Keil & Delitzsch on Proverbs 25:11

A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.

Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.

The first emblematical distich of this collection now follows: 11 Golden apples in silver salvers. A word spoken according to its circumstances. The Syr. and Jerome vocalize דּבר דּבר, and the Targ. דּבר דּבר; both are admissible, but the figure and that which is represented are not placed in so appropriate a relation as by דּבר דּבר; the wonderfully penetrating expression of the text, which is rendered by the traditional nikkud, agrees here with the often occurring דּבר (= מדבּר), also its passive דּבוּר. The defective writing is like, e.g., בּטח, Psa 112:7, and gives no authority to prefer דּבּר = מדבּר (Bttcher). That דּברי, corresponding to the plur. תּפּוּחי, is not used, arises from this, that דבר is here manifestly not a word without connection, but a sentence of motive, contents, and aim united. For על־אפניו, the meaning of בּעתּו presents itself from Pro 15:23, according to which, among the old interpreters, Symmachus, Jerome, and Luther render "at its time." Abulwald compared the Arab. âiffan (âibban, also 'iffan, whence 'aly 'iffanihi, justo tempore), which, as Orelli has shown in his Synon. der Zeitbegriffe, p. 21f., comes from the roots af ab, to drive (from within) going out, time as consisting of individual moments, the one of which drives on the other, and thus denotes time as a course of succession. One may not hesitate as to the prep. על, for אפנים would, like עתּות, denote the circumstances, the relations of the time, and על would, as e.g., in על־פּי and על־דּברתי, have the meaning of κατά. But the form אפניו, which like חפניו, Lev 16:12, sounds dualistic, appears to oppose this. Hitzig supposes that אפנים may designate the time as a circle, with reference to the two arches projecting in opposite directions, but uniting themselves together; but the circle which time describes runs out from one point, and, moreover, the Arab. names for time âfaf, âifaf, and the like, which interchange with âiffan, show that this does not proceed from the idea of circular motion. Ewald and others take for אפניו the meaning of wheels (the Venet., after Kimchi, ἐπὶ τῶν τροχῶν αὐτῆς), whereby the form is to be interpreted as dual of אפן = אופן, "a word driven on its wheels," - so Ewald explains: as the potter quickly and neatly forms a vessel on his wheels, thus a fit and quickly framed word. But דבר signifies to drive cattle and to speak = to cause words to follow one another (cf. Arab. syâḳ, pressing on = flow of words), but not to drive = to fashion in that artisan sense. Otherwise Bttcher, "a word fitly spoken, a pair of wheels perfect in their motion," to which he compares the common people "in their jesting," and adduces all kinds of heterogeneous things partly already rejected by Orelli (e.g., the Homeric ἐπιτροχάδην, which is certainly no commendation). But "jesting" is not appropriate here; for what man conceives of human speech as a carriage, one only sometimes compares that of a babbler to a sledge, or says of him that he shoves the cart into the mud. (Note: It is something different when the weaver's beam, minwâl in Arab., is metaph. for kind and manner: they are 'aly minwâl wâḥad, is equivalent to they are of a like calibre, Arab. kalib, which is derived from καλόπους (καλοπόδιον), a shoemaker's last.) Is it then thus decided that אפניו is a dual? It may be also like אשׂריו, the plur. especially in the adverbial expression before us, which readily carried the abbreviation with it (vid., Gesen. Lehrgebr…

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