Don't Wear Yourself Out
Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has needless wounds? Who has bloodshot eyes? Proverbs 23:29 · Berean Standard Bible
The teacher is about to answer a powerful rhetorical question: Who ends up with all these problems—the regret, the fights, the injuries, the bloodshot eyes from excess?
This is a literary pause. He's asking you to think about someone you know who has all these problems. You probably can picture them immediately. The point is about to get personal and pointed—it's not theoretical, it's the life you're considering stepping into.
The wisdom teacher, using a rhetorical technique to make you stop and think before he answers.
Proverbs uses this technique throughout: making you an observer of the consequences before spelling them out. It appeals to your own experience and observation, not just abstract instruction.
A series of rhetorical questions diagnoses the anatomy of human misery: those who experience woe, sorrow, conflict, and self-inflicted suffering are invariably those enslaved to appetite and intemperance.
The Hebrew formulation using 'êt (who, what) repeated five times builds rhetorical tension, demanding the reader's active engagement. Each question names a specific dimension of human wretchedness: woe (ʾôy), sorrow (tûgâ), contentions (midînim), complaints (śîaḥ), and needless wounds (piṣʿa). The 'bloodshot eyes' (ʿênayim ʾadûmôt) are not merely the physical sign of dissipation but the visual indication that one's inner vision has been corrupted—one sees the world through the lens of craving.
The wisdom teacher, employing the diagnostic mode characteristic of Hebrew rhetoric: posing questions that the attentive listener must answer, thereby achieving pedagogical participation.
This diagnostic passage stands within the prophetic tradition's indictment of human folly (cf. Isaiah 5:11-12, where similar lists of woes attend to drunkenness). It demonstrates the biblical conviction that suffering is not arbitrary but consequential—rooted in the choices that defy wisdom's ordering of reality.
27For a prostitute is a deep pit, and an adulteress is a narrow well.
28Like a robber she lies in wait and multiplies the faithless among men.
29Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has needless wounds? Who has bloodshot eyes?
30Those who linger over wine, who go to taste mixed drinks.
31Do not gaze at wine while it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.
Read all of Proverbs 23 — Do not wear yourself out to get rich. Have the wisdom to show restraint. Riches sprout wings and fly away like an eagle.
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