Discovery BoxProverbs 5:11-14 
Context5:11 And at the end of your life 1 you will groan 2
when your flesh and your body are wasted away. 3
5:12 And you will say, “How I hated discipline!
My heart spurned reproof!
5:13 For 4 I did not obey my teachers 5
and I did not heed 6 my instructors. 7
5:14 I almost 8 came to complete ruin 9
in the midst of the whole congregation!” 10
1 tn Heb “at your end.”
2 tn The form is the perfect tense with the vav consecutive; it is equal to a specific future within this context.
sn The verb means “to growl, groan.” It refers to a lion when it devours its prey, and to a sufferer in pain or remorse (e.g., Ezek 24:23).
3 tn Heb “in the finishing of your flesh and your body.” The construction uses the Qal infinitive construct of כָּלָה (calah) in a temporal clause; the verb means “be complete, at an end, finished, spent.”
4 tn The vav that introduces this clause functions in an explanatory sense.
5 tn The Hebrew term מוֹרַי (moray) is the nominal form based on the Hiphil plural participle with a suffix, from the root יָרָה (yarah). The verb is “to teach,” the common noun is “instruction, law [torah],” and this participle form is teacher (“my teachers”).
6 sn The idioms are vivid: This expression is “incline the ear”; earlier in the first line is “listen to the voice,” meaning “obey.” Such detailed description emphasizes the importance of the material.
7 tn The form is the Piel plural participle of לָמַד (lamad) used substantivally.
8 tn The expression כִּמְעַט (kim’at) is “like a little.” It means “almost,” and is used of unrealized action (BDB 590 s.v. 2). Cf. NCV “I came close to”; NLT “I have come to the brink of.”
9 tn Heb “I was in all evil” (cf. KJV, ASV).
10 tn The text uses the two words “congregation and assembly” to form a hendiadys, meaning the entire assembly.
