Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1999

 for they partly purpose to read אחרי־כן, partly to give to 'אח the meaning of postea. אחרי, Ewald says, is a notable example of an adverb. Hitzig seeks to correct this adv. as at Neh 3:30., but where, with Keil, אחרו is to be read; at Jos 2:7, where אחרי is to be erased; and at Deu 2:30, where the traditional text is accountable. This אחרי may be formed like אזי and מתי; but if it had existed, it would not be a ἅπαξ λεγ. The accentuation also, in the passage before us, does not recognise it; but it takes אחרי and אדם together, and how otherwise than that it appears, as Ibn-Jachja in his Grammar, and Immanuel have recognised it, to be a noun terminating in aj. It is a formation, like לפני, 1Ki 6:10 (cf. Olshausen's Lehrb. p. 428f.), of the same termination as שׁדּי, חגּי, and in the later Aram.-Heb. זכּי, and the like. The variant אחרי, noticed by Heidenheim, confirms it; and the distinction between different classes of men (vid., vol. i. p. 39) which prevails in the Book of Proverbs favours it. A אדם אחרי is defined, after the manner of Jeremiah (Jer 7:24): a man who is directed backwards, and not לפנים, forwards. Not the renegade - for מוכיח, opp. מחליק לשׁון, does not lead to so strong a conception - but the retrograder is thus called in German: Rückläufige one who runs backwards or Rückwendige one who turns backwards, who turns away from the good, the right, and the true, and always departs the farther away from them (Immanuel: going backwards in his nature or his moral relations). This centrifugal direction, leading to estrangement from the fear of Jahve, or, what is the same thing, from the religion of revelation, would lead to entire ruin if unreserved and fearless denunciation did not interpose and seek to restrain it; and he who speaks so truly, openly, and earnestly home to the conscience of one who is on the downward course, gains for himself thereby, on the part of him whom he has directed aright, and on the part of all who are well disposed, better thanks (and also, on the part of God, a better reward, Jam 5:19.)