Proverbs (Paj Lug) — Linguistic Gap Analysis, Hmong

0. Purpose and Scope

This document performs the linguistic-gap function of the TRI pipeline for the Hmong Proverbs Language Package: it maps each assigned doctrine to its available Hmong vocabulary, names the specific weaknesses of that vocabulary, recommends a disambiguation/fencing strategy, identifies where vocabulary is genuinely missing versus where it is crowded (multiple doctrinal referents competing for one lexeme or semantic field), makes explicit transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions, and ranks the letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for downstream Phase 2 enforcement. It covers the full book (chs. 1-31) with the core passage (3:1-12) treated as the doctrinal anchor, not the scope boundary, per the full-book-coverage mandate.

All renderings cited below are drawn from analysis/08_core_glossary.md (Section A = permanent Romans-baseline reuse; Section B = provisional Proverbs-new terms) and assets/bible_term_registry.json (Proverbs registry, ids 1-59). No new permanent renderings are minted in this document.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the seven assigned doctrines: the available Hmong term(s), their specific weaknesses, and the recommended mitigation strategy.

1.1 The Fear of the LORD as the Beginning of Wisdom

Available Hmong Terms	Source	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
kev hwm thiab ntshai Vajtswv (fear of the LORD) — PR-A / registry id 7	New, Critical	The head noun ntshai (fear/dread) is the identical word used for kev ntshai dab — the servile, appeasement-oriented dread of capricious ancestor/nature spirits. Hmong traditional religion treats this dread as instrumentally rational: spirits harm those who fail ritual obligations, so fear motivates ritual correctness. Proverbs’ yir'at YHWH is filial, worshipful awe flowing from covenant relationship with a trustworthy Father, not appeasement of a capricious power.	(1) Never render yir'at YHWH with bare ntshai; the compound hwm thiab ntshai (honor-and-fear) is mandatory as a fixed collocation, paralleling the baseline’s Vaj Ntsuj Plig fixed-prefix strategy. (2) Mandatory co-occurrence with Leej Txiv (Father) and/or PR-I cia siab rau tus Tswv (trust) within the same teaching unit, so the fear is framed as filial not servile. (3) Exploit the book’s own inclusio (1:7 / 31:30) as a built-in teaching structure: open every module on this doctrine by naming both bookend verses together.
kev ntshai tib neeg (fear of man) — registry id 8	New, Medium	Risk of being blurred into id 7 if not visually/lexically distinguished (both use ntshai).	Keep the human-fear register strictly unqualified (no hwm, no Vajtswv) and always contrasted explicitly with trust in the LORD (29:25) in the same sentence.

Gap assessment: Not a missing-vocabulary problem — Hmong has ample dread/reverence vocabulary — but a crowded semantic neighborhood: ntshai alone is doctrinally unsafe because it is shared property with the shamanic fear-of-spirits domain. This is functionally the same collision class the Romans baseline already documents for orgē theou (wrath of God) — see §3 below for the fencing strategy, which is structurally reused here.

1.2 Wisdom Personified

Available Hmong Terms	Source	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
tswvyim (wisdom, generic) — PR-B / registry id 4	New, High	Bare tswvyim also names shrewd/cunning cleverness, including the cunning Hmong tradition attributes to a txiv neeb (shaman) in negotiating successfully with spirits.	Mandatory qualifier ntawm Vajtswv (or explicit co-text anchoring to tus Tswv, e.g. 1:7, 2:5-6) whenever the theological sense is intended — structural parallel to baseline’s hwjchim → Vajtswv hwjchim.
Tus Tswvyim (Wisdom Personified) — PR-C / registry id 5	New, Critical	Grammatically feminine personification of a divine attribute, portrayed as a speaking, calling, hosting female figure (chs. 1, 8, 9). This is structurally identical in shape (a named female spiritual figure who calls/summons/is honored) to dab poj niam household/ancestral female-spirit veneration. Additionally, 8:22-31 carries an unresolved historic Christological (Logos) reading.	(1) Tus classifier-marking (parallel to baseline’s Vaj prefix strategy) signals “distinct literary/rhetorical referent,” never an independent being. (2) Mandatory teaching note on first occurrence (1:20) explicitly stating Wisdom Personified is God’s own attribute given voice, not a goddess or spirit to be venerated/consulted. (3) 8:22 (qanah) is explicitly walled off — registry id 58 — as [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED]; no Phase 2 content may resolve the typological question unilaterally.
Tus Ruam (Folly Personified) — PR-D / registry id 6	New, High	Same female-personification shape-collision as above, though unambiguously negative (lower doctrinal stakes, no Christological question).	Same Tus-classifier strategy; teaching note may be shorter since polarity is unambiguous.

