Sayings about private thoughts and feelings have been expressed in the first lines of 12.25 and 13.12. This saying recognizes that everyone is ultimately an individual and cannot share their deepest self with others. Psa 44.21 (Hebrew verse 22) says that God knows the secrets of the heart.

“The heart knows its own bitterness”: “The heart” is understood here as more than the center of feeling; it refers to the whole person, that is, the knowledge, feelings, and awareness that a person has. What the “heart knows” is its “own bitterness”, which is literally “bitterness of its soul,” most likely a reference to the person’s own inward sadness or sorrow that can only be truly experienced by the individual. In languages in which it is not natural to speak of the “heart” as knowing, it may be necessary to say, for example, “A person knows his own sadness” or “A person’s sorrow is known only to himself.”

“And no stranger shares its joy”: This line does not contrast with the first but rather expands it. The term “stranger”, which calls attention to such qualities as being an outsider, a foreigner, someone who is unfamiliar, is not suitable in this context. “Stranger” is better rendered as “another person” or “no one else.” “Shares” renders a verb whose reciprocal form means to have fellowship with or to experience something jointly with another person. “Its joy” refers to the joy of the heart of line 1. “Joy”, that is, “gladness” or “happiness,” is felt, like “bitterness”, in the individual’s heart, and so in some translations “joy” is joined to line 1; for example, Bible en français courant says “Everyone is alone in their sorrows and joys, no one else can truly share them,” and Contemporary English Version has “No one else can really know how sad or happy you are.” See Good News Translation also.

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 .