Proverbs 5 · a question people ask

Does the chapter mean that everyone who does this will lose their health and their wealth?

In the text

The father warns his son of what could follow, and the WEB gives two of the warnings with lest: "lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one" (5:9), and "lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich another man’s house" (5:10). Then he says, "You will groan at your latter end, when your flesh and your body are consumed" (5:11), and gives the words the son would say then (5:12-14). He says it all before the fact, as the reason for "Remove your way far from her" (5:8). The chapter doesn't say when these things come, or that each comes to everyone. These notes quote the warning as it stands, without making it a guarantee the text doesn't state or explaining it away, and they apply it to no one's past.

From Favor's study of Proverbs 5

Proverbs 5: Drink from your own well

One Hebrew verb, shagah, runs through the chapter's close: "Be captivated always with her love" (5:19), "why should you, my son, be captivated with an adulteress?" (5:20), and "he will go astray" (5:23). And she "gives no thought to" the way of life (5:6), while the LORD "examines" every path (5:21): in Hebrew, one verb.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions