Proverbs 2:21 - Exposition

For the upright shall dwell in the land. Much the same language is met with in Psalms 37:29 , "The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein foreverse" It is the secure and peaceful dwelling in the land which is intended (cf. Proverbs 10:30 ). To dwell in the land was always put forward as the reward of obedience to God's commandments (see Exodus 20:12 ; Le Exodus 25:18 ; Exodus 26:5 ), and the phrase conveyed to the Hebrew mind the idea of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all temporal blessings. The love of country was a predominant characteristic of the race. Elster, quoted by Zockler, remarks, "The Israelite was beyond the power of natural feeling, which makes home dear to every one, more closely bound to the ancestral soil by the whole form of the theocracy; torn kern it, he was in the inmost roots of life strained and broken. Especially from psalms belonging to the period of the exile this patriotic feeling is breathed out in the fullest glow and intensity." The land ( אָרֶץ , arets ) was the promised land, the land of Canaan. The word is not used here in the wider sense in which it occurs in Matthew 5:5 , "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." And the perfect shall remain in it; i.e. they shall not, as Rabbi Levi remarks, be driven thence nor caused to migrate. The perfect ( תְמִימִים , th'mimim ) , the holy ( LXX ; ὅσιοι ), the spotless ( immaeulati, Targum), those without a staid ( qui sine labe, Syriae), the guileless ( simplices, Vulgate). Shall remain ; יִוָּתְרוּ ( yivrath'ru ) , niph. future of יָתר ( yathar ) , properly "to be redundant," and in the niph. form, "to be left," or "to remain." LXX ; ὑπολειφθήσαντι "shall remain;" permanebunt, Vulgate.