“Be not envious of evil men”: “Be not envious” or “don’t be jealous of” (Contemporary English Version) renders a word that has strong emotional content (see 23.17). The sense is “don’t be consumed with desire for what they have.” The Hebrew “evil men” is literally “men of badness,” with the focus on their deeds. It is not exclusively masculine, so a number of versions translate it as “the wicked” (New Revised Standard Version, New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Bible); Contemporary English Version uses the more colloquial term “crooks.”

“Nor desire to be with them”: “Desire” is the parallel term to “Be . . . envious” in the previous line (see 21.10). However, the warning in this line is against wanting “to be with them”. This is a literal rendering of the Hebrew; but the expression has the sense of wanting their company or their friendship, and so many versions say something like “wish for their company” (New Jerusalem Bible, Scott) or “want to be their friends” (Contemporary English Version).

One translation that is a good model for the whole verse says “It’s not good for you to feel bad that you don’t have everything that bad people have; and it’s also not good for you to try to make friends with them.”

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 .