Proverbs 23

The chapter opens with table manners in the royal court — observe carefully what is before you; put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite; do not desire the ruler's delicacies. The warning against the wealth of the stingy host follows: his heart is not with you; the morsel you have eaten you will vomit up. The chapter then turns to the foolishness of exhausting oneself for wealth: do not wear yourself out to get rich; be wise enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. The image — wealth with wings, gone in an instant — is one of the book's most vivid single images for the instability of material gain. The social-ethics cluster continues with warnings against eating the food of the evil person, against removing the ancient landmark, and against charging interest of the poor.

The chapter's most extended single passage is the long poem on wine in verses 29-35. The poem opens with a series of rhetorical questions — who has woe, who has sorrow, who has strife, who has complaining, who has wounds without cause, who has redness of eyes — with the answer: those who tarry long over wine. The description of what wine does is then given in first person, as if from the inside of the experience: do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. They struck me, you will say, but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink. The last line is one of the most psychologically precise descriptions of compulsion in the Hebrew Bible.