This verse sits inside the saying about drunkards and gluttons, Proverbs 23:19–21.
Quick answer
Do not become a regular in the heavy-drinking, heavy-feasting crowd. The verse targets membership, "do not mix with," because the company a person keeps at the table quietly sets the direction of a life.
Read the whole unit
The father's appeal (v. 19) has asked for a steered heart; this verse names the current that will otherwise do the steering, and verse 21 will name where that current empties out.
Read the whole unit
A three-verse saying against joining the party crowd, and the first of this chapter's two drinking texts. The structure is a father's appeal (v. 19), the command with its company named, winebibbers and gluttonous eaters (v. 20), and the economic forecast (v. 21): the drunkard and the glutton come to poverty, and drowsiness dresses a man in rags. The saying's concern is not pleasure but trajectory; it watches the table companions a young man chooses and reads his future in them. Its warning is sociological before it is moral: you become your banquets. The heavier, more compassionate treatment of drunkenness itself waits at 23:29–35; this saying does the earlier, preventive work of choosing company.
What this verse contributes
This verse contributes the saying's sociology. It does not say "do not drink wine"; Proverbs knows wine as both gift and trap. It says do not mix in, do not take your place among those whose life has organized itself around consumption. The sages had watched how formation actually works: not usually by dramatic choices but by tables, by whoever it is you eat and drink with until their normal becomes yours. Paul quotes the same street wisdom centuries later: evil company corrupts good habits (1 Corinthians 15:33).
Related: Proverbs 28:7 · 1 Corinthians 15:33
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.