Proverbs 5:11

Proverbs 5:11, in plain English

At the end of your life, you'll be broken and regretful, your body worn out by the consequences of choices you made long ago.

Why it's here

The father is painting a realistic picture of old age after a life of infidelity and poor choices. You'll have wasted your health, your strength, your years. The despair of that realization—looking back and seeing all that was lost—is the grief he's describing here.

Who's speaking

The father, now painting the long-term picture

Where it sits in the story

This connects to the recurring biblical theme of reaping what you sow. Wisdom isn't just about immediate consequences; it's about the arc of your entire life. By the time you realize the cost, much of your life is already spent.

The scholarly reading

At life's end, facing decay and exhaustion, the man will experience profound regret for the price he has paid through his moral compromises.

Language and setting

The word 'groan' (הָנַחְתָּ, hanachta) carries the sense of sighing under anguish—a Hebrew word that suggests both physical pain and existential despair. The 'flesh and body are spent' (בִּשְׂרְךָ וּבְשָׁרִירֶךָ כָּלוּ, bisra vesharirah kalu) evokes the wear and deterioration of a body consumed by disease, possibly venereal disease (a common consequence of sexual liaison in the ancient world) or simply the accelerated aging that accompanies moral and social degradation. This verse shifts to the retrospective vantage point—the old man looking back. Delitzsch emphasized that Proverbs consistently portrays wisdom and folly not as abstract principles but as lived trajectories whose consequences accumulate irreversibly.

Voice

The father-teacher, now invoking the voice of future regret as a present warning.

Significance

This anticipates Ecclesiastes's meditation on mortality and regret, as well as the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21), where a man faces judgment having squandered his opportunities.

9lest you concede your vigor to others, and your years to one who is cruel;

10lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich the house of a foreigner.

11At the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and your body are spent,

12and you will say, “How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!

13I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my mentors.

Read all of Proverbs 5 — The lips of a forbidden woman drip honey — but her end is bitter as wormwood. A warning that sounds ancient but arrives fresh every generation.