This saying follows on from the previous verse as another bad way of seeking to get rich. It is a single statement that continues through both lines of the verse.

“The getting of treasures by a lying tongue”: “Treasures”, as in 10.2, has the sense of what people hoard or store up, hence “wealth,” “riches,” or “a fortune.” “By a lying tongue” is a figure of speech, the “tongue” standing for the words it speaks (see 6.17). So the sense is “deceitful words” (Scott) or “telling lies” (Revised English Bible). Both Good News Translation (“dishonesty”) and Contemporary English Version (“cheating”) make the sense even more general than just the words spoken. In some languages it is not natural to use an impersonal subject like “getting rich”; so translations in these languages say, for instance, “If a person tells lies and gets wealthy [by it] . . ..”

“Is a fleeting vapor and a snare of death”: The two expressions here are difficult to make sense of. “A fleeting vapor” gives a picture of smoke being driven by the breeze, with the meaning that riches gained by dishonest means are worth no more than smoke that is blown away, or as in Good News Translation, “soon disappear.” This expression may be translated as a simile, “is like smoke that blows away,” for example, or nonfiguratively as “soon disappears” or “doesn’t last long.”

The other expression, “a snare of death” in Revised Standard Version, is actually “seekers of death” in Hebrew, as the New Revised Standard Version footnote indicates. “Snares” is the rendering of the Septuagint, based on a slight variation from the Hebrew as we have it. Hebrew Old Testament Text Project favors the Hebrew text and gives a possible translation “the fleeting breath of those who seek death”; however, its rating for this preference is only “C.” A number of English versions follow the Septuagint with “snares of death” or “a deadly snare” (New International Version, Scott). Good News Translation “lead you into the jaws of death” apparently takes this same sense. New Jerusalem Bible follows the Hebrew with “those who look for death,” and Contemporary English Version probably does also with “is no less than suicide.” Translators may follow either of the above possibilities.

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 .