Reproach - The word so rendered has this sense in the Targum of Leviticus 20:17. Its more usual meaning is "mercy," "piety;" hence, some have attached to the word rendered "sin" the sense of "sin-offering," and so get the maxim "piety is an atonement for the people."

But sin is a reproach to any people - I am satisfied this is not the sense of the original, וחסד לאמים חטאת vechesed leummim chattath; which would be better rendered, And mercy is a sin-offering for the people. The Vulgate has, Miseros autem facit populos peccatum, "sin makes the people wretched." Ελασσονουσι δε φυλας ἁμαρτιαι; "But sins lessen the tribes." - Septuagint. So also the Syriac and Arabic. The plain meaning of the original seems to be, A national disposition to mercy appears in the sight of God as a continual sin-offering. Not that it atones for the sin of the people; but, as a sin-offering is pleasing in the sight of the God of mercy, so is a merciful disposition in a nation. This view of the verse is consistent with the purest doctrines of free grace. And what is the true sense of the words, we should take at all hazards and consequences: we shall never trench upon a sound creed by a literal interpretation of God's words. No nation has more of this spirit than the British nation. It is true, we have too many sanguinary laws; but the spirit of the people is widely different.
If any one will contend for the common version, he has my consent; and I readily agree in the saying, Sin is the reproach of any people. It is the curse and scandal of man. Though I think what I have given is the true meaning of the text.

Righteousness exalteth a nation,.... Administered by the government, and exercised by subjects towards one another; doing justice between man and man: this exalts a nation, as it did the people of Israel, while practised among them; this sets a people above their neighbours, and high in the esteem of God and men; and is attended with privileges and blessings, which make a nation great and honourable. Some understand this of aims deeds, or beneficence to the poor; which, both in the Hebrew and Greek languages, is called righteousness; See Gill on Matthew 6:1. It may be put for the whole of true religion, which is an honour to a nation, where it obtains; and is what makes the holy nation, and peculiar people, so truly illustrious; and particularly the righteousness of Christ makes such who are interested in it really great and noble, and promotes and exalts them to heaven and happiness;
but sin is a reproach to any people; where vice reigns, iniquity abounds, profaneness, impiety, and immorality of all sorts prevail, a people become mean and despicable; they fall into poverty and contempt; are neither able to defend themselves, nor help their neighbours, and so are despised by them. The word rendered "reproach" most commonly signifies "mercy" or goodness; and some render it, "and the mercy of a people is a sin offering" (p); or as one: or it is so "to the nations"; it is as good as a sacrifice for sin, of which the word is sometimes used, or better, more acceptable to God, "who will have mercy, and not sacrifice", Matthew 9:13; even beneficence and kindness to the poor, the same with righteousness, as before. I think it may be as well rendered, "the piety" or religion "of the nations is sin" (q); it being idolatry, as Aben Ezra observes: such is the religion of the antichristian nations, who worship idols of gold and silver; and though they may afflict themselves, as Gersom remarks of the idolatrous nations, with fasting and penance, with whippings and scourgings; yet it is nothing else but sin, will worship, and superstition.
(p) "beneficentia expiatio est populi", Grotius; "sacrificium expiatorium", Tigurine version; "velut sacrificium pro peccato", Vatablus, Gejerus; "gratuita beneificentia nationibus est aliquid sacrificium peccati expiatorium", Gussetius, p. 74. (q) "Pietas nationum est peccatium", Munster, Mercerus; "studium nationum peccatum", Cocceius.

Piety and holiness always promote industry, sobriety, and honesty.

Righteousness--just principles and actions.
exalteth--raises to honor.
is a reproach--brings on them the ill-will of others (compare Proverbs 13:6).

Two proverbs follow regarding the state and its ruler:
34 Righteousness exalteth a nation,
And sin is a disgrace to the people.
The Hebr. language is richer in synonyms of "the people" than the German. גּוי (formed like the non-bibl. מוי, water, and נוי, corporealness, from גּוה, to extend itself from within outward; cf. Proverbs 9:3, גּפּי, Proverbs 10:13, גּו) is, according to the usus loq., like natio the people, as a mass swollen up from a common origin, and עם, 28a (from עמם, to bind), the people as a confederation held together by a common law; לאם (from לאם, to unite, bind together) is the mass (multitude) of the people, and is interchanged sometimes with גוי, Genesis 25:23, and sometimes with עם, Proverbs 14:28. In this proverb, לאמּים stands indeed intentionally in the plur., but not גוי, with the plur. of which גּוים, the idea of the non-Israelitish nations, too easily connects itself. The proverb means all nations without distinction, even Israel (cf. under Isaiah 1:4) not excluded. History everywhere confirms the principle, that not the numerical, nor the warlike, nor the political, nor yet the intellectual and the so-called civilized greatness, is the true greatness of a nation, and determines the condition of its future as one of progress; but this is its true greatness, that in its private, public, and international life, צדקה, i.e., conduct directed by the will of God, according to the norm of moral rectitude, rules and prevails. Righteousness, good manners, and piety are the things which secure to a nation a place of honour, while, on the contrary, חטּאת, sin, viz., prevailing, and more favoured and fostered than contended against in the consciousness of the moral problem of the state, is a disgrace to the people, i.e., it lowers them before God, and also before men who do not judge superficially or perversely, and also actually brings them down. רומם, to raise up, is to be understood after Isaiah 1:2, cf. Proverbs 23:4, and is to be punctuated תּרומם, with Munach of the penult., and the העמדה-sign with the Tsere of the last syllable. Ben-Naphtali punctuates thus: תּרומם. In 34b all the artifices of interpretation (from Nachmani to Schultens) are to be rejected, which interpret חסד as the Venet. (ἔλεος δὲ λαῶν ἁμαρτία) in its predominant Hebrew signification. It has here, as at Leviticus 20:17 (but not Job 6:14), the signification of the Syr. chesdho, opprobrium; the Targ. חסדּא, or more frequently חסּוּדא, as among Jewish interpreters, is recognised by Chanan'el and Rashbam. That this חסד is not foreign to the Mishle style, is seen from the fact that חסּד, Proverbs 25:10, is used in the sense of the Syr. chasedh. The synon. Syr. chasam, invidere, obtrectare, shows that these verbal stems are formed from the R. הס, stringere, to strike. Already it is in some measure perceived how חסד, Syr. chasadh, Arab. hasada, may acquire the meaning of violent love, and by the mediation of the jealousy which is connected with violent love, the signification of grudging, and thus of reproach and of envy; yet this is more manifest if one thinks of the root-signification stringere, in the meaning of loving, as referred to the subject, in the meanings of disgrace and envy, as from the subject directed to others. Ewald (51c) compares חסל and חסר, Ethiop. chasra, in the sense of carpere, and on the other side חסה in the sense of "to join;" but חסה does not mean to join (vid., Psalm 2:12) and instead of carpere, the idea more closely connected with the root is that of stringere, cf. stringere folia ex arboribus (Caesar), and stringere (to diminish, to squander, strip) rem ingluvie (Horace, Sat. i. 2. 8). The lxx has here read חסר (Proverbs 28:22), diminution, decay, instead of חסד (shame); the quid pro quo is not bad, the Syr. accepts it, and the miseros facit of Jerome, and Luther's verderben (destruction) corresponds with this phrase better than with the common traditional reading which Symmachus rightly renders by ὄνειδος.