Proverbs 14:34
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.
BSB
ASV
Righteousness exalteth a nation; But sin is a reproach to any people.
KJV
Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.
Righteousness exalteth a nation,.... Administered by the government, and exercised by subjects towards one another; doing justice between man and man: this exalts a nation, as it did the people of Israel, while practised among them; this sets a people above their neighbours, and high in the esteem of God and men; and is attended with privileges and blessings, which make a nation great and honourable. Some understand this of aims deeds, or beneficence to the poor; which, both in the Hebrew and Greek languages, is called righteousness; See Gill on Mat 6:
But sin is a reproach to any people - I am satisfied this is not the sense of the original, וחסד לאמים חטאת vechesed leummim chattath; which would be better rendered, And mercy is a sin-offering for the people. The Vulgate has, Miseros autem facit populos peccatum, “sin makes the people wretched.” Ελασσονουσι δε φυλας ἁμαρτιαι; “But sins lessen the tribes.” - Septuagint. So also the Syriac and Arabic. The plain meaning of the original seems to be, A national disposition to mercy appears in the sight of God as a continual sin-offering.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk5
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Psalms 107:34and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.
leads to
The latter five came as allies to the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea).
And Lot looked out and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan, all the way to Zoar, was well watered like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt. (This was…
All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the…
But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt.
But the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD.