Yet affliction makes false a wise man’s hope, and destroys the heart of his purpose.
(7.) For the oppression (generic, ‘the affliction of life’) makes mad (poel future, occurs Job xii. 7, Isaiah xlii. 5; compare also chapter ii. 2, which we have seen is the madness of false expectation) a wise man (hence the meaning must be, that the oppressions or afflictions of life put out the calculations of the wise, and make their expectation false) and destroys with respect to the heart (את לב, therefore emphatic; hence the LXX. render τὴν καρδίαν, and the meaning is, that affliction [compare chapter iv. 1] not only makes his expectations false, but disappoints his desires; which clearly, with the advantages of sorrow stated above, it ought not to do to a wise man) of his purpose. (Following the LXX., who derive the word from the root מתן, which exists in the Arabic, and also in the Syriac——see Bernstein, s. v.,
‘moratus est,’ ‘tardus fuit;’ ‘that which is purposed or appointed’ would be quite a natural meaning, for נתן not only has the meaning ‘to give,’ but also ‘to settle or appoint.’ If we render with the Authorized Version ‘gift,’ we introduce an idea altogether new and strange, while with the rendering supported by the LXX. and unpointed text, the aphorism connects itself with what went before and follows after.)
8 Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
(6.) [Yet] good is the end of a matter, and more than its beginning.
(7.) [And] good is the long-suffering soul above the high swelling spirit.