Proverbs 17:12 - Exposition

Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man. The Syrian bear was once common throughout Palestine; it is now found in but few localities, such as the hills of Hermon and Lebanon, and in the hills east of the Jordan, the destruction of wood and forest having deprived these animals of the shelter necessary to their existence. The ferocity of the bear when deprived of its young had become proverbial (see 2 Samuel 17:8 ; Hosea 13:8 ; Hart, 'Animals of the Bible,' 28, etc.). Rather than a fool in his folly; i.e. in the paroxysm of his passion. Compare Saul's ungoverned language to Jonathan ( 1 Samuel 20:30 ), and Herod's murder of the children ( Matthew 2:16 ). So we read of the people being filled with ἄνοια against Jesus ( Luke 6:11 ). Oort supposes that this proverb arose from the riddle, "What is worse to meet than a bear?" Septuagint, "Care will fall upon a man of understanding; but fools imagine evils." The Greek translators take "bear" as us d metaphorically for terror and anxiety, but go far astray from the Hebrew text.