Proverbs 5:10 warns that a person who gives themselves to the wrong kind of relationship can end up losing their resources, their strength and their reputation to people who never earned them. Solomon, the traditional author of the book, is speaking as a father to his son, urging him to stay clear of a seductive and dangerous woman. The verse is part of a larger warning, not a stand-alone rule.
Lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich another man’s house.
Proverbs 5:10 (WEB)
What Proverbs 5:10 Means
The verse uses two images that are easy to picture. The first is “strangers feast on your wealth.” A feast is a lavish meal, and the picture is of outsiders sitting at a table you paid for, eating well while you go hungry. “Wealth” here means more than money. It stands for whatever you have built through effort: savings, health, time, a good name.
The second image is “your labors enrich another man’s house.” Labor is the work you put in day after day, and the verse says that work ends up building someone else’s household. You do the work, and another family reaps the benefit. Together the two images describe a quiet loss, the kind that happens slowly when you invest your energy in a relationship or path that gives nothing back.
The verse does not promise that every person you meet will take advantage of you, and it does not describe every kind of hard work or generosity as foolish. It is a wisdom saying, which means it describes how life tends to go when people ignore sound judgment, rather than a guarantee for every case.
The Context of Proverbs 5:10
The book of Proverbs is a collection of short, memorable sayings meant to shape character and daily decisions. Chapters 1 through 9 are written as a series of speeches from a parent to a child, and chapter 5 belongs to that instructional section. The audience is a young man who is about to make choices about sex, money and loyalty, and the father is trying to show him what those choices cost.
Just before verse 10, the father says “Remove your way far from her” and warns against going near the door of her house. Verse 9 names what is at stake: honor and years given to a cruel person. Verses 11 through 13 then show the regret that follows, the groaning at the end of life and the bitter admission that the son ignored his teachers. Read this way, verse 10 is one step in a chain: the wrong path drains your resources, and the sorrow comes later, when it is too late to recover what was lost.
Key Phrases in Proverbs 5:10
Proverbs 4:23
Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life.
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This verse urges guarding the heart because life flows from it. Read alongside Proverbs 5:10, it shows that protecting your resources and your inner life are closely connected parts of the same wise discipline.
Proverbs 6:1-5
1 My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor, if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger; 2 You are trapped by the words of your mouth. You are ensnared with the words of your mouth. 3 Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself, since you have come into the hand of your neighbor. Go, humble yourself. Press your plea with your neighbor. 4 Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. 5 Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler.
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This passage warns against binding yourself carelessly to the obligations of others. It deepens the concern of Proverbs 5:10 by showing how easily personal labor and money can be pulled away by commitments made too quickly.
