CHAPTER V.
KEEP thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.
Section IV.——Practical aphorisms grounded on the foregoing.
GUARD thou thy steps as one who art walking to the House of the Divinity, and approach rather to hearken than to give, as the fools do, a sacrifice; who do not know when evil is being done.
V. (1.) Keep thy feet (the Masorets have altered this to the singular, but without sufficient reason; yet the LXX. support the Kri) as when (occurs chapter v. 3 (4), viii. 7; ‘as though’ is the meaning here) thou walkest (taking up the word from the last clause above) towards the house of the Deity (the LXX. render, of course correctly as to sense by the double article, τὸν οἶκον τοῦ Θεοῦ——‘Thou art walking to the temple of a Divine Providence’ is the idea), and drawing near to hear (evidently ‘in order to hear’; hence the LXX. render ἐγγὺς τοῦ ἀκούειν; some, however, with the Authorized Version, take this as an imperative, but the sense is better preserved by rendering as the LXX. do), more than giving of the befooled ones (for we must not lose sight of the hiphil form: they are deceived either by themselves or others) a sacrifice. (The curious rendering of the LXX. by no means shows that they did not understand the meaning, or even would have altered the present pointing; ὑπὲρ δόμα τῶν ἀφρόνων θυσία σου fulfils their conditions of rendering, which is, if possible, to preserve both the sense and the order, ‘above the gift of fools is thy sacrifice’). For they are not those instructed to the doing of (so the LXX., τοῦ ποιῆσαι) evil. The sentence is purposely ambiguous and equivocal; it is not clear at first sight whether the fools are those who do evil, or whether it be the doing of evil generally which is the point, but the following will seem to give a fair explanation of this [♦]difficult passage. The advice given after the considerations above, is to walk reverently, and to listen to what God’s oracle will say, rather than do as fools do,——offer a sacrifice to avert evil, which they do not after all know to be such, and which, if it implies dissatisfaction with these divine providential arrangements, is a foolish, if not sinful, sacrifice. This is further set forth in the following verses.
[♦] “difcult” replaced with “difficult”
2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any [¹]thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.