THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. PART FIRST. THE HEBREW TEXT, KING JAMES' VERSION, AND A REVISED VERSION, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND CRITICAL AND PHILOLOGICAL NOTES. PART SECOND. THE REVISED VERSION, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND EXPLANATORY NOTES. FOR THE AMERICAN BIBLE UNION. BY THOMAS J. CONANT. NEW YORK: SHELDON & COMPANY, NO. 677 BROADWAY. 1872. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by THE AMERICAN BIBLE UNION, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. T. HOLMAN, Printer and Stereotyper, New York. TO THE READER. In the plan of the following work, the critical and exegetical notes designed for the learned, and the strictly expository notes for English readers, are printed separately, the former in connection with the Hebrew text and the revised version, the latter in connection with the revised version alone. In the former division, for convenient comparison the entire Hebrew text,* the common English version, and the revised version, are printed side by side in parallel columns; and in the subjoined notes are stated the grounds, critical, philological, and exegetical, for the renderings in the revised version. In determining the proper rendering of the text into English, the principal questions in exegesis, as well as in criticism and philology, are necessarily considered. The plan here adopted combines in one work the advantages both of a learned and of a popular commentary, while neither interferes with the other. The course of critical and philological discussion, in which the different views of scholars on questions of translation and exegesis have to be fully discussed, can not without inconvenience be interrupted by purely expository commentary for practical use. On the other hand, the union of expository and practical with learned commentary, on the same page, embarrasses the mere English reader, by the occurrence of foreign words and extended critical discussions, unintelligible to him, and on subjects of no interest to him. For the use of scholars, and of ministers of the gospel and others to whom the Hebrew text is familiar, the two parts are bound together in one volume. For the convenience of the common English reader, the Revised Version, with Introduction and Explanatory Notes, is bound in a volume by itself, and is complete in itself for the use of the common reader, having no connection with the other division of the work, and no dependence on it. * As edited by Theile; with the correction of typographical errors, of which a remarkable instance occurs in ch. 27: 3, where by an oversight of the printer the word is omitted after 5. |