Proverbs 30:21

For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Proverbs 30:21-23. For three things the earth — That is, the inhabitants of the earth; is disquieted — By their insolence and impudence they cause great disturbances in the places where they live; for four it cannot rest — They are intolerable in human societies. For a servant when he reigneth — When he is advanced to great power and dignity; for such a one is ignorant and unfit for his place, and therefore commits many errors; he is poor, and therefore insatiable; he is proud and imperious, and usually injurious and cruel; and a fool — A conceited fool, or an obstinately wicked man; when he is filled with meat — When he is over fed, his meat and drink heating his blood, and stirring him up to many insolences: or, when he abounds in wealth, which, in that case, is like a sword in a madman’s hand, being an instrument and occasion of many acts of wickedness and mischief. For an odious woman — Proud and perverse, and full of other offensive qualities; when she is married — For then she displays all those ill humours which before she concealed. And a handmaid that is heir — Which great and sudden change transports her beside herself, and makes her insufferably proud and scornful.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

30:10 Slander not a servant to his master, accuse him not in small matters, to make mischief. 11-14. In every age there are monsters of ingratitude who ill-treat their parents. Many persuade themselves they are holy persons, whose hearts are full of sin, and who practise secret wickedness. There are others whose lofty pride is manifest. There have also been cruel monsters in every age. 15-17. Cruelty and covetousness are two daughters of the horseleech, that still cry, Give, give, and they are continually uneasy to themselves. Four things never are satisfied, to which these devourers are compared. Those are never rich that are always coveting. And many who have come to a bad end, have owned that their wicked courses began by despising their parents' authority. 18-20. Four things cannot be fully known. The kingdom of nature is full of marvels. The fourth is a mystery of iniquity; the cursed arts by which a vile seducer gains the affections of a female; and the arts which a vile woman uses to conceal her wickedness. 21-23 Four sorts of persons are very troublesome. Men of low origin and base spirit, who, getting authority, become tyrants. Foolish and violent men indulging in excesses. A woman of a contentious spirit and vicious habits. A servant who has obtained undue influence. Let those whom Providence has advanced from low beginnings, carefully watch against that sin which most easily besets them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For four which it cannot bear - Better: four it cannot bear. Here the common element is that of being intolerable, and the four examples are divided equally between the two sexes. Each has its examples of power and prosperity misused because they fall to the lot of those who have no training for them, and are therefore in the wrong place.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

21-23. Pride and cruelty, the undue exaltation of those unfit to hold power, produce those vices which disquiet society (compare Pr 19:10; 28:3).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The earth is disquieted; either,

1. The earth itself trembleth and is moved; so it is an hyperbole. Or rather,

2. The inhabitants of the earth. They do by their insolence and impudence cause great and dreadful disturbances in the places where they live.

Which it cannot bear; which are intolerable in human societies.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For three things the earth is disquieted,.... The inhabitants of it are made very uneasy;

and for four which it cannot bear; they are a load and burden upon it, and are intolerable to those that dwell on it, and make them very uncomfortable.

Geneva Study Bible

For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

21. For] “or Under,” R.V. marg.

21–23. Four things that are intolerable.

Two of them are drawn from each sex, and in each case they are unbearable because they are out of place, in a false position.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 21-23. - Then follows a proverb concerning four things which are intolerable, examples of incongruous associations or positions - two in the case of men, two in the case of women. Verse 21. - For three things the earth is disquieted; better, under three things the earth doth tremble, as if oppressed by an overwhelming borden. The form of expression does not allow us to think of an earthquake. "The earth" is equivalent to "the inhabitants thereof." And for four which it cannot bear; or, under four it cannot stand (comp. Amos 7:10). These four evils destroy the comfort of social life, uproot the bonds of society, and endanger the safety of a nation. Proverbs 30:21

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

It is now not at all necessary to rack one's brains over the grounds or the reasons of the arrangement of the following proverb (vid., Hitzig). There are, up to this point, two numerical proverbs which begin with שׁתּים, Proverbs 30:7, and שׁתּי, Proverbs 30:15; after the cipher 2 there then, Proverbs 30:18, followed the cipher 3, which is now here continued:

21 Under three things doth the earth tremble,

     And under four can it not stand:

22 Under a servant when he becomes king,

     And a profligate when he has bread enough;

23 Under an unloved woman when she is married,

     And a maid-servant when she becomes heiress to her mistress.

