For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
Ver. 38. They were eating and drinking] Wine, likely; because our Saviour hereupon bids his apostles take heed to themselves lest their hearts at any time should be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, &c., Luke 21:34. Like as some do not improbably conjecture, that Nadab and Abihu were in their drink when they offered strange fire, because after they were devoured by fire from the Lord. Aaron and the priests are charged to drink no wine nor strong drink when they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest they die, Leviticus 10:1,2; Leviticus 10:8,9. St Luke delivers the matter more roundly by an elegant asyndeton, "They ate, they drank, they married," &c., q.d. they passed without intermission from eating to drinking, from drinking to marrying, &c.; they followed it close, as if it had been their work, and they born for no other end. Of Ninius, second king of Assyrians, nephew haply to these antediluvian belly gods, it is said, that he was old excellent at eating and drinking. a And of Sardanapalus, one of the same line, Cicero tells us that his gut was his god. Summum bonum in ventre, aut sub ventre posuit; and Plutarch, that he hired men to devise new pleasures for him. See my Commonplace of Abstinence.
Until the day] They were set upon it, and would lose no time. Their destruction was foretold them to a day; they were nothing bettered by it; no more would wicked men, should they foreknow the very instant of Christ's coming to judgment. Joseph had foretold the famine of Egypt and the time when it should come; but fulness bred forgetfulness, saturity, security; none observed or provided for it. Quod vel inviti norant, non agnoverant.
a αριστος ην εσθιειν και πινειν. Athenae Dipnosoph. ii.