The Pulpit Commentary on Proverbs 7:23

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Till a dart strike through his liver. This clause would be better taken with the preceding verse, as in the Septuagint, or else placed in a parenthesis; then the following clause introduces a new come parison. The youth follows the harlot till his liver, the seat of the passions, is thoroughly inflamed, or till fatal consequences ensue. Theocr; 'Id,' 11.15—

ἔχθιστον ἔχων ὑποκάρδιον ἕλκος

κύπριος ἐκ μεγάλας τὸ οἱ ἥπατι πᾶξε βέλεμνον.

"Beneath his breast

A hateful wound he bore by Cypris given,

Who in his liver fixed the fatal dart."

Delitzsch would relegate the hemistich to the end of the verse, making it denote the final result of mad and illicit love. The sense thus gained is satisfactory, but the alteration is quite arbitrary, and unsupported by ancient authority. As a bird hasteth to the snare. This is another comparison (see Proverbs 1:17, the first proverb in the book, and note there). And knoweth not that it is for his life; i.e. the infatuated youth does not consider that his life is at stake, that he is bringing upon himself, by his vicious rashness, temporal and spiritual ruin (Proverbs 5:11).

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