Proverbs 22:28

A fourth proverb - a distich - beginning with the warning אל: 28 Remove not the perpetual landmark Which thy ancestors have set up. 28a = Pro 23:10. Regarding the inviolability of boundaries established by the law, vid., at Pro 15:25. גּבוּל עולם denotes "the boundary mark set up from ancient times, the removal of which were a double transgression, because it is rendered sacred by its antiquity" (Orelli, p. 76). נסג = סוּג signifies to remove back, Hiph. to shove back, to move away. אשׁר has the meaning of (ὅριον) ὅ, τι, quippe quod. Instead of עולם, the Mishna reads, Pea v. 6, עולים, which in the Jerusalem Gemara one Rabbi understands of those brought up out of Egypt, another of the poor; for "to rise" (in the world) is a euphemism (לשׁון כבוד) for "to come down" (be reduced in circumstances). (Note: As an analogical example, סגּי נהור, seeing clearly = blind.)

1. We are here taught not to invade another man's right, though we can find ways of doing it ever so secretly and plausibly, clandestinely and by fraud, without any open force. Let not property in general be entrenched upon, by robbing men of their liberties and privileges, or of any just ways of maintaining them. Let not the property of particular persons be encroached upon. The land-marks, or meer-stones, are standing witnesses to every man's right; let not those be removed quite away, for thence come wars, and fightings, and endless disputes; let them not be removed so as to take from thy neighbour's lot to thy own, for that is downright robbing him and entailing the fraud upon posterity. 2. We may infer hence that a deference is to be paid, in all civil matters, to usages that have prevailed time out of mind and the settled constitutions of government, in which it becomes us to acquiesce, lest an attempt to change it, under pretence of changing it for the better, prove of dangerous consequence.

22:28 Saying 4: Property was marked by stones set up as boundary markers; it was a great offense to move these ancient markers of real estate (see also 23:10; Deut 19:14).