Proverbs 3:24

When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Proverbs 3:24-26. When thou liest down thou shalt not be afraid — Of fire, or thieves, or any of the terrors of the darkness, knowing that when thou and all thy friends are asleep, yet He that keepeth Israel, and every true-born Israelite, neither slumbers nor sleeps, and that to him thou hast committed thyself, and taken shelter under the shadow of his wings. Yea, thou shalt lie down — And shalt not need to sit up to keep guard; and, being laid down, thou shalt sleep, and not have thine eyes held waking by care or fear; and thy sleep shall be sweet — Refreshing to thee, not being disturbed by any alarms from without, or apprehensions from within. The way to have a good night is to sleep with a good conscience; and the sleep, as of the labouring man, so of the wise and godly man, is sweet. Be not afraid — That is, thou shalt not be afraid. For that it is a promise seems most probable from the context; only, for greater emphasis, it is delivered in the form of a precept; as if he had said, I require thee not to be afraid; it is both thy duty and privilege; of sudden fear — For sudden and unexpected evils are most frightful and grievous; and fear is here put for the evils feared. Neither of the desolation of the wicked — Which befalls them, when the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; and thou mayest be ready to fear, lest thou shouldst be involved in the common calamity; but fear not, for God will then hide thee in his chambers, Isaiah 26:20-21. For the Lord shall be thy confidence — A sufficient and sure ground of confidence; and shall keep thy foot from being taken — In the snares either of sin or of mischief.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:21-26 Let us not suffer Christ's words to depart from us, but keep sound wisdom and discretion; then shall we walk safely in his ways. The natural life, and all that belongs to it, shall be under the protection of God's providence; the spiritual life, and all its interests, under the protection of his grace, so that we shall be kept from falling into sin or trouble.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Let not them depart - i. e., The wisdom and discretion of the following clause. Keep thine eye on them, as one who watches over priceless treasures.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

22-24. assign reasons in their value for happiness and ornament, guidance and support in dangers, both when waking and sleeping.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Free from distracting cares and terrors, which ofttimes haunt sinners even in their sleep, because thy mind shall be composed and serene through the sense of God’s favour and providence, and the conscience of thine own integrity.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

When thou liest down thou shalt not be afraid,.... That is, when thou liest down on thy bed at night in order to take sleep, having committed thyself into the hands of a faithful Creator and covenant God and Father, and of Christ the Redeemer and Wisdom of God; thou shalt not be afraid of thieves breaking in to hurt thy person or rob thee of thy property, or of fire to consume thy dwelling and substance, and of nocturnal apparitions and diabolical spectres deceiving thy sight and disturbing thy mind: or when thou art "asleep" (e), for so the word also signifies; thou shall not be surprised out of it with any of the above things, or terrified in it with uneasy imaginations, anxious cares, and distressing dreams;

yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet; free of all uneasy thoughts and cares, sound and refreshing, pleasant and comfortable, like that of the labouring man, Ecclesiastes 5:12; see Psalm 4:8. This epithet of "sweet" is often given to "sleep" in poetic writings (f).

(e) "dormieris", V. L. "eum dormies", Vatablus. (f) , Homer. Odyss. 7. v. 289. & 19. v. 511. Theocrit. Idyll. 11. v. 22, 23.

Geneva Study Bible

When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 24. - When thou liest down thou shalt not be afraid. This is beautifully illustrated by what David says in Psalm 4:8, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety." No fear is to be apprehended where Jehovah is Protector (see Psalm 3:5, 6; Psalm 46:1-3; Psalm 91:1-5; Psalm 121:5-8). When, (im) is rendered "if" by the Vulgate, LXX., Targum Jonathan. Thou liest down; tish'kav, "thou shalt lie down," kal future, like shakavta, kal perfect, in the corresponding hemistich, is from shakav, "to lie down," specially to lay one's self down to sleep, as in Genesis 19:4; Psalm 3:6. Vulgate, si dormieris; cf. Proverbs 6:22, "when thou sleepest" בְּשָׁכְבְּך, b'shok'b'ka). The LXX. rendering, "if thou sittest" (κάθη), arises from reading תֵּשֵׁב (teshev) for תִּשְׁכַב (tish'kav) Yea, thou shalt lie down; b'shok'b'ta, as before, with] prefixed, equivalent to the future, as in the Authorized Version; LXX., καθεύδῃς. Shall be sweet; arvah, from arav, "to be sweet," or "pleasant," perhaps "well mixed," as arev, equivalent to "to mix." Thy sleep shall be full of pleasing impressions, not restless, as in Deuteronomy 28:66 and Job 7:4, but sweet, because of the sense of safety, and from confidence in God, as well as from a good conscience (cf. Job 11:18, "Thou shalt take thy rest in safety," from which the idea is probably taken). Proverbs 3:24

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But more than this, wisdom makes its possessor in all situations of life confident in God:

23 Then shalt thou go thy way with confidence,

     And thy foot shall not stumble.

24 When thou liest down, thou are not afraid,

     But thou layest thyself down and hast sweet sleep.

25 Thou needest not be afraid of sudden alarm,

     Nor for the storm of the wicked when it breaketh forth.

