How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? etc. From this verse to the end of the chapter the sacred writer puts before us the words of Wisdom herself. The discourse begins in the same way as in Psalms 4:2 (Zockler), and the classification of the persons addressed—the simple, the scorners, and the sinners—closely resembles that of Psalms 1:1.
In the order there is a progression from the least to the most culpable. The simple ( פְתָיִם, p'thayim), as in Psalms 1:4, those who are indifferent through thoughtlessness and inconsiderateness, and are thereby open to evil.
The scorners ( לֵצֵים, letsim); or, mockers, the same as the ( לָצוֹן, latson) "scornful men" of Proverbs 29:8, derived from the root לּוּץ (luts), "to deride, mock," probably by imitating the voice in derision.
The mockers are those who hold all things in derision, both human and Divine, who contemn God's admonitions, and treat with ridicule both threatenings and promises alike. Fools; כְסִילִים (ch'silim), a different word from the evilim of Proverbs 29:7, but signifying much the same, i.
e. the obdurate, the hardened, stolidi, those who walk after the sight of their eyes and the imagination of their hearts—a class not ignorant of knowledge, but hating it because of the restraint it puts them under.
The word occurs in Proverbs 17:10, in the sense of the incorrigible; in Proverbs 26:3, Proverbs 26:4 as a term of the greatest contempt. The enallage, or interchange of tenses in the original—the verbs "love" and "hate" being future, and "delight" being perfect—is not reproducible in English.
The perfect is used interchangeably with the future where the action or state is represented as first coming to pass or in progress, and, as Zockler remarks, may be inchoative, and so be rendered "become fond of," instead of "be fond of."
But it appears to represent not so much a state or action first coming to pass as in progress. Bottcher translates it by concupiverint, i.e. "How long shall ye have delighted in scorning?" The futures express "love" and "hate" as habitual sentiments (Delitzsch).
It is to be noted that the language of Wisdom, in Proverbs 26:22 and Proverbs 26:23, is expressive of the most tender and earnest solicitude.