Proverbs 2:9 - Exposition

Then ( אָז , az ), repeated from Proverbs 2:5 , introduces the second apodosis. As the former referred to God, so this appears to refer more especially to man, and thus we have stated the whole benefit, in its twofold aspect, which Wisdom confers on those who diligently seek her. It is not to be affirmed, however, that righteousness and judgment and equity refer exclusively to man; they must represent some aspects of our relationship to God, both from the meaning of the words themselves, and because the law which regulates our dealings and intercourse with man has its seat in the higher law of our relation to God. Righteousness, and judgment, and equity. These three words occur in the same collocation in Proverbs 1:3 , which see. Yea, every good path. "Yea" does not occur in the original. The expression is a summarizing of the three previous conceptions, as if the teacher implied that all good paths are embraced by and included in "righteousness, and judgment, and equity;" but the term is also comprehensive in the widest degree. The literal translation is "every path of good" ( כְּל־מַעְגֻּל־טוֹב , cal-ma'gal-tov ) , i.e. every course of action of which goodness is the characteristic, or, as the Authorized Version, "every good path," the sense in which it was understood by St. Jerome, omnem orbitam bonam. The word here used for "path" is מַעְגַּל ( ma'gal ) , "the way in which the chariot rolls" (Delitzsch), and metaphorically a course of action, as in Proverbs 2:15 ; Proverbs 4:26 .