Proverbs 20:16 - Exposition

Take his garment that is surety for a stranger. The maxim is repeated in Proverbs 27:13 ; and warnings against suretyship are found in Proverbs 6:1 , etc.; Proverbs 11:15 ; Proverbs 17:18 ; Proverbs 22:26 , etc. The second portion of the clause is translated also, "For he is surety for another." If a man is so weak and foolish as to become security for any one, and is unable to make good his engaged payment, let him lose his garment which the creditor would seize; his imprudence must bring its own punishment. And take a pledge of him for a strange woman. The Authorized Version probably adopts this rendering in conformity with Proverbs 27:13 , where it occurs in the text, as hero in the margin (the Keri). But the Khetib has, "for strangers," which seems to be the original reading; and the first words ought to be translated, "hold him in pledge;" i.e. seize his person for the sake of the strangers for whom he has stood security, so as not to suffer loss from them. The Law endeavoured to secure lending to needy brethren without interest (see Psalms 15:5 ; Ezekiel 18:8 , Ezekiel 18:13 , etc.; Ezekiel 22:12 ): but it allowed the creditor to secure himself by taking pledges of his debtor, while it regulated this system so as to obviate most of its severity and oppressiveness (see the restrictions in Exodus 22:26 , etc.; Deuteronomy 24:6 , Deuteronomy 24:12 , etc.). "Where the debtor possessed nothing which he could pledge, he gave the personal security of a friend. This was a very formal proceeding. The surety gave his hand both to the debtor and to the creditor before an assembly legally convened, he deposited a pledge, and, in accordance with this twofold promise, was regarded by the creditor in just the same light as the debtor himself, and treated accordingly. If the debtor, or in his place the surety, was unable to pay the debt when it fell due, he was entirely at the mercy of the creditor. The authorities troubled themselves but little about these relations, and the law, so far as it is preserved to us, gave no directions in the matter. We see, however, from many allusions and narratives, what harsh forms these relations actually took, especially in later times, when the ancient national brotherly love which the Law presupposed was more and more dying out. The creditor could not only forcibly appropriate all the movable, but also the fixed property, including the hereditary estate (this at least till its redemption in the year of jubilee), nay, he could even (if he could find nothing else of value) carry off as a prisoner the body of his debtor, or of his wife and child, to employ them in his service, though this could only he done for a definite period".