SIL Translator’s Notes on Proverbs 13:25

13:25

Notice the parallel parts that contrast in meaning:

25a
The righteous eat to their hearts’ content,

25b but the stomach of the wicked goes hungry.

This verse has a similar theme to 10:3.

13:25a

A righteous man eats to his heart’s content: In Hebrew, the phrase to his heart’s content is literally “to the satisfying of his soul.” Here the word “soul” probably refers to the person’s appetite. The overall meaning of 13:25a is that righteous people will have enough to eat to satisfy their hunger or appetite. Some other ways to translate this line are:

If you live right, you will have plenty to eat (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
The righteous has enough food to satisfy his appetite (NET Bible)

13:25b

but the stomach of the wicked is empty: In some languages, hunger is described in terms of a person’s stomach or belly. In other languages, the person himself, rather than his stomach, feels hunger. English has both expressions. For example:

but the bellies of wicked people are always empty (God’s Word)
-or-
but the wicked are always hungry (Good News Translation)

Use a natural expression in your language.

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Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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