Gap assessment: This is a genuine missing-vocabulary gap, not merely crowded: Hmong has no existing Christian-register convention for personifying a divine attribute as a literary female speaker (the Romans baseline never required this — its closest analogue, Vaj Ntsuj Plig, solves a different problem via a prefix on a real Person, not a literary figure). The Tus X classifier convention proposed here is new and must be logged for formal TM-revision review before being treated as permanent curriculum-wide practice.

1.3 Practical Righteousness in Daily Life

Available Hmong Terms	Source	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
tus ncaj ncees / kev ncaj ncees — registry id 17, baseline-inherited lexeme	Medium in Proverbs (Critical in Romans)	The same lexeme carries opposite doctrinal correctness across the two books in this pipeline: in Romans, the “achieved personal quality” default sense is precisely what must be resisted (forensic imputation); in Proverbs, that same achieved/practiced sense is exactly right (practical righteousness IS a lived, cultivable quality). A learner moving between both curricula could silently import the wrong register.	Mandatory cross-book disambiguation note in every Proverbs lesson touching this term: “In Loos (Romans), this word points to a legal standing given by God through faith; in Paj Lug (Proverbs), this same word describes the practiced, daily-life conduct that flows from wisdom — these are related but distinct teachings, and Proverbs never teaches that practical righteousness is how a person is justified before God.”
hwm Vajtswv (honor the LORD, positive use of the “ungodly” root) — registry id 21	Low-Medium	Comprehension-level only (reuses a root the Romans baseline used negatively); no collision.	No special fencing beyond a first-use note that this positive use of the root differs from the Romans baseline’s negative tus tsis hwm Vajtswv.
teev taus ncaj ncees (honest weights) — registry id 20	Low	Concrete, comprehension-level only.	None needed beyond standard glossing.

Gap assessment: Not missing vocabulary — the risk here is entirely a crowded neighborhood across curricula (same lexeme, two books, two correct-but-different senses). This is the single highest-risk cross-book item in the whole package and is elevated in §4 below.

1.4 The Contrast of the Wise and the Fool

Available Hmong Terms	Source	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
txawj ntse (wise) — registry id 29, baseline merism reuse	Low	Stable, already used in the Romans baseline’s merism entry; no collision.	Reuse verbatim.
ruam (fool, hardened/kesil) — registry id 28, baseline merism reuse	Low	Stable baseline reuse.	Reuse verbatim.
tus tsis paub qab hau (simple/naive, peti) — PR-M / registry id 27	Medium	Distinct sub-category risk: could be flattened into ruam by translators seeking economy, erasing Proverbs’ three-tier taxonomy (simple → scoffer → hardened fool).	Maintain three lexically distinct terms (simple / scoffer / fool) at every occurrence in doctrinally dense chapters (1, 9) rather than collapsing to a single “foolish” gloss.
tus thuam luag (scoffer/mocker, letz) — PR-N / registry id 26	Medium	Same flattening risk as above.	As above; teach the three-tier taxonomy explicitly as a unit.

Gap assessment: No missing vocabulary and no traditional-religion collision. The risk is purely taxonomic flattening — a comprehension-preservation issue, not a doctrinal-collision issue. Ranked Medium overall, but flagged because collapsing the three categories weakens this specific doctrine’s pedagogical structure.

