from a man's mouth: they are deep waters, for their meaning does not lie on the surface, but can be perceived only by penetrating into the secret motives and aims of him who speaks; they are a bubbling brook, which freshly and powerfully gushes forth to him who feels this flow of words, for in this brook there never fails an always new gush of living water; it is a fountain or well of wisdom, from which wisdom flows forth, and whence wisdom is to be drawn. Hitzig supposes that the distich is antithetic; מים עמקּים, or rather מי מעמקּים, “waters of the deep,” are cistern waters; on the contrary, “a welling brook is a fountain of wisdom.” But עמק means deep, not deepened, and deep water is the contrast of shallow water; a cistern also may be deep (cf. Pro 22:14), but deep water is such as is deep, whether it be in the ocean or in a ditch. 4b also does not suggest a cistern, for thereby it would be indicated that the description, דברי פי־אישׁ, is not here continued; the “fountain of wisdom” does not form a proper parallel or an antithesis to this subject, since this much rather would require the placing in contrast of deep and shallow, of exhausted (drained out) and perennial. And: the fountain is a brook, the well a stream - who would thus express himself! We have thus neither an antithetic nor a synonymous (lxx after the phrase ἀναπηδῶν, Jerome, Venet., Luth.), but an integral distich before us; and this leads us to consider what depths of thought, what riches of contents, what power of spiritual and moral advancement, may lie in the words of a man.
Verse 5
Pro 18:5 5 To favour the person of the godless is not good, And to oppress the righteous in judgment.
As Pro 18:4 has one subject, so Pro 18:5 has one predicate. The form is the same as Pro 17:26. שׂאת פּני (cf. Pro 24:23), προσωποληψία, acceptio personae, is this, that one accepts the פני, i.e. the personal appearance of any one (πρόσωπον λαμβάνει), i.e., regards it as acceptable, respectable, agreeable, which is a thing in itself not wrong; but in a judge who ought to determine according to the facts of the case and the law, it becomes sinful partiality. הטּות, in a forensic sense, with the accus. of the person, may be regarded in a twofold way: either as a turning aside, מדּין, Isa 10:2, from following and attaining unto the right, or as an oppression, for the phrase הטּה משׁפּט [to pervert justice] (cf. Pro 17:23)
