“Lie not in wait as a wicked man against the dwelling of the righteous”: “Lie not in wait” suggests a plan to rob or attack a person’s home secretly or without warning. To “Lie . . . in wait”, as in 1.11, means to hide and wait for an opportunity to do something. Commentators suggest that “as a wicked man” or “you wicked man” is a gloss or addition by a scribe to the original Hebrew text. But the major English translations all retain it, and translators are advised to do the same. For “wicked” see 2.22. “The dwelling of the righteous” uses a poetic term for the place where a person lives; in this context it is taken by most versions as meaning “home” (New Revised Standard Version) or “house” (New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Bible). For “the righteous” see 3.33.

“Do not violence to his home”: This line is parallel to the previous line, except that there is no equivalent for “as a wicked man”. “Do not violence” matches “Lie not in wait”, but refers perhaps to open assault rather than a secret raid on the house. See 19.26. “His home” (literally “his lying-down place”) matches “the dwelling of the righteous” and is also a poetic term. New Revised Standard Version renders it “the place where the righteous live,” while most other English versions have “home”, “dwelling [place],” or something similar. While the common word for “house” in Hebrew may refer to a person’s family, that is unlikely to be the meaning of the term used here.

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 .