“Know that wisdom is such to your soul”: In Hebrew the first word of this line is “so” or “thus,” which marks the saying as a simile and introduces the comparison between honey and wisdom. “Such” or “like this” is the Revised Standard Version equivalent for this word. “Know”, which has unusual vowels in the Hebrew, seems to be more for emphasis than for information; so New Jerusalem Bible renders it “for sure,” and Good News Translation “you may be sure,” while Contemporary English Version omits it altogether. In this context “soul” (nefesh in Hebrew) may refer to the activity of the mind or the inner life of a person. The last part of the line is literally “wisdom to your soul,” which goes with “so” at the beginning. To make the comparison complete we must understand “good” or “sweet” from the description of honey in the previous verse: “wisdom is sweet to your soul” (New International Version) or “wisdom is good for the soul” (Good News Translation). Another way of expressing the comparison is “Wisdom is like honey for your life” (Contemporary English Version).

“If you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off”: “If you find it” is a conditional clause; that is, it states what must happen for the following clause to be true. But this clause really states what the saying wants readers to do, so it is a command in disguise: “Get wisdom and. . .” (Good News Translation). For “there will be a future and your hope will not be cut off”, see 23.18 where the Hebrew is identical. In some languages “your hope” will need to be expressed as a verb; for example, “You will be able to look forward to good things in the future, and what you look forward to will not disappoint you.” Note that Good News Translation restructures all this to “you have a bright future,” and Contemporary English Version is similar with “your future is bright.”

In translating the saying as a whole, some restructuring may be desirable to express the comparison between wisdom and honey in a way that is natural in the translator’s language. This may be done without changing the order of clauses by placing the words or markers that introduce comparison earlier in the saying, that is, somewhere in verse 13. Good News Translation is one example of this, putting “just as. . .” at the beginning of the second line of verse 13. Scott places it right at the beginning of the saying: “My son, as you eat honey because it is good, and. . ..” However, the best restructuring in some languages may be to state the two things that are compared at the beginning of the saying; for example: “My son, wisdom is just like honey. Honey is good to eat, and it tastes sweet. And wisdom is like that for your inner life [your soul]. If you get wisdom, you will have hope for the future, hope that will not be disappointed.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .