Proverbs Chapter 1 verse 11 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 11. - If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood. The teacher here puts into the mouth of the sinners, for the sake of vivid representation, the first inducement with which they seek to allure youth from the paths of rectitude, viz. privacy and concealment (Cartwright, Wardlaw). Both the verbs אָרַב (arav) and צָפַן, (tzaphan) mean "to lay in wait" (Zockler). The radical meaning of arav, from which נֶאֶרְבָה (neer'vah), "let us lay in wait" (Authorized Version) is taken, is "to knot, to weave, to intertwine." Verbs of this class are often applied to snares and craftiness (cf. the Greek δόλον ὑδαίνειν, and the Latin insidias nectere, "to weave plots, or lay snares"). Generally, arav is equivalent to "to watch in ambush" (Gesenius); cf. the Vulgate, insidiemur sanguini; i.e. "let us lay wait for blood." The LXX. paraphrases the expression, κοινώνησον αἵματος, i.e. "let us share in blood." On the other hand, צָפַן (tzaphan), from which נִצְפְנָה (nitz'p'nah), translated in the Authorized Version, "let us lurk privily," is "to hide or conceal," and intrans. "to hide one's self," or ellipt., "to hide nets, snares" (Gesenius, Holden). This sense agrees with the Vulgate abscondamus tendiculas; i.e. "let us conceal snares." Delitzsch, however, holds that no word is to be understood with this verb, and traces the radical meaning to that of restraining one's self, watching, lurking. in the sense of speculari, "to watch for," insidiari, "to lay wait for." The two verbs combine what may be termed the apparatus, the arrangement of the plot and their lurking in ambush, by which they will await their victims. For blood (לְדָם, l'dam). The context (see vers. 12 and 16), bearing as it does upon bloodshed accompanying robbery, requires that the Hebrew לְדָם (l'dam) should be understood here, as Fleischer remarks, either elliptically, for "the blood of men," as the Jewish interpreters explain, or synedochically, for the person, with especial reference to his blood being shed, as in Psalm 94:21. Vatablus, Cornelius a Lapide. and Gesenius support the latter view (cf. Micah 7:2, "They all lie in wait for blood," i.e. for bloodshed, or murder. דָם (dam) may be also taken for life in the sense that "the blood is the life" (Deuteronomy 12:23). Let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause. The relation of the phrase. "without cause" (חִנָּם, khinnam), in this sentence is a matter of lnueh dispute. It may be taken either with (1) the verb (as in the Authorized Version, Wordsworth, Luther, Van Ess, Noyes, Zockler, Delitzsch, Hatzig, LXX., Syriac, Rashi, Ralbac), and then "lurk privily without cause" is equivalent to (a) without having any reason for revenge and enmity (Zockler), i.e. though they have not provoked us, nor done us any injury, yet let us hurt them, in the sense of absque causa (Munsterus, Paganini Version, Piscatoris Version, Mercerus), ἀδικῶς (LXX.), inique (Arabic); (b) with impunity, since none will avenge them in the sense of Job 9:12 (this is the view of Lowestein, but it is rejected by Delitzsch); or . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(11) Without cause.--To be taken with "lurk." Though he has done us no harm.