Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

The representation of the good doctrine is now personified, and becomes identified with it. When thou walkest, it will guide thee; When thou liest down, it will keep watch over thee; And when thou wakest, it will talk with thee. The subject is the doctrine of wisdom, with which the representation of wisdom herself is identified. The futures are not expressive of a wish or of an admonition, but of a promise; the form of the third clause shows this. Thus, and in the same succession as in the schema Deu 6:7, cf. Pro 11:19, are the three circumstances of the outward life distinguished: going, lying down, and rising up. The punctuation בּהתהלכך, found here and there, is Ben-Naphtali's variant; Ben-Asher and also the Textus rec. reject the Metheg in this case, vid., Baer's Metheg-Setzung, 28. The verb נחה, with its Hiph. in a strengthened Kal-signification, is more frequently found in the Psalms than in the Proverbs; the Arab. nh' shows that it properly signifies to direct (dirigere), to give direction, to move in a definite direction. שׁמר with על, to take into protection, we had already Pro 2:11; this author has favourite forms of expression, in the repetition of which he takes delight. With lying down, sleeping is associated. והקיצות is, as Psa 139:18, the hypoth. perf., according to Ewald, 357a: et ut expergefactus es, illa te compellabit. Bertheau incorrectly: she will make thee thoughtful. But apart from the fact that there is no evidence of the existence of this Hiph. in the language of the Bible, the personification demands a clearer figure. שׂיח (שׂוּח) signifies mental speech and audible speech (Gen 24:63, poet., in the Talmudic (Note: The conjecture thrown out by Wetstein, that (Arab.) shykh is equivalent to משׂיח (מסיח), speaker, is untenable, since the verb shakh, to be old, a so-called munsarif, i.e., conjugated throughout, is used in all forms, and thus is certainly the root of the shykh.) a common word); with ב, speaking concerning something (fabulari de), Psa 69:13; with the accus., that which is said of a thing, Psa 145:5, or the address, briefly for שׂיח ל, Job 12:8 (as מגּן with accus. Pro 4:9 = מגן ל): when thou art awake, wisdom will forthwith enter into conversation with thee, and fill thy thoughts with right matter, and give to thy hands the right direction and consecration.