What Does Proverbs 23:20 Mean?
Do not be among those saturated with wine, or among those who pour themselves out on flesh.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:THE KEY
The repeated “among” shows how appetite can become an identity when a group makes excess ordinary.
THE MEANING
The verse places two forms of excess side by side: drinking past measure and eating without restraint. Its repeated “among” makes this a pattern of belonging, where shared appetite shapes the group. The words speak now wherever consumption becomes the bond that gathers people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that excess is only a private indulgence; the company built around it can make appetite a way of life.
THE ROOT
זֹלֲלֵי
zolelei
GROWS FROM
זלל
z-l-l
To be lavish or squander; here, to consume excessively.
“those who pour themselves out on flesh” in this verse is zolelei. “Riotous” can sound merely disorderly, but זֹלֲלֵי names gluttonous excess from זלל, a root also linked with squandering and what is treated as cheap. The verse sets unrestrained appetite beside a deeper disorder: value is spent lightly, and a group can make that seem ordinary.
ALSO GROWS
zolel: A glutton or excessive eater; used alongside “drunkard” in Deuteronomy 21:20 and Proverbs 23:21.
זֹלֵל
The same word makes clear that Proverbs 23:20 names a pattern of excess that continues into the next verse.
mizzolel: Vile or worthless; a related form appears in Jeremiah 15:19.
מִזּוֹלֵל
This usage echoes the root’s sense of treating something as cheap, bringing the waste of excess into view.
THE PATTERN
When appetite becomes the center of a person’s belonging or attention, it begins to govern the whole life.
Whoever guards the instruction is a discerning son, but whoever grazes with squanderers brings his father low.And look to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be weighed down by reeling and drunkenness, and by the dividing cares of this living, and that day stand over you suddenly.Whose end is perishing, whose God is their belly, and whose weight is in their shame, who think on the things of the ground.THE THREAD
For the drunkard and the glutton are dispossessed, and nodding clothes a man in tatters.The next verse repeats זֹלֵל (zolel, glutton), from the same root זלל (zalal, to consume lavishly or squander). The group pattern named here becomes a consequence there: excess spends down what sustains a person.
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