Proverbs 31:8

Open your mouth ¹  on behalf of those unable to speak, ²  for the legal rights of all the dying. ³ 

1Sa 19:4-7; 1Sa 20:32; 1Sa 22:14,15; Es 4:13-16; Job 29:9,17; Ps 79:11; Ps 82:3,4; Pr 24:7,11,12; Jer 26:16-19,24; Jer 38:7-10; Joh 7:51

¹ sn The instruction to “open your mouth” is a metonymy of cause; it means “speak up for” (so NIV, TEV, NLT) or in this context “serve as an advocate in judgment” (cf. CEV “you must defend”).

² sn The instruction compares people who cannot defend themselves in court with those who are physically unable to speak (this is a figure of speech known as hypocatastasis, an implied comparison). The former can physically speak; but because they are the poor, the uneducated, the oppressed, they are unable to conduct a legal defense. They may as well be speechless.

³ tn Or “of all the defenseless.” The noun חֲלוֹף (khalof) means “passing away; vanishing” (properly an infinitive); in this construction “the sons of the passing away” means people who by nature are transitory, people who are dying – mortals. But in this context it would indicate people who are “defenseless” as opposed to those who are healthy and powerful.