Read Proverbs 11 here (text coming …) or at Bible Gateway.
The Hebrew paragraph:
10:1b-19:9 {p} …
Pro 11:16-31 Chiastic Structure:
The Proverbs are illuminating what is abominable to YHVH, and what is delightful to YHVH.
A false balance is an abomination to YHVH; but a just weight is His delight. Pro 11:1
Those who are perverse in heart are an abomination to YHVH; but those who are upright in their way are His delight. Pro 11:20
In ancient days, there was no coined money. For money, people used chunks of gold, silver, and bronze. A merchant would have a balance scale at his table. If something he was selling was worth 5 grams of gold, he would set a 5 gram weight on one side of the balance scale, and the customer would pile gold chunks on the other side of the balance scale. When he had piled 5 grams worth of gold on the other side of the scale, the scale balanced.
A false balance is one which has been tinkered with to always balance heavier than the weights the merchants kept. Another trick the unscrupulous ones employed, if their balance was true, was to have a set of weights, labeled 1 gram, 5 grams, 10 grams, actually weigh 1.1 grama, 5.2 grams, or 10.4 grams. Those are unjust weights.
Likewise a perverse heart is abominable to YHVH.
Perverse is from Strong’s H6140 עקש aqash, a primitive verb meaning, “to be perverse, to make crooked.” The modern pictographs are ayin + quph + shin, but the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon reveals that the ayin was originally a ghah. The ghah, a separate letter in ancient days, has been enfolded into the ayin, and has disappeared in modern days.
ghah § = rope, thus twisted, goat, dark, negative
quph ק = sun on the horizon, thus condense, circle, time
shin ש = two front teeth, thus sharp, press, eat, two, again
The parable being told by the Hebrew Root Word, is of walking a twisted (ghah) path time (quph) and time again (shin). He who is of a perverse heart is he who refuses to repent or to learn from mistakes, but who purposely chooses perversity and continually returns to it.
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