29 Who says, Oh! who says, Ah! who has violent arguments, who has grief, who has wounds without cause, whose eyes are dark? 30 Those who are seated late over the wine: those who go looking for mixed wine. 31 Keep your eyes from looking on the wine when it is red, when its colour is bright in the cup, when it goes smoothly down: 32 In the end, its bite is like that of a snake, its wound like the wound of a poison-snake. 33 Your eyes will see strange things, and you will say twisted things. 34 Yes, you will be like him who takes his rest on the sea, or on the top of a sail-support. 35 They have overcome me, you will say, and I have no pain; they gave me blows without my feeling them: when will I be awake from my wine? I will go after it again.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Proverbs 23:29-35
Commentary on Proverbs 23:29-35
(Read Proverbs 23:29-35)
Solomon warns against drunkenness. Those that would be kept from sin, must keep from all the beginnings of it, and fear coming within reach of its allurements. Foresee the punishment, what it will at last end in, if repentance prevent not. It makes men quarrel. Drunkards wilfully make woe and sorrow for themselves. It makes men impure and insolent. The tongue grows unruly; the heart utters things contrary to reason, religion, and common civility. It stupifies and besots men. They are in danger of death, of damnation; as much exposed as if they slept upon the top of a mast, yet feel secure. They fear no peril when the terrors of the Lord are before them; they feel no pain when the judgments of God are actually upon them. So lost is a drunkard to virtue and honour, so wretchedly is his conscience seared, that he is not ashamed to say, I will seek it again. With good reason we were bid to stop before the beginning. Who that has common sense would contract a habit, or sell himself to a sin, which tends to such guilt and misery, and exposes a man every day to the danger of dying insensible, and awaking in hell? Wisdom seems in these chapters to take up the discourse as at the beginning of the book. They must be considered as the words of Christ to the sinner.