Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Proverbs 30:10
A historical reference excerpt for this verse.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.
10 Calumniate not a servant with his master, Lest he curse thee, and thou must atone for it. Incorrectly Ewald: entice not a servant to slander against his master; and Hitzig: "Make not a servant tattle regarding his master." It is true that the Poel לושׁן (to pierce with the tongue, lingu petere) occurs twice in the sense of to calumniate; but that הלשׁין means nothing else, is attested by the post-bibl. Hebrew; the proverb regarding schismatics (בּרכּת המּינים) in the Jewish Schemone-Esre (prayer of the eighteen benedictions) began with ולמלשינים, "and to the calumniators" (delatoribus). Also in the Arab. âlsana signifies pertulit verba alicujus ad alterum, to make a babbler, rapporteur (Fleischer). That the word also here is not to be otherwise interpreted, is to be concluded from אל with the causative rendering. Rightly Symmachus, μὴ διαβάλῃς; Theodotion, μὴ καταλαλήσῃς; and according to the sense also, Jerome, ne accuses; the Venet. μὴ καταμηνύσῃς (give not him); on the contrary, Luther, verrate nicht \[betray not\], renders הלשׁין with the lxx, Syr. in the sense of the Aram. אשׁלם and the Arab. âslam (tradere, prodere). One should not secretly accuse ( Psa 101:5) a servant with his master, and in that lies the character of slander (לשׁון הרע) when one puts suspicion upon him, or exaggerates the actual facts, and generally makes the person suspected - one thereby makes a man, whose lot in itself is not a happy one, at length and perhaps for ever unhappy, and thereby he brings a curse on himself. But it is no matter of indifference to be the object of the curse of a man whom one has unrighteously and unjustly overwhelmed in misery: such a curse is not without its influence, for it does not fruitlessly invoke the righteous retribution of God, and thus one has sorrowfully to atone for the wanton sins of the tongue (veaschāmta, for ve-aschamtá as it is would be without pause). Proverbs 30:11
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