C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Proverbs 5:12-14

Pro 5:12-14

The poet now tells those whom he warns to hear how the voluptuary, looking back on his life-course, passes sentence against himself. 12 And thou sayest, “Why have I then hated correction,      And my heart despised instruction! 13 And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers,      Nor lent mine ear to my instructors? 14 I had almost fallen into every vice      In the midst of the assembly and the congregation!”

The question 12a (here more an exclamation than a question) is the combination of two: How has it become possible for me? How could it ever come to it that.... Thus also one says in Arab.: Kyf f'alat hadhâ (Fl.). The regimen of איך in 12b is becoming faint, and in 13b has disappeared. The Kal נאץ (as Pro 1:30; Pro 15:5) signifies to despise; the Piel intensively, to contemn and reject (R. נץ, pungere).