Loving pleasure—organizing life around wine and oil—is one of the surest predictors of long-term poverty.
The ordering of pleasure surfaces in Proverbs 21:17: He who loves pleasure will become a poor man; He who loves wine and oil will not become rich (v. 17). Pleasure here is not condemned outright. The problem is loving it—organizing one's life around it.
Wine and oil were the two staple luxuries of an Israelite household, the marks of celebration and abundance. The man who loves these to the point that he must always have them, regardless of what it costs to maintain them, will spend his way into poverty.
This is one of the chapter's quieter wisdom-points: a person's relationship to pleasure is one of the surest predictors of his long-term financial life. The disciplined enjoy pleasure as a punctuation; the undisciplined treat it as the sentence.
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Proverbs 21:17 meaning
The ordering of pleasure surfaces in Proverbs 21:17: He who loves pleasure will become a poor man; He who loves wine and oil will not become rich (v. 17). Pleasure here is not condemned outright. The problem is loving it—organizing one's life around it.
Wine and oil were the two staple luxuries of an Israelite household, the marks of celebration and abundance. The man who loves these to the point that he must always have them, regardless of what it costs to maintain them, will spend his way into poverty.
This is one of the chapter's quieter wisdom-points: a person's relationship to pleasure is one of the surest predictors of his long-term financial life. The disciplined enjoy pleasure as a punctuation; the undisciplined treat it as the sentence.