We cannot say here that the 4 falls into 3 + 1; but the four consists of four ones standing beside one another. ארץ is here without pausal change, although the Athnach here, as at Proverbs 30:24, where the modification of sound occurs, divides the verse into two; מארץ, 14b (cf. Psalm 35:2), remains, on the other hand, correctly unchanged. The "earth" stands here, as frequently, instead of the inhabitants of the earth. It trembles when one of the four persons named above comes and gains free space for acting; it feels itself oppressed as by an insufferable burden (an expression similar to Amos 7:10); - the arrangement of society is shattered; an oppressive closeness of the air, as it were, settles over all minds. The first case is already designated, Proverbs 19:10, as improper: under a slave, when he comes to reign (quum rex fit); for suppose that such an one has reached the place of government, not by the murder of the king and by the robbery of the crown, but, as is possible in an elective monarchy, by means of the dominant party of the people, he will, as a rule, seek to indemnify himself in his present highness for his former lowliness, and in the measure of his rule show himself unable to rise above his servile habits, and to pass out of the limited circle of his earlier state. The second case is this: a נבל, one whose mind is perverted and whose conduct is profligate - in short, a low man (vid., Proverbs 17:17) - ישׂבּע־לחם (cf. Metheg-Setzung, 28), i.e., has enough to eat (cf. to the expression Proverbs 28:19; Jeremiah 44:17); for this undeserved living without care and without want makes him only so much the more arrogant, and troublesome, and dangerous. The שׂנוּאה, in the second case, is not thought of as a spouse, and that, as in supposed polygamy, Genesis 29:31; Deuteronomy 21:15-17, as fallen into disfavour, but who again comes to favour and honour (Dathe, Rosenmller); for she can be שׂנואה without her own fault, and as such she is yet no גּרוּשׁה; and it is not to be perceived why the re-assumption of such an one should shatter social order. Rightly Hitzig, and, after his example, Zckler: an unmarried lady, an old spinster, is meant, whom no one desired because she had nothing attractive, and was only repulsive (cf. Grimm, under Sir. 7:26b). If such an one, as כּי תבעל says, at length, however, finds her husband and enters into the married relation, then she carries her head so much the higher; for she gives vent to ill-humour, strengthened by long restraint, against her subordinates; then she richly requites her earlier and happily married companions for their depreciation of her, among whom she had to suffer, as able to find no one who would love her. In the last case it is asked whether כּי־תירשׁ is meant of inheriting as an heiress (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Targ., Jerome, the Venet., and Luther), or supplanting (Euchel, Gesenius, Hitzig), i.e., an entering into the inheritance of the dead, or an entering into the place of a living mistress. Since ירשׁ, with the accus. of the person, Genesis 15:3-4, signifies to be the heir of one, and only with the accus. of peoples and lands signifies, "to take into possession (to seize) by supplanting," the former is to be preferred; the lxx (Syr.), ὅταν ἐκβάλῃ, appear to have read כּי־תגרשׁ. This גּרשׁ would certainly be, after Genesis 21:10, a piece of the world turned upside down; but also the entering, as heiress, into the inheritance, makes the maid-servant the reverse of that which she was before, and brings with it the danger that the heiress, notwithstanding her want of culture and dignity, demean herself also as heiress of the rank. Although the old Israelitish law knew only intestate succession to an inheritance, yet there also the case might arise, that where there were no natural or legal heirs, the bequest of a wife of rank passed over to her servants and nurses.