26 For Jahve will be thy confidence

     And keep thy foot from the snare.

The לבטח (cf. our "bei guter Laune" equals in good cheer), with ל of the condition, is of the same meaning as the conditional adverbial accusative בּטח, Proverbs 10:9; Proverbs 1:33. Proverbs 3:23 the lxx translate ὁ δὲ πούς σου οὐ μὴ προσκόψῃ, while, on the contrary, at Psalm 91:12 they make the person the subject (μήποτε προσκόψῃς τὸν κ.τ.λ.); here also we retain more surely the subject from 23a, especially since for the intrans. of נגף (to smite, to push) a Hithpa. התנגּף is used Jeremiah 13:16. In Proverbs 3:24 there is the echo of Job 11:18, and in Proverbs 3:25 of Job 5:21. Proverbs 3:24 is altogether the same as Job 5:24 : et decumbes et suavis erit somnus tuus equals si decubueris, suavis erit. The hypothetic perf., according to the sense, is both there and at Job 11:18 (cf. Jeremiah 20:9) oxytoned as perf. consec. Similar examples are Proverbs 6:22; Genesis 33:13; 1 Samuel 25:31, cf. Ewald, 357a. ערבה (of sleep as Jeremiah 31:26) is from ערב, which in Hebr. is used of pleasing impressions, as the Arab. ‛ariba of a lively, free disposition. שׁנה, somnus (nom. actionis from ישׁן, with the ground-form sina preserved in the Arab. lidat, vid., Job, p. 284, note), agrees in inflexion with שׁנה, annus. אל, Proverbs 3:25, denies, like Psalm 121:3, with emphasis: be afraid only not equals thou hast altogether nothing to fear. Schultens rightly says: Subest species prohibitionis et tanquam abominationis, ne tale quicquam vel in suspicionem veniat in mentemve cogitando admittatur. פּחד here means terror, as Proverbs 1:26., the terrific object; פּתאם (with the accus. om) is the virtual genitive, as Proverbs 26:2 חנּם (with accus. am). Regarding שׁאה, see under Proverbs 1:27. The genitive רשׁעים may be, after Psalm 37:18, the genit. subjecti, but still it lies nearer to say that he who chooses the wisdom of God as his guiding star has no ground to fear punishment as transgressors have reason to fear it; the שׁאה is meant which wisdom threatens against transgressors, Proverbs 1:27. He needs have no fear of it, for wisdom is a gift of God, and binds him who receives it to the giver: Jahve becomes and is henceforth his confidence. Regarding ב essentiae, which expresses the closest connection of the subject with the predicate which it introduces, see under Psalm 35:2. As here, so also at Exodus 18:4; Psalm 118:7; Psalm 146:6, the predicate is a noun with a pronominal suffix. כּסל is, as at Psalm 78:7; Job 31:24, cognate to מבטה and מקוה,

(Note: According to Malbim, תּקוה is the expectation of good, and כּסל, confidence in the presence of evil.)

the object and ground of confidence. That the word in other connections may mean also fool-hardiness, Psalm 49:14, and folly, Ecclesiastes 7:25 (cf. regarding כּסיל, which in Arab. as belı̂d denotes the dull, in Hebr. fools, see under Proverbs 1:22), it follows that it proceeds from the fundamental conception of fulness of flesh and of fat, whence arise the conceptions of dulness and slothfulness, as well as of confidence, whether confidence in self or in God (see Schultens l.c., and Wnsche's Hosea, p. 207f.). לכד is taking, catching, as in a net or trap or pit, from לכד, to catch (cf. Arab. lakida, to fasten, III, IV to hold fast); another root-meaning, in which Arab. lak connects itself with nak, nk, to strike, to assail (whence al-lakdat, the assault against the enemy, Deutsch. Morgenl. Zeitsch. xxii. 140), is foreign to the Hebr. Regarding the מן of מלכד, Fleischer remarks: "The מן after the verbs of guarding, preserving, like שׁמר and נצר, properly expresses that one by those means holds or seeks to hold a person or thing back from something, like the Lat. defendere, tueri aliquem ab hostibus, a perculo."

(Note: Hitzig rejects Proverbs 3:22-26 as a later interpolation. And why? Because chap. 3, which he regards as a complete discourse, consists of twice ten verses beginning with בּני. In addition to this symmetry other reasons easily reveal themselves to his penetration. But the discourses contained in chap. 1-9 do not all begin with בני (vid., Proverbs 1:20); and when it stands in the beginning of the discourse, it is not always the first word (vid., Proverbs 1:8); and when it occurs as the first word or in the first line, it does not always commence a new discourse (vid., Proverbs 1:15 in the middle of the first, Proverbs 3:11 in the middle of the fourth); and, moreover, the Hebr. poetry and oratory does not reckon according to verses terminated by Soph Pasuk, which are always accented distichs, but they in reality frequently consist of three or more lines. The rejected verses are in nothing unlike those that remain, and which are undisputed; they show the same structure of stichs, consisting for the most part of three, but sometimes also only of two words (cf. Proverbs 3:22 with Proverbs 1:9, Proverbs 1:10), the same breadth in the course of the thoughts, and the same accord with Job and Deuteronomy.)