'Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath
babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? 30.
They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. 31.
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour
in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. 32. At the last it biteth
like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. 33. Thine eyes shall
behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. 34.
Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or
as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. 35. They have stricken me,
shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it
not: when shall I awake! I will seek it yet again.'--PROVERBS xxiii.
29-35.
This vivid picture of the effects of drunkenness leaves its sinfulness
and its wider consequences out of sight, and fixes attention on the
sorry spectacle which a man makes of himself in body and mind when he
'puts an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains.' Disgust and
ridicule are both expressed. The writer would warn his 'son' by
impressing the ugliness and ludicrousness of drunkenness. The argument
is legitimate, though not the highest.
The vehement questions poured out on each other's heels in verse 29
are hot with both loathing and grim laughter. The two words rendered
'woe' and 'sorrow' are unmeaning exclamations, very like each other in
sound, and imitating the senseless noises of the drunkard. They
express discomfort as a dog might express it. They are howls rather
than words. That is one of the prerogatives won by drunkenness,--to
come down to the beasts' level, and to lose the power of articulate
speech. The quarrelsomeness which goes along with certain stages of
intoxication, and the unmeaning maudlin misery and whimpering into
which it generally passes, are next coupled together.
Then come a pair of effects on the body. The tipsy man cannot take
care of himself, and reeling against obstacles, or falling over them,
wounds himself, and does not know where the scratches and blood came
from. 'Redness of eyes' is, perhaps, rather 'darkness,' meaning
thereby dim sight, or possibly 'black eyes,' as we say,--a frequent
accompaniment of drunkenness, and corresponding to the wounds in the
previous clause. It is a hideous picture, and one that should be
burned in on the imagination of every young man and woman. The
liquor-sodden, miserable wrecks that are found in thousands in our
great cities, of whom this is a picture, were, most of them, in
Sunday-schools in their day. The next generation of such poor
creatures are, many of them, in Sunday-schools now, and may be reading
this passage to-day.
The answer to these questions has a touch of irony in it. The people
who win as their possessions these six precious things have to sit up
late to earn them. What a noble cause in which to sacrifice sleep, and
turn night into day! And they pride themselves on being connoisseurs
in the several vintages; they 'know a good glass of wine when they see
it.' What a noble field for investigation! What a worthy use of the
faculties of comparison and judgment! And how desirable the prizes won
by such trained taste and delicate discrimination!
In verses 31 and 32 weighty warning and dehortation follow, based in
part on the preceding picture. The writer thinks that the only way of
sure escape from the danger is to turn away even the eyes from the
temptation. He is not contented with saying 'taste not,' but he goes
the whole length of 'look not'; and that because the very sparkle and
colour may attract. 'When it is red' might perhaps better be rendered
'when it reddens itself,' suggesting the play of colour, as if put
forth by the wine itself. The word rendered in the Authorised Version
and Revised Version 'colour' is literally 'eye,' and probably means
the beaded bubbles winking on the surface. 'Moveth itself aright'
(Authorised Version) is not so near the meaning as 'goeth down
smoothly' (Revised Version). The whole paints the attractiveness to
sense of the wine-cup in colour, effervescence, and taste.
And then comes in, with startling abruptness, the end of all this
fascination,--a serpent's bite and a basilisk's sting. The kind of
poisonous snake meant in the last clause of verse 32 is doubtful, but
certainly is one much more formidable than an adder. The serpent's
lithe gracefulness and painted skin hide a fatal poison; and so the
attractive wine-cup is sure to ruin those who look on it. The evil
consequences are pursued in more detail in what follows.
But here we must note two points. The advice given is to keep entirely
away from the temptation. 'Look not' is safe policy in regard of many
of the snares for young lives that abound in our modern society. It is
not at all needful to 'see life,' or to know the secrets of
wickedness, in order to be wise and good. 'Simple concerning evil' is
a happier state than to have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Many a young man has been ruined, body and soul, by a prurient
curiosity to know what sort of life dissipated men and women led, or
what sort of books they were against which he was warned, or what kind
of a place a theatre was, and so on. Eyes are greedy, and there is a
very quick telephone from them to the desires. 'The lust of the eye'
soon fans the 'lust of the flesh' into a glow. There are plenty of
depths of Satan gaping for young feet; and on the whole, it is safer
and happier not to know them, and so not to have defiling memories,
nor run the risk of falling into fatal sins. Whether the writer of
this stern picture of a drunkard was a total abstainer or not, the
spirit of his counsel not to 'look on the wine' is in full accord with
that practice. It is very clear that if a man is a total abstainer, he
can never be a drunkard. As much cannot be said of the moderate man.
Note too, how in all regions of life, the ultimate results of any
conduct are the important ones. Consequences are hard to calculate,
and they do not afford a good guidance for action. But there are many
lines of conduct of which the consequences are not hard to calculate,
but absolutely certain. It is childish to take a course because of a
moment's gratification at the beginning, to be followed by protracted
discomfort afterwards. To live for present satisfaction of desires,
and to shut one's eyes tight against known and assured results of an
opposite sort, cannot be the part of a sensible man, to say nothing of
a religious one. So moralists have been preaching ever since there was
such a thing as temptation in the world; and men have assented to the
common sense of the teaching, and then have gone straight away and
done the exact opposite.
