19:10
Notice the parallelism:
10a Luxury is unseemly for a fool—
10b how much worse for a slave to rule over princes!
This is another example of logical reasoning from the lesser to the greater. The reasoning is: The situation in 19:10a is inappropriate. The situation in 19:10b is even more inappropriate. See 11:31 for a list of other examples.
19:10a
Luxury is unseemly: The phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as unseemly means “unsuitable,” “inappropriate,” or “wrong.” It refers to a situation that is contrary to what people in a particular culture consider to be normal or proper.
Luxury: This word means a life of extreme comfort. It means to own many nice things that cost a lot of money. In some languages, there are idioms or phrases that refer to this kind of lifestyle. For example:
Living like a rich person
-or-
To have an easy/good life
for a fool: The Hebrew word kǝsil, which the Berean Standard Bible translates as fool, describes a person who is morally foolish. He does what is stupid and wrong because he is mentally lazy and is satisfied with himself.
Some other ways to translate 19:10a are:
Luxury is not appropriate for a fool (NET Bible)
-or-
It isn’t right for a fool to live in luxury (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
Fools should not live in luxury (Good News Translation)
19:10b
how much worse for a slave to rule over princes!: It is inappropriate for a fool to live in luxury. So it is even more inappropriate for a servant or slave to rule over princes. The word that the Berean Standard Bible translates here as princes refers to anyone who belongs to the ruling class. It does not refer specifically to the sons of kings. Some other ways to translate this line are:
It is much less appropriate for a servant to govern leaders.
-or-
or for a slave to rule in place of a king (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
and slaves should not rule over noblemen (Good News Translation)
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