1.5 Speech and Self-Control

Available Hmong Terms	Source	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
nplaig / lus hais (tongue/speech) — PR-R / registry id 22	High	Hmong traditional religion holds a live belief in the ritual/spiritual efficacy of spoken words — formal curses and blessings believed to actually invoke spirit action independent of relational truth-content. 18:21 (“death and life are in the power of the tongue”) is acutely exposed to being heard as incantational rather than ethical-relational.	Mandatory teaching note at every doctrinally dense occurrence (6:17, 10:19-21, 12:18-19, 18:21, 25:11) explicitly stating that Proverbs’ speech-ethic is about how truthful/kind/destructive words shape character, relationships, and community outcomes over time — not verbal magic that operates independent of truth or relationship.
nplaig dag (lying tongue) — registry id 23	High	Subfamily of above; same collision.	Same teaching-note requirement, inherited.
kev tswj lub siab (self-control, 25:28) — PR-S / registry id 24	High	Risk of being taught as Stoic willpower or, worse, as a ritual/charm-based self-mastery technique (paralleling shamanic self-protection practices) rather than character formation.	Anchor teaching explicitly to Spirit-enabled/character-formation categories already established in the Romans baseline (renewal_of_the_mind, sanctification), even though Proverbs itself does not use Vaj Ntsuj Plig vocabulary — the cross-reference is pedagogical, not lexical substitution.
tus hais lus xyov qab hau (talebearer) — PR-AB / registry id 25	Medium	Minor collision potential (same speech-magic backdrop) but primarily ethical-relational.	Standard teaching note; lower priority than the two entries above.

Gap assessment: No missing vocabulary; this is a direct collision (not merely crowded) between the ethical-relational biblical speech-ethic and an active competing belief-system (verbal-magic efficacy). This is ranked High/near-top in §4.

1.6 Diligence versus Sloth

Available Hmong Terms	Source	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
kev nquag (diligence) — PR-P / registry id 30	Low	No traditional-religion collision — diligence is an existing positive Hmong agrarian value — but risk of prosperity-gospel-adjacent misapplication if taught divorced from 23:4-5’s warning against toiling merely for riches.	Pair diligence teaching with 23:4-5 in the same module; no lexical fencing required, only a doctrinal-balance note.
tus tub nkeeg (sluggard) — PR-Q / registry id 31	Low	Stable, no collision.	None needed.

Gap assessment: No linguistic gap of any kind. This is the lowest-risk doctrine in the assigned set; flagged here only to confirm full-book coverage, per the never-silently-skip mandate.

1.7 Trust in the LORD’s Providence

Available Hmong Terms	Source	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
cia siab rau tus Tswv (trust in the LORD, 3:5) — PR-I / registry id 32	Critical	A bare cia siab (without the rau tus Tswv object) could drift toward either (a) fatalistic self-resignation adjacent to hmoov (impersonal fate), or (b) an implicit sense of securing a spirit’s favor through correct ritual posture. Also risks conflation with the baseline’s kev cia siab (hope) and kev ntseeg (faith), which name adjacent but distinct concepts.	Mandatory-anchor rule, structurally identical to the baseline’s kev xaiv and kev cawm dim pattern: the object tus Tswv may never be dropped, in any context, including titles/headers/quiz options.
Vajtswv txoj kev tswj fwm txhua yam (the LORD’s providence) — PR-V / registry id 34	Critical	Direct competing concept: hmoov, impersonal fate/fortune assigned by ancestors/spirits/cosmic forces, unalterable by the individual, is the Hmong worldview’s default explanatory category for “why things turn out as they do” — exactly the semantic territory Proverbs’ providence texts (16:9, 16:33, 19:21, 20:24, 21:1) occupy.	hmoov-family vocabulary is PERMANENTLY FORBIDDEN for this term, identical prohibition-logic to the Romans baseline’s election_choose entry. Providence must always be rendered with personal, purposeful, volitional phrasing (an Agent who actively directs), never impersonal-mechanism phrasing.
rho ntawv xaiv (casting lots, 16:33) — PR-W / registry id 36	High	Direct collision with ongoing Hmong divinatory practice (consulting spirits/omens for guidance) — this is a live present-tense practice, not merely a historical folk-memory.	Mandatory teaching note: the text affirms God’s sovereignty over a historically-bounded, divinely-sanctioned ancient mechanism; must not be read as endorsing divination as an ongoing spiritual practice today.
Vajtswv qhov muag saib txhua qhov (the LORD’s all-seeing eyes, 15:3,11) — registry id 35	Medium-High	Could be heard as impersonal cosmic surveillance/fate-tracking rather than a caring Father’s attentiveness.	Teach jointly with Leej Txiv fatherhood imagery; avoid surveillance-only framing.