'What shall the end be?' ought to be the question at every beginning.
If we would cultivate the habit of holding present satisfactions in
suspense, and of giving no weight to present advantages until we saw
right along the road to the end of the journey, there would be fewer
failures, and fewer weary, disenchanted old men and women, to lament
that the harvest they had to reap and feed on was so bitter. There are
other and higher reasons against any kind of fleshly indulgence than
that at the last it bites like a serpent, and with a worse poison than
serpent's sting ever darted; but that is a reason, and young hearts,
which are by their very youth blessedly unused to look forward, will
be all the happier to-day, and all the surer of to-morrow's good, if
they will learn to say, 'And afterwards--what?'
The passage passes to a renewed description of the effects of
intoxication, in which the disgusting and the ludicrous aspects of it
are both made prominent. Verse 33 seems to describe the excited
imagination of the drunkard, whose senses are no longer under his
control, but play him tricks that make him a laughingstock to sober
people. One might almost take the verse to be a description of
delirium tremens. 'Strange things' are seen, and perverse things (that
is, unreal, or ridiculous) are stammered out. The writer has a keen
sense of the humiliation to a man of being thus the fool of his own
bewildered senses, and as keen a one of the absurd spectacle he
presents; and he warns his 'son' against coming down to such a depth
of degradation.
It may be questioned whether the boasted quickening and brightening
effects of alcohol are not always, in a less degree, that same
beguiling of sense and exciting of imagination which, in their extreme
form, make a man such a pitiable and ridiculous sight. It is better to
be dull and see things as they are, than to be brilliant and see
things larger, brighter, or any way other than they are, because we
see them through a mist. Imagination set agoing by such stimulus, will
not work to as much purpose as if aroused by truth. God's world, seen
by sober eyes, is better than rosy dreams of it. If we need to draw
our inspiration from alcohol, we had better remain uninspired. If we
desire to know the naked truth of things, the less we have to do with
strong drink the better. Clear eyesight and self-command are in some
degree impaired by it always. The earlier stages are supposed to be
exhilaration, increased brilliancy of fancy and imagination, expanded
good-fellowship, and so on. The latter stages are these in our
passage, when strange things dance before cheated eyes, and strange
words speak themselves out of lips which their owner no longer
controls. Is that a condition to be sought after? If not, do not get
on to the road that leads to it.
Verse 34 adds another disgusting and ridiculous trait. A man who
should try to lie down and go to sleep in the heart of the sea or on
the masthead of a ship would be a manifest fool, and would not keep
life in him for long. One has seen drunken men laying themselves down
to sleep in places as exposed and as ridiculous as these; and one
knows the look of the heavy lump of insensibility lying helpless on
public roads, or on railway tracks, or anywhere where the fancy took
him. The point of the verse seems to be the drunken man's utter loss
of sense of fitness, and complete incapacity to take care of himself.
He cannot estimate dangers. The very instinct of self-preservation has
forsaken him. There he lies, though as sure to be drowned as if he
were in the depth of the sea, though on as uncomfortable a bed as if
he were rocking on a masthead, where he could not balance himself.
The torpor of verse 34 follows on the unnatural excitement of verse
33, as, in fact, the bursts of uncontrolled energy in which the man
sees and says strange things, are succeeded by a collapse. One moment
raging in excitement caused by imaginary sights, the next huddled
together in sleep like death,--what a sight the man is! The teacher
here would have his 'son' consider that he may come to that, if he
looks on the wine-cup. '_Thou_ shalt be' so and so. It is very
impolite, but very necessary, to press home the individual application
of pictures like this, and to bid bright young men and women look at
the wretched creatures they may see hanging about liquor shops, and
remember that they may come to be such as these.
Verse 35 finishes the picture. The tipsy man's soliloquy puts the
copestone on his degradation. He has been beaten, and never felt it.
Apparently he is beginning to stir in his sleep, though not fully
awake; and the first thing he discovers when he begins to feel himself
over is that he has been beaten and wounded, and remembers nothing
about it. A degrading anaesthetic is drink. Better to bear all ills
than to drown them by drowning consciousness. There is no blow which a
man cannot bear better if he holds fast by God's hand and keeps
himself fully exposed to the stroke, than if he sought a cowardly
alleviation of it, softer the drunkard's fashion.
But the pains of his beating and the discomforts of his waking do not
deter the drunkard. 'When shall I awake?' He is not fully awake yet,
so as to be able to get up and go for another drink. He is in the
stage of feeling sorry for himself, and examining his bruises, but he
wishes he were able to shake off the remaining drowsiness, that he
might 'seek yet again' for his curse. The tyranny of desire, which
wakes into full activity before the rest of the man does, and the
enfeebled will, which, in spite of all bruises and discomforts, yields
at once to the overmastering desire, make the tragedy of a drunkard's
life. There comes a point in lives of fleshly indulgence in which the
craving seems to escape from the control of the will altogether.
Doctors tell us that the necessity for drink becomes a physical
disease. Yes; but it is a disease manufactured by the patient, and he
is responsible for getting himself into such a state.
This tragic picture proves that there were many originals of it in the
days when it was painted. Probably there are far more, in proportion
to population, in our times. The warning it peals out was never more
needed than now. Would that all preachers, parents, and children laid
it to heart and took the advice not even to 'look upon the wine'!