Proverbs 30:6

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(6) Lest he reprove thee.—Or, convict thee of thy falsehood.

Benson Commentary

Proverbs 30:6. Add thou not unto his words — As the word of God is pure, do not thou corrupt it, by adding to it thine own or other men’s inventions, or opinions; lest he reprove thee — By words or deeds; by discovering thy folly, and bringing thee to deserved shame and punishment; and thou be found a liar — Delivering thy own fancies and notions in the name, and as the truths of God, and thus being guilty of the worst of forgeries.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

30:4, there is a prophetic notice of Him who came down from heaven to be our Instructor and Saviour, and then ascended into heaven to be our Advocate. The Messiah is here spoken of as a Person distinct from the Father, but his name as yet secret. The great Redeemer, in the glories of his providence and grace, cannot be found out to perfection. Had it not been for Christ, the foundations of the earth had sunk under the load of the curse upon the ground, for man's sin. Who, and what is the mighty One that doeth all this? There is not the least ground to suspect anything wanting in the word of God; adding to his words opens the way to errors and corruptions.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Men are not to mingle revealed truth with their own imaginations and traditions. In speculating on the unseen, the risk of error is indefinitely great, and that error God reproves by manifesting its falsehoods.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6. Add … words—implying that his sole reliance was on God's all-sufficient teaching.

reprove thee—or, "convict thee"—and so the falsehood will appear.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

And as the word of God is pure, do not thou corrupt or abuse it, by adding to it thine own or other men’s inventions and opinions, and delivering or receiving of them in the name and as the words of God. He here forbids only adding to it, not diminishing from it, which yet is equally forbidden, Deu 4:2 12:32, because the Israelites then and always were, and others are, more prone to add than to diminish, because it is more easy to add under colour of interpreting, and because it is more agreeable to the humour of mankind, which is much delighted with its own inventions, as the experience of all ages showeth. Lest he reprove thee by words or deeds; by discovering thy folly, and bringing thee to deserved shame and punishment.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Add thou not unto his words,.... To the words of God; as the Jews did, by joining their oral law, or the traditions of the elders, to the written word, and preferring them before it; and as the Papists, by making their unwritten traditions, and the sense and determinations of their church, equal to the Scriptures; and as all enthusiasts do, who set up their pretended dreams, visions, revelations, and prophecies, upon a foot with the word of God, or as superior to it; whereas that is, and that only, the rule and standard of faith and practice, and is a sufficient and perfect one; see Deuteronomy 4:2;

lest he reprove thee; that is, God; either by words or by blows, by threatenings and denunciations of his wrath and displeasure; or by chastisements and corrections for such daring pride, blasphemy, and wickedness; those who add to his words, he threatens to add plagues unto them, Revelation 22:18;

and thou be found a liar; a forger, speaker, and spreader of doctrinal lies, such doctrines as are contrary to the word of truth; not being built on that, but upon human inventions, and additions to it.

Geneva Study Bible

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

6. Add thou not] Do not mix with the pure silver of His words the dross of human speculations. “Noli investigare res quæ mentem humanam transcendunt (Proverbs 30:4), ut doctrinam divinitus patefactam inde compleas.” Maurer.

Proverbs 30:7-9. To the profitable reception of this word of God two things are necessary: first there must be “an honest and good heart,” and next there must be a lot removed from the dangerous extremes of wealth and poverty. For these two things therefore he prays earnestly.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 6. - Add thou not unto his words. God's will, as announced in revelation, is to be simply accepted and acted upon, not watered down, not overstrained. This injunction had already been given in the old Law (Deuteronomy 4:2; Deuteronomy 12:32); it is repeated in the New Testament with awful emphasis (Revelation 22:18, 19). No human speculations or traditions may be mingled with God's words; the glosses and explanations and definitions, affixed by rabbinical ingenuity to plain enactments, and proved to be false in morality and fatal to vital religion, are a commentary on the succeeding sentence, Lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. The reproof is found in the consequences of such additions; the results to which they lead are such as show that no who asserts that these things are contained in the Word of God is a liar. Proverbs 30:6

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

5 Every word of Eloah is pure;

   A shield is He for those who hide themselves in Him.

6 Add thou not to His words,

   Lest He convict thee and thou becomest a liar.

