¹ tn Heb “man.”

² tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn BDB 814 s.v. פָּלַס 2 suggests that the participle מְפַּלֵּס (mÿpalles) means “to make level [or, straight].” As one’s ways are in front of the eyes of the Lord, they become straight or right. It could be translated “weighs” since it is a denominative from the noun for “balance, scale”; the Lord weighs or examines the actions.

⁴ tn Heb “all his”; the referent (the person mentioned in the first half of the verse) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ tn Heb “fear of the Lord.” The term יְהוָה (yÿhvah, “the Lord”) functions as an objective genitive.

⁶ tn Heb “crooked of ways”; NRSV “devious in conduct.” This construct phrase features a genitive of specification: “crooked in reference to his ways.” The term “ways” is an idiom for moral conduct. The evidence that people fear the Lord is uprightness; the evidence of those who despise him is the devious ways.

⁷ sn This chapter gives a lot of attention to the contrast between the poor and the rich, assuming an integrity for the poor that is not present with the rich; the subject is addressed in vv. 6, 8, 11, 20, 22, 25, and 27 (G. A. Chutter, “Riches and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs,” Crux 18 [1982]: 23-28).

⁸ tn The Hebrew term translated “ways” is in the dual, suggesting that the person has double ways, i.e., he is hypocritical. C. H. Toy does not like this idea and changes the form to the plural (Proverbs [ICC], 497), but his emendation is gratuitous and should be rejected.

⁹ tn Heb “and he is rich.” Many English versions treat this as a concessive clause (cf. KJV “though he be rich”).

¹⁰ sn This is another “better” saying, contrasting a poor person who has integrity with a rich person who is perverse. Of course there are rich people with integrity and perverse poor people, but that is not of interest here. If it came to the choices described here, honest poverty is better than corrupt wealth.