There are six things the LORD hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up dissension in the community.

The Holy Bible : Today’s New International Version. 2005 (Pr 6:16–19). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

COMMENT:

This particular passage in Proverbs is the first example of what is called a “numerical proverb.” The nature of poetry in Hebrew (and in Semitic languages in general) is not to rhyme sounds, but to rhyme ideas. Thus, the lines will bounce off each other, either repeating the same basic concept with synonymous words or phrases, adding more details and completing the previous line, or answering the line with an opposite concept. One of the difficulties in creating this sort of poetry was the question of what to do with numbers. Numbers do not commonly have either a synonym or an antonym. The solution that the ancient poets came up with was a convention of essentially completing the number: that is, by beginning in the first line with a certain number, and then following in the second line with a number one iteration higher. Thus, in this proverb, the author begins in the first line with “six” and then parallels it with “seven” before then listing seven items. In other poetry, one might find the pattern “hundred” followed then by “thousand” or “thousand” followed by “ten thousand.” Thus, the song that so upset King Saul illustrates the level of his crazy paranoia:

“Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands.” (1 Samuel 18:7)

Just as there are not actual synonyms for numbers, there are not normally actual synonyms for people. Thus, the convention for poetry was to list the most important person in the first line, followed by his associate in the second line–for instance the king, followed by his top general or aide (see Judges 5:12: Deborah first, followed by Barak). In the lyrics of the song recorded in 1 Samuel, Saul comes first, and the numbers follow the standard pattern, with the smaller number first (as we see in this passage in Proverbs 6, above). Saul was not being “dissed” by the song at all; it was, in fact innocuous and his interpretation, that David was being credited with a greater victory than he, culturally and poetically speaking, was obviously insane and weird.

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