Their wives are foolish, and their children evil: Good News Translation expresses this very well, but idiomatically. It means “Their wives will be irresponsible, and their children no good.” “Irresponsible” is a good translation for the Greek adjective, better than foolish. An American Translation “silly” is also good.

The Handbook recommends that rather than follow the verse numbering used by Good News Translation and Revised Standard Version here, translators follow the Greek texts and make the next line part of this section. A new section clearly begins with the line after.

Their offspring are accursed: Offspring refers to all a person’s descendants, not just to the immediate children. If anyone is thought of here as actually pronouncing a curse, it would be God: “… will be under God’s curse.” But the line probably means only “All their descendants will suffer the same miserable fate” or “… will be punished by God,” or even “God will punish all….” The idea is that by ignoring the opportunities to gain wisdom, the ungodly will have no wisdom to pass on their descendants, thus consigning them, as well as themselves, to the fate of people who have no education, wisdom, or even good sense.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Wisdom of Solomon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2004. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.