The authors of this Handbook believe that the subject of this saying is God himself. The theme is that God knows about the evil that people do and brings evildoers to their ruin. With God as the subject, there is a natural progression in thought from the first line to the second.

“The righteous observes the house of the wicked”: “The righteous” (one) is taken by New Revised Standard Version (“the Righteous One”) and most other versions to refer to God, although it could refer to a righteous human person. As Kidner says, the verse “yields sense most easily if we take this Righteous One to be God.” Translators can make this perfectly clear by following Good News Translation, “God, the righteous one,” or saying something like “The Lord always does what is right; he knows. . ..” The verb “observes” means more than just to look at something; it is the same verb rendered “is instructed” in verse 11 and has the sense of “considers” or “takes note of” (New International Version). Good News Translation gets the sense well with “knows what goes on,” as does Contemporary English Version “knows what the wicked do.” “The house of the wicked” may mean that God sees what goes on inside the house, away from what other people see; Good News Translation expresses this thought with “in the homes of the wicked,” while others say “knows everything the wicked do inside their houses.” But, as it often does in the Old Testament, the expression may refer to all the people in a household; so Revised English Bible refers to “the wicked household.”

“The wicked are cast down to ruin”: After identifying God as the subject of the previous line, New Revised Standard Version revises this line to say “he casts the wicked down to ruin”; and most other versions do something similar. The sense of the verb “cast down” is “turn upside down” or “bring to ruin.” The final term “ruin” is a common Hebrew word meaning “evil,” “distress,” “adversity,” or “injury” (see “evil” in 1.33). Most versions say “. . . to [their] ruin,” but some combine this term with the verb and say “he will destroy them” or “will punish them” (Contemporary English Version).

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 .