Proverbs 31:4 [It is] not for kings, O Lemuel, [it is] not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink:
Ver. 4. It is not for kings to drink wine,] i.e., To be "drunk with wine, wherein is excess," Eph 5:18 where the apostle determines excessive drinking to be downright drunkenness, viz., when as swine do their bellies, so men break their heads with filthy quaffing. This, as no man may lawfully do, so least of all princes; for in maxima libertate minima est licentia. Men are therefore the worse because they are bound to be better.
Nor for princes strong drink.] Or, as some read it, Where is the strong drink? It is not for princes to ask such a question. All heady and intoxicating drinks are by statute here forbidden them. Of Bonosus the emperor it was said that he was born non ut vivat sed ut bibat, not to live but to drink; and when, being overcome by Probus, he afterwards hanged himself, it was commonly jested that a tankard hung there, and not a man. But what a beast was Marcus Antonius, that wrote (or rather spewed out) a book concerning his own strength to bear strong drink? And what another was Darius King of Persia, who commanded this inscription to be set upon his sepulchre, "I was able to hunt lustily, to drink wine soundly, and to bear it bravely." a That Irish rebel Tiroen, A.D. 1567, was such a drunkard, that, to cool his body when he was immoderately inflamed with wine and whisky, he would many times be buried in the earth up to the chin. b These were unfit men to bear rule.
a Kυνηγειν εκρατουν, οινον πολυν πινειν, και τουτον φερειν καλως. - Strabo.
b Camden's Elisabeth.