Gap assessment: This doctrine sits atop the single largest competing-worldview collision in the entire Proverbs package: Hmong hmoov is a fully-formed, culturally load-bearing alternative explanatory system for exactly the phenomena (outcomes, “luck,” life-direction) that biblical providence addresses. No vocabulary is missing; the risk is entirely one of an existing, powerful competing category. Ranked #1 in §4.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no existing Hmong lexical resource, requires new coinage/periphrasis)

Concept	Passage(s)	Gap Type	Resolution Path
Personification of a divine attribute as an independent speaking female literary figure	1:20-33, 8, 9	No existing Hmong Christian-register convention for this literary device	Tus Tswvyim / Tus Ruam classifier-strategy (PR-C/PR-D); provisional, logged for TM-revision review
Wisdom’s “poured-out spirit” (1:23, ruchi)	1:23	No safe existing term — every candidate collides with either Vaj Ntsuj Plig (forbidden, reserved) or ntsuj plig (forbidden, reserved for human soul)	[TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] — registry id 57; provisional periphrasis pending theologian sign-off, no permanent coinage without review
Wisdom “possessed/brought forth” at creation (8:22, qanah)	8:22	No existing Hmong theological vocabulary distinguishes “begotten,” “created,” and “acquired/possessed” with the needed doctrinal precision for the historic Logos debate	[TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] — registry id 58; mandatory human theologian resolution, not resolvable by lexical substitution alone
Botanical/cultural referent for olive-tree-adjacent horticultural metaphors is inherited from Romans, but Proverbs introduces its own comprehension gaps: e.g., the “tree of life” (3:18) needs distinguishing from eschatological eternal life without a ready-made Hmong theological distinction already existing for “this-life flourishing image” vs. “eschatological life”	3:18, 11:30, 13:12, 15:4	Comprehension gap, not collision	tsob ntoo ntawm txoj sia (PR-AD/id 53) with a mandatory teaching note distinguishing it from baseline’s txoj sia nyob mus ib txhis
Numerical/riddle proverb genre marker (30:15-33)	30	Genre-label gap only	lus qhia zais (id 55); low-stakes, comprehension-level

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (vocabulary exists but is shared across multiple doctrinal referents, requiring fencing)

