Note 396 — Chapter XI

The text reads, For also wine is treacherous, under which we might be tempted to suspect some such original as, As wine is treacherous, so (next line) the proud fellow, etc. (or, as Davidson suggests, Like wine is the treacherous dealer), were it not that the word wine appears neither in the Greek nor in the Syrian version. Wellhausen suggests that היין, wine, is a corruption of הוי, with which the verse, like vv. 6b, 9, 12, 15, 19, may have originally begun, but according to 6a the taunt-songs, opening with הוי, start first in 6b. Bredenkamp proposes וְאֶפֶס כְּאַיִן.