), p. 54f.) The undutifulness of a child is here placed first. To curse one's parents is, after Exo 21:17, cf. Pro 20:10, a crime worthy of death; "not to bless," is here, per litoten, of the same force as קלּל to curse. The second characteristic, Pro 30:12, is wicked blindness as to one's judgment of himself. The lxx coarsely, but not bad: τὴν δ ̓ ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἀπένιψεν. Of such darkness one says: sordes suas putat olere cinnama. רחץ is not the abbreviated part. (Stuart), as e.g., Exo 3:2, but the finite, as e.g., Hos 1:6. In 13a the attributive clause forms itself, so as to express the astonishing height of arrogance, into an exclamation: a generation, how lofty are their eyes (cf. e.g., Pro 6:17, עינים רמות)! to which, as usual, it is simply added: and his eyelids (palpebrae) lift themselves up; in Lat., the lifting up of the eyebrow as an expression of haughtiness is described by elatum (superbum) supercilium. The fourth characteristic is insatiable covetousness, which does not spare even the poor, and preys upon them, the helpless and the defenceless: they devour them as one eats bread, Psa 14:4. The teeth, as the instruments of eating, are compared to swords and knives, as at Psa 57:4 to spears and arrows. With שׁנּיו there is interchanged, as at Job 29:17; Jon 1:6, מתלּעתיו (not 'מת, as Norzi writes, contrary to Metheg-Setzung, 37, according to which Gaja, with the servant going before, is inadmissible), transposed from מלתּעתיו, Psa 58:7, from לתע, to strike, pierce, bite. The designation of place, מארץ, "from the earth" (which also, in pausa, is not modified into מארץ), and מאדם, "from the midst of men," do not belong to the obj.: those who belong to the earth, to mankind (vid., Psa 10:18), for thus interpreted they would be useless; but to the word of action: from the earth, out from the midst of men away, so that they disappear from thence (Amo 8:4). By means of fine but cobweb combinations, Hitzig finds Amalek in this fourfold proverb. But it is a portrait of the times, like Psa 14:1-7, and certainly without any national stamp.