| 19. Linguistic Exegesis The proverb begins with a vivid verbless comparative phrase shen ro‘āh ve-reḡel mū‘ādeṯ {שֵן רֹעָה וְרֶגֶל מוּעָדֶת | šēn rō‘āh wə-reḡel mū‘ādeṯ} ‘a broken tooth and a slipping foot’, invoking physical pain as a metaphor for misplaced trust. In this phrase, the participles rō‘āh {רֹעָה | rō‘āh} ‘broken’ and mū‘ādeṯ {מוּעָדֶת | mū‘ādeṯ} ‘slipping’ modify their respective nouns. The conjunction vav in wə-reḡel {וְרֶגֶל | wə-reḡel} links two parallel body-part images. The main clause mivṭāḥ bōgeḏ bə-yōm ṣārָה {מִבְטָח בּוֹגֵד בְּיוֹם צָרָה | mivṭāḥ bōgeḏ bə-yōm ṣārָה} ‘trust in a treacherous one in a day of distress’ is a noun construct where mivṭāḥ heads a genitive relationship with bōgeḏ and is specified by the temporal prepositional phrase bə-yōm ṣārָה. The Hebrew word order is preserved to maintain rhetorical progression from imagery to ethical application. |