Wine and strong drink overpower the will, and the intoxicated person cannot live wisely while under their influence.
Proverbs 20:1 opens the chapter with a vivid warning about intoxication: Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise (v. 1). Solomon, son of David and king of Israel, reigned from Jerusalem around 970-930 BC. He writes not as a moralist scolding consumption but as an observer naming what these substances actually do to a person.
Wine and strong drink are personified in the verse. They mock and they brawl. The picture recognizes that what the substance does to the drinker is the substance's true character. It slowly takes over the will of the one who indulges in it, until the person is shaped by the drink rather than the other way around.
The man intoxicated by it is not wise because wisdom requires a clear head and a self-governed will. Anything that erodes those is, by the standard of Proverbs, foolish. The same warning reappears in Proverbs 23:29-35 and in Proverbs 31:4-5, where King Lemuel's mother tells her son that strong drink is not for kings.
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Proverbs 20:1 meaning
Proverbs 20:1 opens the chapter with a vivid warning about intoxication: Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise (v. 1). Solomon, son of David and king of Israel, reigned from Jerusalem around 970-930 BC. He writes not as a moralist scolding consumption but as an observer naming what these substances actually do to a person.
Wine and strong drink are personified in the verse. They mock and they brawl. The picture recognizes that what the substance does to the drinker is the substance's true character. It slowly takes over the will of the one who indulges in it, until the person is shaped by the drink rather than the other way around.
The man intoxicated by it is not wise because wisdom requires a clear head and a self-governed will. Anything that erodes those is, by the standard of Proverbs, foolish. The same warning reappears in Proverbs 23:29-35 and in Proverbs 31:4-5, where King Lemuel's mother tells her son that strong drink is not for kings.