“Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house” is literally “Make your foot precious from the house of your neighbor” and means to make your visits rare; that is, “Don’t go too often into your neighbor’s house.” The reason for this advice is given in the next line.

“Lest he become weary of you and hate you”: “Lest” opens the second line in the same way as the second line of verse 16. “Become weary” is the same verb as “be sated” in verse 16, but here it has the sense of “get tired of you” or “get too much of you.” “Hate” is kept in many translations, but some feel the sense in this saying is “dislike.” Contemporary English Version translates “Don’t visit friends too often, or they will get tired of it and start hating you.” Scott links this verse with verse 16 and translates “So be infrequent in visiting your neighbor’s home, lest he see too much of you and begin to dislike you.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Proverbs. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .