Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

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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