Proverbs 23: Who Hath Woe?

"When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite" (23:1–2). At a powerful man's table, control your appetite: his delicacies may be "deceitful meat" (v. 3), offered to buy loyalty.

"Labour not to be rich… Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven" (23:4–5).

"Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: for their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee" (23:10–11).

"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine… At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder… They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again" (23:29–35).

Amenemope again

Amenemope's chapter 23 begins: "Do not eat in the presence of an official and then set your mouth before him"; chapter 7 has "riches… they make themselves wings like geese, and fly to the sky"; chapter 11 warns against the poor man's goods and the greedy man's food that makes you vomit; chapter 6 forbids moving boundary markers and encroaching on a widow's fields (Lichtheim). Proverbs 23:1–11 follows the same topics, often the same images (wings, vomiting), and puts them under Israel's God: the fatherless have a go'el, a Redeemer, who is "mighty" (v. 11). The parallels end at 23:11 (C check against the Egyptian edition).

The redeemer of the fatherless

Go'el is the kinsman who buys back land and defends a relative (Leviticus 25:25; Ruth 4). Orphans had no such kin, so God himself is their go'el (compare Psalm 68:5; Jeremiah 50:34). The Egyptian text speaks of the god protecting the widow; the Hebrew uses Israel's family-law term.

23:13–14 "he shall not die"

"If thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die… and shalt deliver his soul from hell (Sheol)." In its setting the saying reassures a parent that correction will not kill the child but save him from the early death folly brings. It assumes physical punishment as normal, as Egyptian and Mesopotamian school texts do. The site presents it in that setting and does not treat it as a mandate to strike or injure a child; see the passage page on 13:24 and the investigation Contradictory Advice, Contextual Wisdom.

23:29–35: an ancient portrait of addiction

The poem describes intoxication from the inside: quarrels and complaints, wounds one cannot explain, red eyes, the attraction of wine's colour, the snake-bite at the end, distorted perception and speech, dizziness, numbness to injury, and the first thought on waking: "I will seek it yet again." It is literature, not a clinical tool, but its description of craving and repetition has been noted by modern readers working with addiction. Egyptian texts (the Instruction of Any) also warn against the beer-house.

The Greek

The library's Greek has 36 numbered slots in chapter 23 with the last empty. It lacks 23:23 ("Buy the truth"), as the Old Greek is reported to (C check), and renders 23:31 with an added line ("if you set your eyes on bowls and cups, you will later walk more naked than a pestle"). Greek readings are located by content (D check).