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OET (OET-LV) Not people_despise (to)_thief if/because he_will_steal to_fill appetite_of_his if/because he_will_be_hungry.
This lesson may be summarized as follows: The son should heed his parents’ teaching, because it will keep him from the dangers of adultery (6:20–24). He should strictly avoid being tempted by another man’s wife. An affair with such a woman will have inevitable and disastrous consequences (6:25–33), resulting from the jealous fury of the husband (6:34–35).
Some other headings for this section are:
Warning Against Adultery (NIV)
Avoid adultery
More Advice About Avoiding Adultery (GW)
The terrible consequences of committing adultery
In these notes, this section forms a single paragraph (as in the NRSV). If a long paragraph like this is not natural in your language, you may want to make paragraph breaks as in the section summary above. Some other ways to divide the paragraphs are:
6:20–26, 27–35 (GNT)
6:20–22, 23–29, 30–35 (CEV)
6:20–29, 30–35 (NIV)
Divide the paragraphs in a way that fits the natural patterns of your language.
Men do not despise the thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger.
If there is a hungry thief and he steals food so that he will not starve, do people despise him for that? No, of course not.
Let us suppose that a thief steals something because he is hungry. Even though people may be slightly sympathetic towards him,
This verse does not have parallel lines.
Men do not despise the thief: There are two ways to interpret this clause:
It means that people do not despise a thief. For example:
People attach but little blame to a thief (NJB) (BSB, NIV, NRSV, NJB, NJPS, NASB, GNT, NCV, NLT, NET)
It means that people do indeed despise a thief. This may be expressed as a rhetorical question or as a statement. For example:
Do not men despise a thief? (RSV)
We don’t put up with thieves (CEV) (RSV, REB, CEV)
It is recommended that you follow interpretation (1), along with a majority of versions and scholars. This interpretation preserves the contrast between the lesser evil of stealing and the greater evil of adultery. Also, the second interpretation does not follow normal Hebrew grammatical patterns for questions.Whybray (page 108) gives three conditions under which questions in the OT occur without an interrogative particle: they “normally occur in direct speech, are quite short, and in their contexts present no problem of ambiguity. None of these conditions is present here.” Fox (page 234) and Murphy (page 39) agree that a negative statement is preferable here.
The point of the verse is that people may sympathize with a starving thief who steals food, but they will still punish him, as the next verse states.
In some languages, it may be more effective to change the negative statement “people do not despise a thief” into a rhetorical question. For example:
Do people despise a thief…? Of course not!
Notice that this rhetorical question has the same meaning as interpretation (1).
do not despise: The word despise means to show contempt for someone or to think of him in a belittling way. To “not despise the thief” may be expressed in various ways. For example:
Excuses might be found for a thief… (NLT)
people don’t hate a thief… (NCV)
Note 1 topic: writing-pronouns
לֹא־יָב֣וּזוּ
not despise
They here refers to people in general. If it would be helpful in your language, you could state this explicitly. Alternate translation: “People do not despise”
Note 2 topic: figures-of-speech / genericnoun
לַ֭גַּנָּב & יִגְנ֑וֹב & נַ֝פְשׁ֗וֹ & יִרְעָֽב
(to),thief & steals & appetite_of,his & hungry
Here, the thief, he, and his do not refer to a specific thief, but any person who steals. If it would be helpful, you could use an expression that would be more natural in your language. Alternate translation: “thieves … they steal … their appetites … they are hungry”
Note 3 topic: figures-of-speech / ellipsis
יִגְנ֑וֹב
steals
Solomon is leaving out a word that in many languages a sentence would need in order to be complete. If it would be helpful in your language, you could supply this word from the context, as in the UST.
Note 4 topic: figures-of-speech / explicitinfo
לְמַלֵּ֥א נַ֝פְשׁ֗וֹ
to,fill appetite_of,his
The expression to satisfy his appetite contains extra information that may be unnatural to express in some languages along with when he is hungry. If this is true of your language, you could leave this part unexpressed, as in the UST.
Note 5 topic: figures-of-speech / abstractnouns
נַ֝פְשׁ֗וֹ
appetite_of,his
If your language does not use an abstract noun for the idea of appetite, you could express the same idea in another way. Alternate translation: “his need for food”
6:20-35 This passage emphasizes the life-threatening risk of sleeping with another man’s wife (see also 1:8, 23; 2:16-22; 5:1-23; 7:1-27).
OET (OET-LV) Not people_despise (to)_thief if/because he_will_steal to_fill appetite_of_his if/because he_will_be_hungry.
Note: The OET-RV is still only a first draft, and so far only a few words have been (mostly automatically) matched to the Hebrew or Greek words that they’re translated from.
Acknowledgements: The Hebrew text, lemmas, and morphology are all thanks to the OSHB and some of the glosses are from Macula Hebrew.