17:13 As for the one who repays 1 evil for good,
evil will not leave 2 his house. 3
17:26 It is terrible 4 to punish 5 a righteous person,
and to flog 6 honorable men is wrong. 7
1 tn The sentence begins with the participle מֵשִׁיב (meshiv, “the one who repays”). The whole first colon may be taken as an independent nominative absolute, with the formal sentence to follow. Some English versions have made the first colon a condition by supplying “if” (NAB, NIV, TEV, NLT).
2 tn The verb מוּשׁ (mush) means “to depart; to remove.” The Kethib is a Hiphil, which would yield a meaning of “to take away”; so the Qere, which is the Qal, makes more sense in the line.
3 sn The proverb does not explain whether God will turn evil back on him directly or whether people will begin to treat him as he treated others.
4 tn Heb “not good.” This is an example of tapeinosis – an understatement that implies the worst-case scenario: “it is terrible.”
5 tn The verb עָנַשׁ, here a Qal infinitive construct, properly means “to fine” (cf. NAB, NRSV, NLT) but is taken here to mean “to punish” in general. The infinitive functions as the subject of the clause.
6 tn The form is the Hiphil infinitive construct from נָכָה (nakhah, “to strike; to smite”). It may well refer to public beatings, so “flog” is used in the translation, since “strike” could refer to an individual’s action and “beat” could be taken to refer to competition.
7 tn Heb “[is] against uprightness.” The expression may be rendered “contrary to what is right.”
sn The two lines could be synonymous parallelism; but the second part is being used to show how wrong the first act would be – punishing the righteous makes about as much sense as beating an official of the court for doing what is just.