“Let your father and mother be glad”: This continues the thought of the previous verse with an appeal to the young person to make it happen. The verb “be glad” may be taken as a statement, “Your father and mother will be happy” (New Jerusalem Bible), but most take it as a wish “May your father and mother be glad” (New International Version), or as an appeal for the young person to bring happiness to his parents. Examples of this last sense are “Give your father and mother cause for delight” (Revised English Bible) and “Make your parents proud” (Contemporary English Version). Some commentators suggest that “and mother” should not be part of this line, because “mother” is in the next line and the parallelism requires only “father” here. However, practically all translations retain “father and mother.”

“Let her who bore you rejoice”: “Her who bore you” is the same in Hebrew as “who begot you” in verse 22 and “he who begets” in verse 24, except that the form is feminine. This line, which refers to the mother, balances (and is similar in form to) the second line of the previous verse, which refers to the father. Note that Good News Translation places the element of appeal in the verse in this line also: “give your mother that happiness.” The rendering of the verse in one Pacific language is “Your mother gave birth to you, and you must always make her happy.”

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 .