10:21 The teaching 1 of the righteous feeds 2 many,
but fools die 3 for lack of wisdom. 4
15:14 The discerning heart seeks knowledge,
but the mouth of fools feeds on folly. 5
1 tn Heb “lips.” The term “lips” functions as a metonymy of cause for what is said (or in this case taught).
2 tn The verb רָעָה (ra’ah) means “to feed” or “to shepherd” (e.g., Gen 48:15). What they say will meet the needs of many.
3 tn In what sense the fool “dies” is unclear. Fools ruin their lives and the lives of others by their lack of discipline and knowledge. The contrast is between enhancing life and ruining life.
4 tn Heb “heart.” The term לֵב (lev, “heart”) functions as a metonymy of association for wisdom and knowledge (BDB 524 s.v. 3.a).
5 tn The idea expressed in the second colon does not make a strong parallelism with the first with its emphasis on seeking knowledge. Its poetic image of feeding (a hypocatastasis) would signify the acquisition of folly – the fool has an appetite for it. D. W. Thomas suggests the change of one letter, ר (resh) to ד (dalet), to obtain a reading יִדְעֶה (yid’eh); this he then connects to an Arabic root da`a with the meaning “sought, demanded” to form what he thinks is a better parallel (“Textual and Philological Notes on Some Passages in the Book of Proverbs,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 285). But even though the parallelism is not as precise as some would prefer, there is insufficient warrant for such a change.