Law and Order

A merciful person does himself good, but the cruel person does himself harm.  Proverbs 11:17  NASB

Does himself good – Arthur Branch, the District Attorney in the television series Law and Order, quipped, “Sometimes the good you do doesn’t do you any good.”  Regretfully, he seems to be correct.  Human experience suggests that doing good doesn’t always result in reciprocal benefits.  In fact, we have a saying that suggests just the opposite: “Do the right thing and get punished for it.”  The collector of ancient wisdom had a different opinion.  According to Proverbs, being merciful is reward in itself.  At least that’s what the English translation seems to say.  Now let’s look at the Hebrew.

In Hebrew the syntax is very different.  It is literally, “good himself the man merciful.”

גֹּמֵל נַפְשׁוֹ אִישׁ חָסֶד  וְעֹכֵר שְׁאֵרוֹ אַכְזָרִי

The first thing we notice is that the word “good” isn’t what we might expect.  It’s not tov, but rather gāmal, a verb, not a noun (see the text in red).  “In the Qal it signifies to render either good or evil to someone.”^[1]  That means that when our English translation rearranges the wording it adds a verb, “does,” making the statement reflexive, i.e., the action of the subject upon himself. The verb is a participle; a continuing, incomplete action.  It’s as if we were to say, “recompensing himself,” or “rewarding himself.”  Of course, the word translated “himself” is really nepeš, often mistakenly translated “soul,” but more accurately “person.”  This word is in “the construct state.”  It means that this word is part of a relationship between the verb and the noun where the last word in the construction governs the entire relationship.  And what is the last word here?  אִישׁ, the word for “man” (highlighted in green).  But אִישׁ isn’t really the word of “man” as we understand “man.”  You will remember (I hope) that ʾîšis a word that means something like all the relationships that make up the identity of a person.  That is to say, a “man” is the sum of being father, husband, Israelite, believer, observant citizen, tribal member, etc.  The more relationships a “man” had, the deeper his identity.  And when those relationships diminish or are broken, the shallower his identity.  So, what does this verse really imply?  It seems to suggest that one of the governing relationships that make us who we are is our ability to show mercy (we’ll get to the meaning of the word for “mercy” in a bit).  The reason that this relationship is self-rewarding is not because doing good brings us good but rather because being merciful strengths our own identity.  The reward is not getting mercy back; it’s the person we become no matter what we get back.

You’ll remember Yeshua’s comment in Matthew: “Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.”  Well, maybe his statement is not quite what we thought it was.  To see how different it is, we’ll have to look at the word for “mercy.”  Tomorrow.

Topical Index:  does good, himself, gāmal, ʾîš, reward, identity, Proverb 11:17

^[1] Lewis, J. P. (1999). 360 גָּמַל. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 166). Chicago: Moody Press.