23:7

This verse gives a reason for not eating with a stingy person. The reason has to do with his selfish attitude. Even though he encourages his guest to eat heartily, he actually resents the cost of the food that he has served.

This reason is expressed in two parallel lines. The first line describes the actual thoughts of the stingy person. The second line gives the nice-sounding-but-insincere words that he says to his guest.

7a for he is keeping track, inwardly counting the cost.

7b “Eat and drink,” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

23:7a

for: Some versions use a specific word, such as for, to introduce the reason in this verse. Others do not. Introduce this reason in a natural way in your language.

he is keeping track, inwardly counting the cost: There is a textual issue here:

(1) The Masoretic Text has: “for as he calculates (šaʿar) in his self/soul (nepeš), thus he.” This clause means that in his mind, the stingy person calculates or thinks about either the cost of the food or himself. For example:

for he is like one who is inwardly calculating (English Standard Version)

(2) The LXX apparently understood the text to say: “for as a hair (śeʿar) in his throat (nepeš), thus he.” This clause means that the delicacies will stick in the guest’s throat like a hair.” For example:

for like a hair in the throat, so are they (New Revised Standard Version)

It is recommended that you follow the Masoretic Text, along with most versions and lexicons.

The Masoretic Text does not make explicit what the stingy man calculates or thinks about. Nor does it indicate what “thus he” refers to. There are three ways to interpret the implied information:

(1) The stingy man is the kind of person who thinks about the cost of the food. For example:

for he is like someone calculating the cost in his mind (NET Bible)

(2) What the stingy man thinks about reveals the kind of person he really is. For example:

What he thinks is what he really is. (Good News Translation)

(3) The stingy man thinks about himself. For example:

For what he is really thinking about is himself (New Jerusalem Bible)

It is recommended that you follow interpretation (1), along with most versions. This interpretation better fits the meaning of the verb “calculate/reckon.” It also fits his insincere invitation (in the next line) to eat and drink.

Some other ways to express this meaning are:

He is like one keeping accounts (Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures)
-or-
Selfish people are always worrying about how much the food costs. (New Century Version)

23:7b

“Eat and drink,” he says to you: The words of this quote are intended to show hospitality and generosity. They indicate that the guest should eat and drink all that he wants. Other ways to express this meaning in English are:

They say, “Take all you want!” (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
“Come on and have some more,” he says (Good News Translation)

In some languages, it may be more natural to use an indirect quote. For example:

He will bid you eat and drink (Revised English Bible)
-or-
He tells you to eat and drink a lot

but his heart is not with you: This clause contrasts the man’s actual feelings with his hospitable words in the preceding clause. The Berean Standard Bible translates the Hebrew text here quite literally. Some other ways to translate this clause are:

but he doesn’t really mean it (God’s Word)
-or-
but he is not sincere

General Comment on 23:7a–b

In some languages, it may be more natural to reorder these two lines. For example:

“Eat and drink,” they say, but they don’t mean it.

They are always thinking about how much it costs. (New Living Translation (1996))

With this reordering, the insincere words of stingy people precede the two clauses that describe what they actually think.

© 2012, 2016, 2020 by SIL International®
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.