Proverbs 5:9-11

5:9 lest you give your vigor ¹  to others

and your years to a cruel person,

5:10 lest strangers devour ²  your strength, ³ 

and your labor ⁴  benefit ⁵  another man’s house.

5:11 And at the end of your life ⁶  you will groan ⁷ 

when your flesh and your body are wasted away. ⁸ 

[5:9]  ¹ sn The term הוֹד (hod, “vigor; splendor; majesty”) in this context means the best time of one’s life (cf. NIV “your best strength”), the full manly vigor that will be wasted with licentiousness. Here it is paralleled by “years,” which refers to the best years of that vigor, the prime of life. Life would be ruined by living this way, or the revenge of the woman’s husband would cut it short.

[5:10]  ² tn Or “are sated, satisfied.”

[5:10]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn “labor, painful toil.”

[5:10]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn Heb “at your end.”

[5:11]  ⁷ tn The form is the perfect tense with the vav consecutive; it is equal to a specific future within this context.

[5:11]  ⁸ 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.”