Proverbs 5:10-13

5:10 lest strangers devour ¹  your strength, ² 

and your labor ³  benefit ⁴  another man’s house.

5:11 And at the end of your life ⁵  you will groan ⁶ 

when your flesh and your body are wasted away. ⁷ 

5:12 And you will say, “How I hated discipline!

My heart spurned reproof!

5:13 For ⁸  I did not obey my teachers ⁹ 

and I did not heed ¹⁰  my instructors. ¹¹ 

[5:10]  ¹ tn Or “are sated, satisfied.”

[5:10]  ² tn The word כֹּחַ (coakh, “strength”) refers to what laborious toil would produce (so a metonymy of cause). Everything that this person worked for could become the property for others to enjoy.

[5:10]  ³ tn “labor, painful toil.”

[5:10]  ⁴ tn The term “benefit” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.

[5:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “at your end.”

[5:11]  ⁶ tn The form is the perfect tense with the vav consecutive; it is equal to a specific future within this context.

[5:11]  ⁷ tn Heb “in the finishing of your flesh and your body.” The construction uses the Qal infinitive construct of כָּלָה (calah) in a temporal clause; the verb means “be complete, at an end, finished, spent.”

[5:13]  ⁹ tn The vav that introduces this clause functions in an explanatory sense.

[5:13]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew term מוֹרַי (moray) is the nominal form based on the Hiphil plural participle with a suffix, from the root יָרָה (yarah). The verb is “to teach,” the common noun is “instruction, law [torah],” and this participle form is teacher (“my teachers”).

[5:13]  ¹¹ sn The idioms are vivid: This expression is “incline the ear”; earlier in the first line is “listen to the voice,” meaning “obey.” Such detailed description emphasizes the importance of the material.

[5:13]  ¹² tn The form is the Piel plural participle of לָמַד (lamad) used substantivally.