Proverbs 5:11-14

5:11 And at the end of your life ¹  you will groan ² 

when your flesh and your body are wasted away. ³ 

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

My heart spurned reproof!

5:13 For ⁴  I did not obey my teachers ⁵ 

and I did not heed ⁶  my instructors. ⁷ 

5:14 I almost ⁸  came to complete ruin ⁹ 

in the midst of the whole congregation!” ¹⁰ 

[5:11]  ¹ tn Heb “at your end.”

[5:11]  ² tn The form is the perfect tense with the vav consecutive; it is equal to a specific future within this context.

[5:11]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn The vav that introduces this clause functions in an explanatory sense.

[5:13]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ tn The form is the Piel plural participle of לָמַד (lamad) used substantivally.

[5:14]  ⁸ tn The expression כִּמְעַט (kim’at) is “like a little.” It means “almost,” and is used of unrealized action (BDB 590 s.v. 2). Cf. NCV “I came close to”; NLT “I have come to the brink of.”

[5:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “I was in all evil” (cf. KJV, ASV).

[5:14]  ¹⁰ tn The text uses the two words “congregation and assembly” to form a hendiadys, meaning the entire assembly.