Luke 12:19 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Eat, drink, and be merry. — The words remind us of St. Paul’s “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32), and may possibly have suggested them. There is, however, a suggestive difference in the context. Extremes meet, and the life of self-indulgence may spring either from an undue expectation of a lengthened life, or from unduly dwelling on the fact of its shortness, without taking into account the judgment that comes after it. The latter, as in the “carpe diem” of Horace (Odes, i. 11, 8), was the current language of popular Epicureanism; the former seems to have been more characteristic of a corrupt Judaism. (Comp. James 4:13.) In acting on it the Jew with his far outlook, as he dreamt, into the future, was sinking to the level of the dissolute heathen, who was content to live in and for the present only.