The sense of this saying is very similar to that in verse 3.

“The righteousness of the upright delivers them”: “The righteousness of the upright” is equivalent in form and sense to the subject in the first line of verse 5. “Delivers” has here the sense of “rescue,” “save,” or “protect from”; see the second line of verse 4. If it is not natural in your language to use righteousness as the subject of a transitive verb, it may be necessary to say, for example, “The person who is upright is rescued because he is honest” or “God rescues the upright people because they are good.”

“But the treacherous are taken captive by their lust”: This line is difficult to interpret. Literally it says “But in the hawah of the treacherous [they] are caught,” where hawah can mean “craving” or “desire” as in 10.3, or possibly “ruin” or “destruction.” Since the verb has no subject other than the pronoun “they,” it is hard to decide who “are taken captive”. Revised Standard Version has rendered hawah as “lust”. This leaves “the treacherous” as the ones who are caught, an interpretation supported by the Septuagint and the Vulgate, and the most likely suggestion in light of the contrast with “the upright” in the first line. Good News Translation, in which “the treacherous” are “those who can’t be trusted,” follows Revised Standard Version. Instead of “taken captive by their lusts”, Good News Translation has “trapped by their own greed.” New Revised Standard Version has revised Revised Standard Version to say “but the treacherous are taken captive by their schemes,” and Bible en français courant has “Dishonest people are caught in the trap of their own desires.”

These translations may serve as models for other languages. It may be necessary, however, to avoid the passive construction by saying, for example, “The desires of dishonest people trap them.” If the figurative language here is not natural, it may be possible to add a simile, for example, “The plans of dishonest people catch them just as a trap catches an animal.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .