Proverbs 19:19 - Exposition

Some connect this verse with the preceding, as though it signified, "If you are too severe in chastising your son, you will suffer for it." But there is no connecting particle in the Hebrew, and the statement seems to be of a general nature. A man of great wrath; literally, rough in anger ; Vulgate, impatiens ; Septuagint, κακόφρων ἀνήρ . Such a one shall suffer punishment; shall bear the penalty which his want of self-control brings upon him. For if thou deliver him, yet must thou do it again. You cannot save him from the consequences of his intemperance; you may do so once and again, but while his disposition is unchanged, all your efforts will be useless, and the help which you have given him will only make him think that he may continue to indulge his anger with impunity, or, it may be, he will vent his impatience on his deliverer.

βλάπτει τὸν ἄνδρα θυμὸς εἰς ὀργὴν πεσών

"Anger," says an adage, "is like a ruin, which breaks itself upon what it falls." Septuagint, "If he destroy ( ἐὰν δὲ λοιμεύηται ), he shall add even his life;" if by his anger he inflict loss or damage on his neighbour, he shall pay for it in his own person; Vulgate, Et cum rapuerit, aliud apponet. Another interpretation of the passage, but not so suitable, is this: "If thou seek to save the sufferer ( e.g. by soothing the angry man), thou wilt only the more excite him (the wrathful): therefore do not intermeddle in quarrels of other persons."