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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Proverbs 5:16 - a declaration or a question ?
  • Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:34:58 -0600

Dear Christopher,

On 12/26/04 3:41 PM, "Maurice A. O'Sullivan" <mauros AT iol.ie> wrote:
" The Hebrew text can be read as a question or as a statement of
consequence, and HOTTP accepts both as ways to understand the first line.
" Reyburn, W. D., & Fry, E. M. (2000). A handbook on Proverbs. UBS
handbook series;

As HOTTP = Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, an international team of
scholars preparing BH Quinta, this view deserves consideration at the very
least, don't you think?

Well ... maybe, if we knew what the reasons were, but not simply by
invocation of authority. Do you happen to know the rationale for treating
the line as a question? With those arguments in hand we could bounce them
off Bryan's grammatico-syntactical observations.


HH: The NIV takes it as a question, as does the HCSB. This goes back at least as far as the ASV. The problem is that taken as a declaration, Prov 5:16 would seem to contradict both 5:15 and 5:17, the verses before and after it. They suggest the value of privacy and guarding what is one's own, not letting it pour out in the public streets:

Prov. 5:15 Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own
well.
Prov. 5:16 Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?
Prov. 5:17 Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard




Chris


--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Armstrong Fellow in Religion
Pepperdine University
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info


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