2:11 Discretion 1 will protect you, 2
understanding will guard you,
3:21 My child, do not let them 3 escape from your sight;
safeguard sound wisdom and discretion. 4
5:2 in order to safeguard 5 discretion, 6
and that your lips may guard knowledge.
8:12 “I, wisdom, live with prudence, 7
and I find 8 knowledge and discretion.
11:22 Like a gold ring 9 in a pig’s snout 10
is 11 a beautiful woman who rejects 12 discretion. 13
1 tn The word מְזִמָּה (mÿzimmah, “discretion”) is the ability to know the best course of action for achieving one’s goal. It is knowledge and understanding with a purpose. This kind of knowledge enables one to make the right choices that will protect him from blunders and their consequences (cf. NLT “wise planning”; CEV “sound judgment”).
2 tn Heb “will watch over you.”
3 tn The object of the verb “escape” is either (1) wisdom, knowledge, and understanding in vv. 13-20 or (2) “wisdom and discretion” in the second colon of this verse. Several English versions transpose the terms “wisdom and discretion” from the second colon into the first colon for the sake of clarity and smoothness (e.g., RSV, NRSV, NIV, TEV, CEV).
NIV takes the subject from the second colon and reverses the clauses to clarify that.
4 tn Or: “purpose,” “power of devising.”
5 tn Heb “keep, protect, guard.”
6 sn This “discretion” is the same word in 1:4; it is wise, prudential consideration, careful planning, or the ability to devise plans with a view to the best way to carry them out. If that ability is retained then temptations to digress will not interfere.
7 tn The noun is “shrewdness,” i.e., the right use of knowledge in special cases (see also the discussion in 1:4); cf. NLT “good judgment.” The word in this sentence is an adverbial accusative of specification.
8 tn This verb form is an imperfect, whereas the verb in the first colon was a perfect tense. The perfect should be classified as a gnomic perfect, and this form a habitual imperfect, because both verbs describe the nature of wisdom.
9 tn Heb “a ring of gold.” The noun זָהָב (zahav, “gold”) is a genitive of material; the ring is made out of gold.
10 tn Heb “in a snout of a swine.” A beautiful ornament and a pig are as incongruous as a beautiful woman who has no taste or ethical judgment.
11 tn The verb “is” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.
12 tn Heb “turns away [from].”
13 tn Heb “taste.” The term can refer to physical taste (Exod 16:31), intellectual discretion (1 Sam 25:33), or ethical judgment (Ps 119:66). Here it probably means that she has no moral sensibility, no propriety, no good taste – she is unchaste. Her beauty will be put to wrong uses.