Strangers will consume your wealth, and someone else will enjoy the fruit of your labor.
Parallel translations
- WEB lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich another man’s house.
- KJV Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
- BSB lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich the house of a foreigner.
- NKJV Lest aliens be filled with your wealth, And your labors go to the house of a foreigner;
- NASB And strangers will be filled with your strength, And your hard-earned possessions will go to the house of a foreigner;
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Strangers will feast on your strength and your labors enrich another's house. Immorality can drain away one's wealth and toil to others.
Overview
Continuing the catalog of losses, the verse warns that outsiders will consume one's strength and the fruit of one's labor. Sexual sin can bring financial ruin and see one's hard-won gains pass to others. The wise recognize that the costs of sin reach into every area of life.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 4
- Hos 7:9Strangers have devoured his strength, and he doesn’t realize it. Indeed, gray hairs are here and there on him, and he doesn’t realize it.
- Prov 6:35He won’t regard any ransom, neither will he rest content, though you give many gifts.
- Prov 31:3Don’t give your strength to women, nor your ways to that which destroys kings.
- Luke 15:30But when this, your son, came, who has devoured your living with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.’
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Wisdom personified, with God before creation and the agent of all things, anticipates Christ 'in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom' — the wisdom of God made flesh.
How Proverbs 5:10 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.