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Verse 23
The confusion into which the text has fallen is continued in this verse. For the figure of the deadly arrow connects itself neither with that of the ox which goes to the slaughter-house, nor with that of the madman who is put in chains: the former is not killed by being shot; and with the latter, the object is to render him harmless, not to put him to death. The lxx therefore converts אויל into איל, a stag, and connects the shooting with an arrow with this: ἢ ὡς ἔλαφος τοξεύματι πεπληγὼς εἰς τὸ ἧπαρ. But we need no encroachment on the text itself, only a correct placing of its members. The three thoughts, Pro 7:23, reach a right conclusion and issue, if with כּמהר צפּור אל־פּח (here Mercha-mahpach) a new departure is begun with a comparison: he follows her with eager desires, like as a bird hastens to the snare (vid., regarding פח, a snare, and מוקשׁ, a noose, under Isa 8:15). What then follows is a continuation of 22a. The subject is again the youth, whose way is compared to that of an ox going to the slaughter, of a culprit in chains, and of a fool; and he knows not (non novit, as Pro 4:19; Pro 9:18, and according to the sense, non curat, Pro 3:6; Pro 5:6) that it is done at the risk of his life (בנפשׁו as 1Ki 2:23; Num 17:3), that his life is the price with which this kind of love is bought (הוּא, neut., as not merely Ecc 2:1 and the like, but also e.g., Lev 10:3; Est 9:1) - that does not concern him till (עד = עד אשׁר or עד כי) the arrow breaks or pierces through (פּלּח as Job 16:13) his liver, i.e., till he receives the death-wound, from which, if not immediately, yet at length he certainly dies. Elsewhere the part of the body struck with a deadly wound is called the reins or loins (Job, etc.), or the gall-bladder (Job 20:25); here the liver, which is called כּבד, Arab. kebid, perhaps as the organ in which sorrowful and painful affections make themselves felt (cf. Aeschylus, Agam. 801: δῆγμα λύπης ἐφ ̓ ἧπαρ προσικνεῖται), especially the latter, because the passion of sensual love, according to the idea of the ancients, reflected itself in the liver. He who is love-sick has jecur ulcerosum (Horace, Od. i. 25. 15); he is diseased in his liver (Psychol. p. 268). But the arrow is not here the arrow of love which makes love-sick, but the arrow of death, which slays him who is ensnared in sinful love. The befooled youth continues the disreputable relation into which he has entered till it terminates in adultery and in lingering disease upon his body, remorse in his soul, and dishonour to his name, speedily ending in inevitable ruin both spiritually and temporally.