Amsal 5:10-14

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 

5:14 I almost ¹²  came to complete ruin ¹³ 

in the midst of the whole congregation!” ¹⁴ 

[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]  sn The verb means “to growl, groan.” It refers to a lion when it devours its prey, and to a sufferer in pain or remorse (e.g., Ezek 24:23).

[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]  ⁸ tn The vav that introduces this clause functions in an explanatory sense.

[5:13]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ tn The form is the Piel plural participle of לָמַד (lamad) used substantivally.

[5:14]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ tn Heb “I was in all evil” (cf. KJV, ASV).

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