CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 20:1. Strong drink. The Hebrew word Shekhar includes every strong drink besides wine. Delitzsch translates it mead.
Proverbs 20:2. The fear of a king, i.e., the dread which he inspires. Sinneth against his soul, or “forfeits his life,” so Delitzsch and Miller.
Proverbs 20:3. To cease from strife. Rather, “to remain far from” it.
Proverbs 20:4. Delitzsch translates this verse, “At the beginning of the harvest the sluggard ploweth not, and so when he cometh to reaping time there is nothing.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 20:1
STRONG DRINK
Taking the two words here used to stand for all intoxicating drinks, we remark—
I. That they are most deceptive in their operation. It is most certain that there is no person who is now an abject slave to strong drink, who would not once have indignantly repelled the insinuation that he or she would ever be a drunkard. It is taken probably for a long time without any evil effects being apparent, and the temporary stimulus is mistaken for a permanent increase of strength, until one day the unhappy victim finds himself a subject of the most tyrannical habit that enslaves fallen humanity. And strong drink may truly be said to be a “mocker,” when we see how men appear to struggle to escape from its deadly fascination, and how fruitless their efforts often are.
II. That they are powerful ministers to human passions. Wherever strong drink enters, every evil tendency is increased tenfold; the angry man becomes a monster of cruelty, and he who was before a comparatively harmless member of society, or even a useful one, becomes hurtful and dangerous. The restraints that are all powerful to govern a man when sober are all as utterly useless when he is under the power of strong drink, as silken cords would be to keep a wild beast within bounds.
III. It is utter folly to tamper with such a foe to human dignity and happiness. The deceptive influence of strong drink, and the miserable results of allowing it to gain the mastery over us, are all around men; none can now plead ignorance of its nature, or of its effects, for the world is full of homes ruined by it, and hearts which it has broken, and men whom it has changed into brutes. Experience sets her seal to Solomon’s declaration, and brands as without wisdom those who play with such a deadly and treacherous enemy.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Solomon seldom singles out a specific vice; and when he does, it is often exemplary, or to be understood of any. He does single out drunkenness, however. Strikingly enough the Apostle does so. (1 Corinthians 6:10).—Miller.
If the fruit of his own vine sometimes chastised the unwary Israelite with whips, the fiery product of our distilleries chastise the nation with scorpions. The little finger of strong drink in modern times is thicker than the loins of its father and representative in Solomon’s day. The deceits which our enemy practises are legion; and legion too are the unwary “who are deceived thereby.” I shall enumerate a few of its lying devices.
1. A great quantity of precious food is destroyed in this country that strong drink may be extracted from the rubbish.… On an average of ten years, the quantity of barley converted into malt in the United Kingdom has been nearly six millions of quarters annually. When you add to this the unmalted grain consumed in the distillation of spirits in Ireland, you have an aggregate sufficient to feed between four and five millions of people throughout the year.… What do we obtain in return? A large quantity of malt liquors and distilled spirits. And is the gain equivalent, or nearly equivalent to the loss?
2. The curative and strengthening properties of our strong drinks, which are so much vaunted, are in reality next to nothing. We speak of the ordinary use of these articles as beverages.… If they contribute at any time to the quantity of force exerted by man, it corresponds not to the corn that you give to your horse, but to the whipping. A master who has hired you only for a day, and desires to make the most of his bargain, may possibly find it his interest to bring more out of your bones and sinews, by such a stimulus, but you certainly have no interest in lashing an additional effort out of yourself to-day, and lying in lethargy to-morrow.… Liebig has a pleasant notion about balancing on the point of a pen-knife, like a pinch of snuff, all the nourishment that the most capacious German swallows with his beer in a day. And it is chemistry he is giving us, not poetry or wit.…
3. Strong drink deceives the nation, by the vast amount of revenue that it pours into the public treasury. It is a true and wise economy to tax the articles heavily for behoof of the community, so far and as long as they are sold and used; but it is a false and foolish economy to encourage the consumption of the article, for the sake of the revenue it produces. Drink generates pauperism, and pauperism is costly. Drink generates crime, and crime is costly.… There is a huge living creature with as many limbs as a Hindoo idol, and these limbs intertwined with each other in equally admirable confusion. The creature having life must be fed, and being large, must have a good deal of food for its sustenance. One day, having got rather short allowance, it was rolling its heavy head among its many limbs, and found something warm and fleshy. Being hungry, it made an incision with its teeth, laid its lips to the spot, and sucked. Warm blood came freely; the creature sucked its fill, and, gorged, lay down to sleep. Next day, it supplemented its short rations in the same way. Every day the creature drank from that opening, and as this rich draught made up about one third of its whole sustenance, the wonder grew, why it was becoming weaker under the process, day by day. Some one at last bethought him of turning over the animal’s intermingled limbs, and found that all this time it had been sucking its own blood! The discoverer proposed to bandage the spot, and not permit the continuance of the unnatural operation. The financiers cried out, “A third of the animal’s sustenance comes from that opening; if you stop it, he will die!” Behold the wise politicians who imagine that the body politic would die of inanition, if it were deprived of the revenue which it sucks from its own veins, in the shape of taxes on the consumption of intoxicating drinks!—Arnot.
The thoughts in Proverbs 20:2-3 are the same as that in chap. Proverbs 19:12, see page 571, and chaps. Proverbs 14:29 and Proverbs 16:32, pages 386 and 497. The thought in the fourth verse is identical with that in chap. Proverbs 10:4, although the similitude is different, see page 146.