Prov 24:5:
mightier than the strong one,
/ . . . than one of great power. The Masoretic Text reads gever ḥakham
baʿoz, “a wise man in [the?] strength,” and meʾamets-koah,̣ “summons
up power.” The second phrase is intelligible though a poor parallelism; the
first phrase is not intelligible. The translation follows the Septuagint, the
Syriac, and the Targum, all of which seem to have read gavar ḥakham meiʿaz
and meiʾamits-koah,̣ readings that yield the translation offered here. (Robert
Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2019], 3:426)
Prov 24:21:
neither one nor the other vex.
The Masoretic Text reads, “And don’t mix in [titʿarav] with shonim.”
The meaning of shonim is in doubt. Some think it means “dissidents”; the
King James Version guesses, desperately, “them that are given to change.” There
is no evidence that this verbal root, which can mean “to repeat” or “to be
different,” had either of these senses in the Bible. The translation follows
the Septuagint, which reads sheneyhem, “the two of them,” for shonim,
and titʿabar (or perhaps teʿaber), a root having to do with
anger, instead of titʿarav, “mix in.” This two-line proverb, then,
follows a recurring theme of the book in warning against provoking those in
power, who can have a short fuse and a heavy hand. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew
Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:428)