Shared Hmong Lexical Field	Competing Referents	Fencing Strategy
ntshai (fear/dread)	(a) reverential fear of the LORD [Critical, PR-A]; (b) servile dread of spirits/ancestors [traditional religion]; (c) ordinary fear of people/circumstance [id 8]	Fixed compound hwm thiab ntshai Vajtswv for (a) only; bare unqualified ntshai tib neeg for (c); (b) never lexicalized in curriculum content except as the explicit contrast-object named in teaching notes.
tswvyim (wisdom/cleverness)	(a) God-given wisdom [theological]; (b) shrewd/cunning cleverness incl. shamanic cunning	Mandatory ntawm Vajtswv qualifier for (a); bare form permitted only when explicitly describing worldly/self-reliant cleverness Proverbs itself critiques (e.g., “wise in his own eyes,” 3:7, 26:12) — itself a teaching point, not an oversight.
hwjchim (power) — baseline-inherited	(a) God’s power [Romans baseline, qualified Vajtswv hwjchim]; (b) delegated civil authority [Romans baseline, ch.13 phrase]; (c) NOT separately introduced in Proverbs, but any Proverbs passage implying human strength/might (e.g., 21:22 “a wise man scales the city of the mighty”) must avoid drifting into unqualified hwjchim	No new Proverbs-specific occurrence identified requiring new fencing; existing baseline fencing suffices — logged here to confirm the check was performed (full-book-coverage discipline).
koob hmoov (blessing/fortune) — baseline-reserved	(a) ordinary material blessing [Romans baseline reservation]; (b) Proverbs’ retributive wisdom-order material reward (3:9-10, 10:6,22, 11:24-26); (c) fij-dab exchange logic (ritual payment for spirit favor)	koob hmoov remains the correct rendering for (b) per the baseline reservation, but Proverbs is the FIRST context in this pipeline where the High-risk edge of that reservation is actually exercised at scale; mandatory teaching note on every occurrence in 3:9-10 and the ch.10-11 retribution passages distinguishing covenant-order generosity from mechanical ritual payment (c). txiaj ntsim (grace) remains permanently forbidden as a substitute here, consistent with the Critical baseline reservation.
fij (sacrifice/offering) — baseline-fenced (hilastērion vs. thysia zōsa)	(a) Christ’s unique atonement [Romans, qhov theej txhoj kev txhaum]; (b) ethical living-sacrifice devotion [Romans, khoom fij uas muaj txoj sia nyob]; (c) Proverbs 21:27’s ritual-sincerity teaching, khoom fij (id 59); (d) shamanic appeasement offerings, fij dab	Proverbs 21:27 reuses the baseline’s existing three-way fence without adding new vocabulary; mandatory teaching note that 21:27 is a heart-sincerity critique of ritual, not a statement about atonement mechanics, and must not be read as endorsing fij dab-style appeasement as efficacious when done “correctly.”
hesed-family vs. eleos-family vs. agapē-family love/loyalty vocabulary	(a) kev hlub [agapē, baseline]; (b) txoj kev khuv leej [eleos/mercy, baseline]; (c) kev hlub ruaj khov [hesed/covenant-loyalty, PR-K/id 38, new]	Three-way lexical distinctness must be maintained at 3:3’s hesed-emet pairing specifically; collapsing (c) into either (a) or (b) loses the covenantal-loyalty nuance unique to hesed that 3:3 requires.
chen (relational favor) vs. charis (salvific grace)	(a) kev pom zoo thiab txais yuav [chen, PR-L/id 37, new]; (b) txiaj ntsim [charis, baseline, Critical, permanently reserved]	(b) must never render (a); mandatory teaching note preventing cross-book doctrinal blending, since both concepts sit near “favor/grace” in English but must remain lexically separated in Hmong across the two curricula.
torah (Hebrew root) across two distinct referents	(a) full covenantal Mosaic Law [Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv/Mauxes), baseline, Critical, ch.28-29]; (b) parental teaching/instruction [kev qhia (ntawm niam thiab txiv), PR-G/id 12, new, most of the book]	(a) and (b) share a Hebrew root but must never share a Hmong rendering; the mandatory Law qualifier is reserved exclusively for (a). This is the book’s most frequent root-sharing trap given how often “instruction” language recurs (1:8, 3:1, 4:2, 6:20, 7:2, 13:14).
chemah/af (anger) divine vs. human referent	(a) divine wrath [kev npau taws ntawm Vajtswv, baseline, High]; (b) ordinary human anger, deliberately unqualified [npau taws bare, id 10]	(b) must remain unqualified by design — this is a case where the ABSENCE of the qualifier is the correct, deliberate choice, the inverse of most fencing strategies in this document; teaching note required so students do not over-apply the qualifier rule and mistakenly add ntawm Vajtswv to human-anger verses (15:1, 16:14, 19:11, 22:24, 29:22).

