Proverbs 11:5-7
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
5 The justice of the honest makes their way straight,
but by their wickedness the wicked fall.[a](A)
6 The justice of the upright saves them,
but the faithless are caught in their own intrigue.
7 When a person dies, hope is destroyed;(B)
expectation pinned on wealth is destroyed.[b]
Footnotes
- 11:5 In Hebrew as in English, “way” means the course of one’s life; similarly, “straight” and “crooked” are metaphors for morally straightforward and for bad, deviant, perverted.
- 11:7 An ancient scribe added “wicked” to person in colon A, for the statement that hope ends at death seemed to deny life after death. The saying, however, is not concerned with life after death but with the fact that in the face of death all hopes based on one’s own resources are vain. The aphorism is the climax of the preceding six verses; human resources cannot overcome mortality (cf. Ps 49:13).
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