What Does Proverbs 23:30 Mean?

This verse answers the six questions that open the woe poem, Proverbs 23:29–35.

Quick answer

Read the whole unit

Six questions (v. 29), this answer, and then the poem descends into the experience itself. Read whole, the poem is portrait, not sermon.

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 definition, and it defines by verb, not by quantity. "Linger long" is time: the drinking that will not end the evening. "Go in search" is pursuit: the drinking that organizes itself, seeks out the mixed wine, the spiced and strengthened cup. Between them the two verbs describe a life reorienting around a substance, staying where it is and going where it leads, which is a more precise definition of the condition than any measure of cups could be.

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