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3. Fencing Strategy Applied to the Fear-of-the-LORD / Wrath-of-God Collision Family

Because §1.1 and the chemah/af entry above both belong to the same structural collision-family already solved once in the Romans baseline (the orgē theou entry, registry id 31/9), this document formalizes the reusable fencing pattern for downstream Phase 2 enforcement:

1. Never leave the emotionally-loaded head noun (ntshai, npau taws) bare when the referent is divine and doctrinally load-bearing. Bare forms default to the folk-religious reading (capricious, appeasable, ritual-triggered).
2. Always supply a relational anchor (Leej Txiv, tus Tswv, cia siab rau tus Tswv) within the same teaching unit to establish covenant/filial framing rather than transactional appeasement framing.
3. Explicitly name the contrast in a teaching note at first occurrence per module — do not assume the contrast is self-evident from context, since the surface-level Hmong words are identical to the folk-religious terms, not merely similar.
4. Deliberately preserve the unqualified form where the referent is genuinely non-divine/human (ordinary anger, ordinary fear-of-man) so students learn the qualifier is meaningful, not decorative.

This four-step pattern is recommended as the default fencing template for any future Hmong Proverbs term found to collide with the fear/anger/appeasement folk-religious complex.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Proverbs, unlike Romans, contains almost no proper theological names requiring transliteration decisions (no equivalent to Abba, Yexus Khetos, or contested divine titles beyond YHWH itself, already settled as tus Tswv per baseline). The transliteration/paraphrase question in this book is instead concentrated in three areas:

Item	Decision	Rationale
Book title	Paraphrase/native term: Paj Lug (lit. “flower-words,” the existing Hmong Bible tradition’s title for Proverbs)	Strong positive cultural bridge; coincides with the Hmong oral-proverb (paj lug) tradition itself (PR-T/id 52). No transliteration considered — a transliterated Hebrew Mishlei would be doctrinally inert and would sever the book from an already-successful native-genre bridge.
mashal (proverb, literary form)	Paraphrase: paj lug	Same rationale as above; this is the strongest cross-cultural genre-match anywhere in this Language Package.
Personified Wisdom’s proper “name” (if curriculum materials wish to give her a title, e.g. in headings)	Paraphrase only, via Tus classifier: Tus Tswvyim — explicit rejection of any transliterated proper name (e.g., a Hebraized “Kokmah” loanword)	A transliterated proper name would (a) be opaque to learners, defeating the didactic purpose of the personification, and (b) paradoxically increase the goddess-collision risk by making Wisdom sound like an imported deity-name rather than a literary device native to the text’s own rhetoric. Native descriptive naming (Tus Tswvyim, “The Wise One/Wisdom-Person”) keeps the literary-device framing explicit.
Abba-style loanword retention (baseline precedent)	Not applicable / no analogous case in Proverbs	Logged here only to confirm the check was performed; Proverbs contains no Aramaic/Greek intimacy-marker term analogous to Abba requiring the same retain-plus-gloss treatment.
goral (casting lots, 16:33)	Paraphrase: rho ntawv xaiv (native description of the lot-casting mechanism) rather than a transliterated loanword	A transliterated term would be opaque and would fail to trigger the necessary contrast-teaching against ongoing Hmong divinatory practice; a native descriptive phrase makes the mechanism concrete enough for the mandatory contrast note to attach to it directly.

General transliteration policy for this book: Proverbs’ aphoristic, non-narrative, largely name-free genre means paraphrase/native-idiom rendering is preferred by default; transliteration is reserved (per baseline governing policy, unchanged) only for proper names/titles with no viable native equivalent — a category that barely occurs in this book outside the already-settled tus Tswv and Vajtswv.

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5. Ranked List of the Letter’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision strength × frequency of occurrence):

1. Trust in the LORD’s Providence vs. hmoov (impersonal fate) — PR-V/id 34, PR-I/id 32. The single largest live competing-worldview collision in the book: hmoov is not a marginal folk residue but an active, structurally central explanatory category in contemporary Hmong life for exactly the outcomes Proverbs’ providence texts address (16:9, 16:33, 19:21, 20:24, 21:1, and the core-passage anchor 3:5-6). Permanently forbidden substitution; mandatory personal/volitional phrasing at every occurrence. Top rank because it touches the literal core passage (3:5-6) directly.

2. Fear of the LORD vs. kev ntshai dab (servile spirit-dread) — PR-A/id 7. Programmatic inclusio term (1:7/31:30) bearing the entire book’s theological weight; shares its head noun with an active competing devotional practice (spirit-appeasement fear). Also touches the core passage indirectly via 3:7’s “fear the LORD and turn away from evil.”

