What Does Proverbs 23:21 Mean?
For the drunkard and the glutton are dispossessed, and nodding clothes a man in tatters.
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
For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.THE KEY
The verse pictures excess as something that spends a life down until lack becomes the garment it wears.
THE MEANING
This verse names a pattern that remains visible now: when drink, appetite, and drowsiness take over, resources run down and lack becomes something worn. Its image makes deprivation tangible, as rags covering a person.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that unchecked indulgence costs nothing; here, its cost becomes visible as poverty and raggedness.
THE ROOT
זֹלֵל
zolel
GROWS FROM
זלל
z-l-l
To be light or cheap in worth; the root also carries the sense of wasteful or indulgent excess.
The word for glutton belongs to a root that can also describe wasteful excess, so the verse reaches beyond a full stomach: appetite can consume value. The person is described through a pattern of indulgence that leaves less behind.
ALSO GROWS
zalal: To act lavishly or wastefully; to indulge.
זָלַל
This verb connects gluttony with squandering, widening the verse’s image from eating to resources being spent.
zolel: A glutton, a person given to excess.
זֹלֵל
The noun names the person by the consuming pattern that the proverb links with poverty.
תַּלְבִּישׁ
talbish
GROWS FROM
לבש
To put on or clothe.
“clothe” in this verse is talbish. The clothing root makes lack feel embodied: poverty is pictured as something worn, not merely an abstract shortage. What settles over a person becomes visible in the condition of their covering.
ALSO GROWS
levush: Garment, clothing.
לְבוּשׁ
This noun makes the verse’s image concrete: the consequence is pictured as something worn.
malbush: Clothing, garment.
מַלְבּוּשׁ
This related garment word reinforces the image of a condition that covers and encases.
קְרָעִים
qera'im
GROWS FROM
קרע
To tear or rend.
“tatters” in this verse is qera'im. The word for rags carries the mark of tearing in its root. The verse’s covering is not simply plain or poor cloth; it is pictured as what remains split and worn.
ALSO GROWS
qaraʿ: To tear or rend.
קָרַע
The verb names the damage that makes cloth ragged.
qeri'ah: Tearing or rending.
קְרִיעָה
This related form echoes the torn condition carried by the word for rags.
THE PATTERN
When appetite and ease go unchecked, the resources that sustain life are spent and lack becomes tangible.
Do not love sleep, lest you be dispossessed; open your eyes, and you will be filled with bread.The one who loves joy comes to lack; the one who loves wine and oil does not grow rich.After not many days, the younger son gathered everything together and went away into a distant land, and there he scattered his estate while living wastefully.THE THREAD
Strength and splendor are her clothing, and she laughs toward the latter day.The clothing image shares the לבש root: here, rags cover a life under drowsiness, while there, strength and honor are her clothing. The shared root makes clothing a picture of the condition a person visibly wears.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us