EIS hUBRIN in LXX Proverbs 19:18

Carl Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Sep 6 09:06:08 EDT 1998


At 4:48 PM -0500 9/05/98, Kevin L. Barney wrote:
>Hi, all.  I'm a new member of the list.  I've only lurked for a few days, 
but I have poked around in the archives a fair bit, so I think I have a 
sense for the tone here.  This is obviously a very knowledgeable group.
>
>I studied classics in college (Latin major, Greek minor).  Now I'm an 
attorney with a Chicago law firm.  I'm going to be teaching a course in New 
Testament Greek at my Church this fall (which is one of the main 
motivations for my joining this list).  I am hoping to refresh my rather 
rusty Greek in a hurry.  It's nice to know that this resource is available 
for difficult questions I may not be able to handle on my own.

Welcome aboard, Kevin! Personally, I'll say it does my heart good to see 
another Classics major in our midst.

>Speaking of questions, I have one for the list.  I'm on another list where 
the issue of the meaning of Proverbs 19:18 came up.  The question arose 
because the KJV reads "Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy 
soul spare for his crying," while most other translations refer to the 
possible death of the son.  Some interpret the Hebrew as meaning that you 
shouldn't go overboard with your punishment and kill him, as in the New 
Jerusalem Bible:  "While there is hope for him, chastise your child, but do 
not get so angry as to kill him."  Others suggest that you should not 
desire your child's death, as the NASB:  "Discipline your son while there 
is hope, And do not desire his death."  The KJV "crying" seems to be 
mistaken.
>
>In pursuing this further, I looked at the LXX, which reads as follows:  
PAIDEUE hUION SOU hOUTWS GAR ESTAI EUELPIS EIS DE hUBRIN MH EPAIROU THi 
YUCHi SOU.
>
>I would render "Teach your son, for in this there will be hope, but do not 
raise your soul into hUBRIN."  What does hUBRIN mean here?  Is the noun 
used in an active sense, referring to the father (insolence, arrogance, 
anger), or is it used in a passive sense, referring to the son (shame, 
insult, mistreatment)?  I tend to think the former, but the passage seems 
ambiguous to me (perhaps I am being influenced by the ambiguity of the 
Hebrew, which is what I looked at first).

Interesting little item, this. I'd say first of all that it is anything but 
uncommon for the LXX to differ in phraseology, sometimes in person and 
number of the verbs, occasionally in total sense, from what the Masoretic 
text of the Hebrew has. Where there is a major discrepancy the translation 
commitees have to juggle the probabilities more speculatively to achieve a 
plausible rendering of the OT text, and it appears that this is one of 
those instances.

I don't claim to be able to resolve the problem here definitively, but I'd 
like to make some suggestions regarding the LXX text you've cited above, 
for I read it a bit differently from your way. Here's what I make of it:

"Teach/admonish/punish your son, for thus [i.e., if you do teach him] he 
will be of good hope [I think this means: 'You can be confident/hopeful 
about his future behavior']; but do not stir yourself in your soul to 
violence."

hUBRIS means essentially 'unruliness.' One of its earliest usages (in 
Hesiod's Works and Days) was as an antithesis to DIKH as "right" or "right 
behavior." It can range over all sorts of notions of want of self-control, 
arrogance, insolent behavior. hUBRISTHS is a noun commonly used of 
'ruffians." Socrates, in Plato's Apology, says that the young men of the 
aristocracy that associate with him have a tendency to be hUBRISTAI, and he 
seems to mean that when they engage in the ELEGCOS process of demonstrating 
the ignorance of highly-reputable older Athenians, they don't show the 
courtesy and self-restraint that Socrates himself tries to show--i.e. 
Socrates may make them mad, but the young men make them want to get even.

So: the spin--the 'amplified version,' if you will--I get on the LXX 
version of the proverb is this: "By all means do take pains to admonish 
your son for bad behavior, for you can expect him to improve thereby, but 
do not get so upset in your heart as to go beyond what is reasonable in 
your admonition."

I'd welcome alternative suggestions, as would also Kevin, I'm sure.




More information about the B-Greek mailing list