Don't Wear Yourself Out
Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat. Proverbs 23:20 · Berean Standard Bible
Don't spend time with people who are excessive drinkers or gluttons, because that lifestyle and those habits will pull you down with them.
The warning isn't about occasional drinking but about people defined by excess—whose identity revolves around indulgence. Hanging around them means being drawn into their patterns.
A father or wise teacher speaking to a young person
This reflects the biblical principle that we're shaped by our associations and our habits. Who you spend time with matters because they influence who you become. Choose wisely.
Do not associate with those given to excessive consumption of wine or meat; their behavior signals a loss of self-control that leads to poverty and degradation.
The reference to those who 'drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat' identifies a specific social type marked by unchecked appetite. In the ancient world, such excess would have been economically ruinous except for the wealthy—suggesting either moral degradation or foolish squandering of resources. The prohibition extends beyond judgment of vice to strategic wisdom about choosing one's associations.
The wisdom teacher, extending earlier warnings about appetite and consumption to the social level—recognizing that relationships with those pursuing excess inevitably drag down one's own discipline.
This warning about associations prefigures the New Testament's instruction regarding separation from those pursuing destructive paths, yet also presupposes the redemptive engagement that acknowledges all people as objects of God's potential restoration—a tension the epistles navigate carefully.
18For surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.
19Listen, my son, and be wise, and guide your heart on the right course.
20Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat.
21For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe them in rags.
22Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.
Read all of Proverbs 23 — Do not wear yourself out to get rich. Have the wisdom to show restraint. Riches sprout wings and fly away like an eagle.
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