The Words of King Lemuel

What Does Proverbs 31:7 Mean?

Let him drink and forget his poverty,And remember his misery no more.Proverbs 31:7 · NKJV

This verse completes the thought begun at 31:6.

Quick answer

The perishing man's cup lets him forget his poverty and misery for a while. The same forgetting that disqualifies a king is the one mercy left to a man at the end.

Read the whole unit

The book's last chapter opens with a unique voice: the words of King Lemuel, "the utterance which his mother taught him." Lemuel appears nowhere else in Scripture, and the counsel he carries is the only teaching in Proverbs explicitly credited to a woman. Its structure is a queen mother's brief: the triple address of maternal urgency (v. 2), then three dangers ranked by what they cost a king: women who consume royal strength (v. 3), wine that clouds royal judgment (vv. 4–5, with a sharp aside on where strong drink might mercifully go instead, vv. 6–7), and finally the positive charge that everything was protecting: open your mouth for the speechless, judge righteously, plead the cause of the poor and needy (vv. 8–9). The logic runs on vocation. A king's strength, clarity, and voice are not his own; they are held in trust for people who have none of the three. The unit ends, and the acrostic begins, and the book closes with the counsel of a mother followed by the praise of a woman, wisdom's last two teachers both unexpected and both unforgettable.

What this verse contributes

This verse contributes the mirror that makes the whole drinking section cohere: forgetting. Verse 5 feared the king who drinks and forgets the law; this verse permits the dying man who drinks and forgets his misery. One word, two moral directions, and the difference is entirely in what is being forgotten and who bears the cost. The king's forgetting is paid for by the afflicted; the sufferer's forgetting costs no one and eases him. The mother's counsel is not romanticizing the drowning of sorrows, and Proverbs has already shown where lingering at the cup leads (23:29–35). She is ranking obligations: clarity belongs where it protects people, and comfort belongs where nothing else is left.

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Related: Proverbs 23:29–35 · Psalm 104:15

Go Deeper

If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.

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