Proverbs 11:19

19 Genuine righteousness reaches to life, And he who pursues evil does it to his death. The lxx translate υἱὸς δίκαιος, and the Syrian follows this unwarrantable quid pro quo; the Bible uses the phrase בן־עולה and the like, but not בן־צדקה. The Graec. Venet. (translating οὕτω) deprives the distich of its supposed independence. The Targ. renders כּן with the following ו as correlates, sic ... uti; but כן in comparative proverbs stands naturally in the second, and not in the first place (vid., p. 10). Without doubt כן is here a noun. It appears to have a personal sense, according to the parallel וּמרדּף, on which account Elster explains it: he who is firm, stedfast in righteousness, and Zckler: he who holds fast to righteousness; but כן cannot mean "holding fast," nor does מכונן; - "fast" does not at all agree with the meaning of the word, it means upright, and in the ethical sense genuine; thus Ewald better: "he who is of genuine righteousness," but "genuine in (of) righteousness" is a tautological connection of ideas. Therefore we must regard כן as a substantival neuter, but neither the rectum of Cocceius nor the firmum of Schultens furnishes a naturally expressed suitable thought. Or is כּן a substantive in the sense of 2 Kings 7:31? The word denotes the pedestal, the pillar, the standing-place; but what can the basis refer to here (Euchel)? Rather read "aim" (Oetinger) or "direction" (Lwenstein); but כן does not take its meaning from the Hiph. הכין. One might almost assume that the Chokma-language makes כּן, taliter, a substantive, and has begun to use it in the sense of qualitas (like the post-bibl. איכוּת), so that it is to be explained: the quality of righteousness tendeth to life. But must we lose ourselves in conjectures or in modifications of the text (Hitz…

It is here shown that righteousness, not only by the divine judgment, will end in life, and wickedness in death, but that righteousness, in its own nature, has a direct tendency to life and wickedness to death. 1. True holiness is true happiness; it is a preparative for it, a pledge and earnest of it. Righteousness inclines, disposes, and leads, the soul to life. 2. In like manner, those that indulge themselves in sin are fitting themselves for destruction. The more violent a man is in sinful pursuits the more eagerly bent he is upon his own destruction; he awakens it when it seemed to slumber and hastens it when it seemed to linger.