Where every hand fleeceth, the sheep go naked.

When everyone with access takes something for themselves, the person or resource being exploited is left with nothing. The image presents repeated small acts of taking as collectively ruinous.

It warns that a system with many claimants, collectors, or self-serving intermediaries can strip its weakest party bare. Responsibility is implied: those handling shared assets should not treat them as spoil; the metaphor concerns exploitative extraction.

Use it, with care, to criticize arrangements in which many parties each take from the same dependent person, fund, or resource, leaving the intended beneficiary deprived. Its pastoral metaphor gives the remark a strongly condemnatory, literary, and old-fashioned tone.