3. Wisdom Personified vs. dab poj niam (female household/ancestral spirit veneration) + unresolved 8:22 Christological question — PR-C/id 5, id 58. Highest single-verse doctrinal sensitivity in the book (8:22); combines a live syncretism risk with an unresolved historic theological debate requiring mandatory theologian adjudication before any content is finalized.

4. koob hmoov (blessing) vs. fij dab ritual-payment exchange logic — id 41, directly implicated by the core passage itself (3:9-10, “honor the LORD with your wealth… then your barns will be filled”). This is the book’s clearest point of contact with prosperity-transactional misreading and sits inside the core passage, elevating its rank above its baseline-inherited risk tier would otherwise suggest.

5. Speech-as-instrument vs. verbal-magic/curse-efficacy belief — PR-R/id 22, id 23. High-frequency collision (occurs in 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 18, 25, 26) with a live, present-tense competing practice (ritual curses/blessings believed spiritually efficacious independent of truth-content).

6. Practical righteousness (Proverbs) vs. forensic righteousness (Romans) — id 17. Not a traditional-religion collision but the highest-risk cross-curriculum ambiguity in the entire two-book pipeline: identical Hmong lexeme, opposite default-correct sense, no visual/lexical marker distinguishing them within the word itself.

7. rho ntawv xaiv (casting lots) vs. ongoing Hmong divinatory practice — PR-W/id 36. Narrow textual footprint (16:33 only) but a direct, unambiguous collision with a still-practiced (not merely historical) traditional-religion activity.

8. Self-control (25:28) vs. ritual/charm-based self-protection framing — PR-S/id 24. Lower frequency (single primary verse) but High doctrinal stakes if self-mastery is taught as technique rather than Spirit-enabled character.

9. Three-tier fool taxonomy flattening (simple / scoffer / hardened fool) — ids 26, 27, 28. Medium risk; a comprehension/pedagogical-structure risk rather than a worldview collision, but repeated and structurally load-bearing across chs. 1, 9, 26, 29.

10. chen (relational favor) vs. charis (salvific grace) cross-book bleed — id 37 vs. baseline txiaj ntsim. Medium risk; low collision probability given the baseline’s Critical-tier reservation is well-established, but included because this is the first curriculum to actually generate content in the adjacent semantic space Romans’ reservation was designed to guard against.

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6. Chapter-by-Chapter Coverage Confirmation (Full-Book Mandate)

Every chapter of Proverbs (1-31) has been reviewed for this gap analysis. Chapters not separately itemized above (e.g., portions of chs. 16-20, 22-24, 26-27 not already covered by a named term in §1-2) contain no additional doctrinally load-bearing vocabulary beyond what is already captured in the Section A/B glossary and the registry; they are logged here as reviewed, no new gap identified, consistent with the never-silently-skip mandate:

• Ch. 2, 4, 7: reviewed — vocabulary already covered under Wisdom (§1.2), Speech (§1.5), and Strange Woman (id 48) entries; no new gap.
• Ch. 5, 6 (vv.1-19, apart from the ant/sluggard and seven-things passages already covered): reviewed — no new gap beyond id 48/PR-U.
• Ch. 12, 13, 17, 18 (apart from Speech entries already covered): reviewed — no new gap.
• Ch. 20, 22-24, 27 (apart from Diligence/Sloth and honest-weights entries already covered): reviewed — no new gap; note 23:4-5’s diligence/riches-tension already flagged in §1.6.
• Ch. 32 does not exist (book ends at 31); confirming full-range coverage terminus.

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7. Governing Note

This document is a Phase 1 gap-analysis output. It creates no new permanent TM entries and overrides nothing in assets/translation_memory.json (Romans baseline). All provisional Proverbs renderings referenced here (Section B of 08_core_glossary.md; the full entries of assets/bible_term_registry.json) remain subject to the formal TM-revision review and human-theologian escalation rules documented in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §9-10 before any of them may be treated as fixed, non-negotiable curriculum vocabulary.