Proverbs 28:2 - Exposition

For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof. This implies that the wickedness of a nation is punished by frequent changes of rulers, who impose new laws, taxes, and other burdens, which greatly oppress the people; but regarding the antithesis in the second hemistich, we take the meaning to be that when iniquity, injustice, apostasy, and other evils abound, a country becomes the prey of pretenders and partisans striving for the supremacy. The history of the northern kingdom of Israel, especially in the disastrous period succeeding the death of Jeroboam II , affords proof of the truth of the statement (comp. Hosea 8:4 ). Septuagint, "Owing to the sins of ungodly men, quarrels ( κρίσεις , lawsuits) arise." But by a man of understanding and knowledge the state thereof shall be prolonged . "The state" is the stability, the settled condition of the country. The word is כֵן ( ken ), here a substantive, equivalent to "station," "base." Umbreit, Nowack, and others translate it, "justice," "authority," "order." When a wise and religious man is at the helm of state, justice continues, lives, and works; such a man introduces an clement of enduring good into a land (comp. Proverbs 21:22 ; Ecclesiastes 9:15 ). The good kings Ass, Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, and Hezekiah had long and prosperous reigns. Septuagint, "But a clever man ( πανοῦργος ) will quench them (quarrels)."