Or, An inheritance gotten hastily (greedily sought after by unjust means) at the beginning, the end thereof shall not be blessed. Another reading gives, "an inheritance loathed, (compare Zac 11:8), or with a curse upon it." The King James Version agrees with the versions.

An inheritance - gotten hastily - Gotten by speculation; by lucky hits; not in the fair progressive way of traffic, in which money has its natural increase. All such inheritances are short-lived; God's blessing is not in them, because they are not the produce of industry; and they lead to idleness, pride, fraud and knavery. A speculation in trade is a pubiic nuisance and curse. How many honest men have been ruined by such!

An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning,.... Of a man's setting out in the world in trade and business; and which sometimes is got lawfully, and this must be excepted from this proverb; but generally what is got hastily and in a short time is got unlawfully, and so does not prosper. Some Jewish interpreters, as Gersom, understand it of an inheritance which comes to persons from their friends, without any labour or industry of theirs; and which they are not careful to keep, but, as it lightly comes, it lightly goes: here is a various reading; our version follows the marginal reading, and which is followed by the Targum, Jarchi, and Gersom, and by the Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate Latin versions; but the written text is, "an inheritance loathsome" or "abominable"; an ill gotten one, so the word is used in Zac 11:8. Schultens, from the use of the word in the Arabic language, which signifies to be covetous, renders it "covetously got" or "possessed" (i); and so the Arabic version is, "an inheritance greedily desired", obtained through covetousness and illicit practices; but in his late commentary on this book he renders the passage, by the help of Arabism, "an inheritance smitten with the curse of sordidness", as being sordidly got and enjoyed;
but the end thereof shall not be blessed; it will not continue, it will be taken away from them, and put into some other hands. Jarchi illustrates it by the tribes of Gad and Reuben making haste to take their part on the other side Jordan before their brethren, and were the first that were carried captive.
(i) Animadv. ad V. T. p. 248.

An estate suddenly raised, is often as suddenly ruined.

gotten hastily--contrary to God's providence (Proverbs 28:20), implying its unjust or easy attainment; hence the man is punished, or spends freely what he got easily (compare Proverbs 20:17).

21 An inheritance which in the beginning is obtained in haste,
Its end will not be blessed.
The partic. מבחל may, after Zac 11:8, cf. Syr. bhlaa', nauseans, mean "detested," but that affords here no sense; rather it might be interpreted after the Arab. bajila, to be avaricious, "gotten by avarice, niggardliness," with which, however, neither נחלה, inheritance, nor, since avarice is a chronic disease, בּראשׁונה agrees. On the contrary, the Kerı̂ מבהלת [hastened] perfectly agrees, both linguistically (vid., Proverbs 28:22; cf. Proverbs 13:11) and actually; for, as Hitzig remarks, the words following Proverbs 20:20 fully harmonize with the idea of an inheritance, into the possession of which one is put before it is rightly due to him; for a son such as that, the parents may live too long, and so he violently deprives them of the possession (cf. Proverbs 19:26); but on such a possession there rests no blessing. Since the Piel may mean to hasten, Esther 2:9, so מבהל may mean hastened = speedy, Esther 8:14, as well as made in haste. All the old interpreters adopt the Kerı̂; the Aram. render it well by מסרהבא, from מסרהב, overturned; and Luther, like Jerome, haereditas ad quam festinatur.