What Does Proverbs 23:29 Mean?

This verse opens the six-verse woe poem, Proverbs 23:29–35, which only works when read whole.

Quick answer

Read the whole unit

The poem runs from these questions to the answer, the refused glance at the cup, the serpent, the visions, the sea and the mast, and the drunkard's numb closing speech. Its power is cumulative; see the full poem.

Read the whole unit

The chapter's final saying is a six-part poem on drunkenness and the most artful treatment of addiction in ancient literature. It opens with six rapid-fire questions, who has woe, sorrow, contentions, complaints, causeless wounds, red eyes (v. 29), answers them in one line, those who linger long at the wine (v. 30), issues its single command, do not even look at the sparkle in the cup (v. 31), and then abandons commands entirely for description: the serpent's late bite (v. 32), the hallucinations and perverse speech (v. 33), the sensation of lying down in the sea, of sleeping at the top of a mast (v. 34), and finally the drunkard's own voice, beaten and numb and planning the next drink (v. 35). The poem never thunders. It lets the condition describe itself, and it closes without a verdict because the last sentence is the verdict.

What this verse contributes

This verse contributes the poem's diagnostic opening, and its form is the teaching. The six questions are a symptom list read aloud before the disease is named, so that the hearer assembles the picture himself: the misery, the fights, the injuries no one remembers causing, the eyes. By the time the answer arrives, it is not an accusation but a recognition. The sages begin with sympathy's method, questions rather than charges, and the poem will keep that posture to its last line.

New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.