This verse sits inside the woe poem, Proverbs 23:29–35.
Quick answer
The sparkle of the previous verse gets its sequel: "at the last," the wine bites like a serpent. The verse is the poem's hinge between beauty and consequence, and its key phrase is the delay.
Read the whole unit
The poem admired the cup honestly in verse 31; this verse turns the same object over and shows the fangs. From here to the end, the poem describes what the bite does.
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 timeline. "At the last" is the phrase the whole warning rests on, because the serpent does not bite at the first glass; if it did, no poem would be needed. The bite arrives late, after the sparkle, after the smoothness, after years in some cases, which is exactly why the woe of verse 29 keeps taking people by surprise. The sages compress that delay into four words and pair it with the viper's sting, venom being harm that continues working after the strike. Late and lingering: the two properties that make this danger unlike an ordinary one.
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.