Proverbs 11: A Just Weight Is His Delight

"A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight" (11:1). The strongest religious word in Proverbs, to'evah ("abomination"), is used for cheating in trade.

"When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting. By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked" (11:10–11). "Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety" (11:14).

"As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion" (11:22): an image, absurd on purpose, of beauty wasted.

"There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it" (11:24–26).

Weights and balances

Merchants weighed silver and goods on hand-held balances against stone or metal weights. Excavations in Judah have found hundreds of dome-shaped limestone weights of the 8th–7th centuries BC, marked with a symbol and a number of shekels (the shekel was about 11.3–11.5 grams); some are measurably light or heavy. A cheat could keep two sets, "divers weights" (20:10, 23; Deuteronomy 25:13–16; Amos 8:5; Micah 6:11). The archaeology illustrates the world of the saying; it does not identify any particular cheat.

The grain hoarder

"He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him" (11:26): in a lean year, the one who holds back grain to raise the price profits from hunger. Ancient Near Eastern texts (and Genesis 41–47, where Joseph sells stored grain) show state and private control of grain in famine. The saying sides with the one who sells.

11:30 "He that winneth souls"

The Hebrew loqeach nefashot chakham reads literally "one who takes lives is wise." Elsewhere "taking life" means killing (1 Kings 19:10). So translators either understand "captures hearts" (wins people over), or, with many scholars and following the Greek ("the souls of the lawless are taken away untimely"), read chamas, "violence," for chakham, "wise": "violence takes lives." The English "he that winneth souls" became a missionary motto; it is a possible translation, but the original sense is debated.

11:31 in 1 Peter

1 Peter 4:18 quotes the Greek: "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" The Hebrew says "If the righteous is repaid on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner." The Greek reads the verb as "is saved with difficulty." The New Testament writer used the Greek wording to make his point about suffering before judgment.

The Greek of chapter 11

The library's Greek has 29 verses against 31: it lacks 11:4 (as other Old Greek witnesses are reported to do) and expands 11:16, so its numbering runs two behind in the middle of the chapter (for example, the merciful man of 11:17 stands at Giguet 11:15). Readings must be located by content (D check; C check against Rahlfs).