Although the tetrastich is an independent proverb, yet it is connected to the foregoing Neûm [utterance, Proverbs 30:1]. The more limited a man is in his knowledge of God - viz. in that which presents itself to him lumine naturae, - so much the more thankful must he be that God has revealed Himself in history, and so much the more firmly has he to hold fast by the pure word of the divine revelation. In the dependent relation of Proverbs 30:5 to Psalm 18:31 (2 Samuel 22:31), and of Proverbs 30:6 to Deuteronomy 4:2, there is no doubt the self-testimony of God given to Israel, and recorded in the book of the Tôra, is here meant. כּל־אמרת is to be judged after πᾶσα γραφή, 2 Timothy 3:16, not: every declaration of God, wherever promulgated, but: every declaration within the revelation lying before us. The primary passage Psalm 18:31 has not כל here, but, instead of it, לכל החסים, and instead of אמרת אלוהּ it has יהוה 'אם; his change of the name of Jahve is also not favourable to the opinion that Proverbs 30:5. is a part of the Neûm, viz., that it is the answer thereto. The proverb in this contains traces of the Book of Job, with which in many respects that Neûm harmonizes; in the Book of Job, אלוהּ (with שׁדּי) is the prevailing name of God; whereas in the Book of Proverbs it occurs only in the passage before us. Mhlau, p. 41, notes it as an Arabism. צרף (Arab. ṣaraf, to turn, to change) is the usual word for the changing process of smelting; צרוּף signifies solid, pure, i.e., purified by separating: God's word is, without exception, like pure, massive gold. Regarding חסה, to hide oneself, vid., under Psalm 2:12;: God is a shield for those who make Him, as revealed in His word, their refuge. The part. חסה occurs, according to the Masora, three times written defectively, - Proverbs 14:32; 2 Samuel 22:31; Nehemiah 1:7; in the passage before us it is to be written לחוסים; the proverbs of Agur and Lemuel have frequently the plena scriptio of the part. act. Kal, as well as of the fut. Kal, common to the Book of Job (vid., Mhlau, p. 65).

In 6a, after Aben Ezra's Moznajim 2b (11b of Heidenheim's edition), and Zachoth 53a (cf. Lipmann's ed.), and other witnesses (vid., Norzi), t sp (the ף with dagesh) is to be written, - the Cod. Jaman. and others defect. without ו, - not tôsf; for, since תּוסף (Exodus 10:28) is yet further abbreviated in this way, it necessarily loses

(Note: That both Shevas in tôsp are quiesc., vid., Kimchi, Michlol 155 a b, who is finally decided as to this. That the word should be read tôspe'al is the opinion of Chagg in הנוח 'ס (regarding the quiesc. letters), p. 6 of the Ed. by Dukes-Ewald.)

the aspiration of the tenuis, as in ילדתּ ( equals ילדת). The words of God are the announcements of His holy will, measured by His wisdom; they are then to be accepted as they are, and to be recognised and obeyed. He who adds anything to them, either by an overstraining of them or by repressing them, will not escape the righteous judgment of God: God will convict him of falsifying His word (הוכיח, Psalm 50:21; only here with ב of the obj.), and expose him as a liar - viz. by the dispensations which unmask the falsifier as such, and make manifest the falsehood of his doctrines as dangerous to souls and destructive to society. An example of this is found in the kingdom of Israel, in the destruction of which the curse of the human institution of its state religion, set up by Jeroboam, had no little share. Also the Jewish traditional law, although in itself necessary for the carrying over of the law into the praxis of private and public life, falls under the Deuteron. prohibition - which the poet here repeats - so far as it claimed for itself the same divine authority as that of the written law, and so far as it hindered obedience to the law - by the straining-at-a-gnat policy - and was hostile to piety. Or, to adduce an example of an addition more dogmatic than legal, what a fearful impulse was given to fleshly security by that overstraining of the promises in Genesis 17, which were connected with circumcision by the tradition, "the circumcised come not into hell," or by the overstraining of the prerogative attributed by Paul, Romans 9:4., to his people according to the Scriptures, in the principle, "All Israelites have a part in the future world!" Regarding the accentuation of the perf. consec. after פּן, vid., at Psalm 28:1. The penultima accent is always in pausa (cf. Proverbs 30:9 and Proverbs 30:10).