Wine Is a Mocker
1 Wine is a mocker and beer is a brawler. Whoever is led astray by them is not wise. 2 The terror of a king is like the roaring of a lion. He who provokes him to anger forfeits his own life. 3 It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling. 4 The sluggard will not plow by reason of the winter; therefore he shall beg in harvest, and have nothing. 5 Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. 6 Many men claim to be men of unfailing love, but who can find a faithful man? 7 A righteous man walks in integrity. Blessed are his children after him. 8 A king who sits on the throne of judgment scatters away all evil with his eyes. 9 Who can say, “I have made my heart pure. I am clean and without sin”? 10 Differing weights and differing measures, both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh. 11 Even a child makes himself known by his doings, whether his work is pure, and whether it is right. 12 The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, Yahweh has made even both of them. 13 Don’t love sleep, lest you come to poverty. Open your eyes, and you shall be satisfied with bread. 14 “It’s no good, it’s no good,” says the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasts. 15 There is gold and abundance of rubies, but the lips of knowledge are a rare jewel.
Drink is described by what it does to a man's judgment, and the run's hardest question is whether anyone can claim a clean heart.
Wine is a mocker and beer is a brawler. The two drinks are given the characters of two men. A mocker is the book's word for the person who cannot be taught, and a brawler is the man who starts fights. Both descriptions are about what drink does to judgment and temper, not about the liquid itself. The clause that follows is the verdict: Whoever is led astray by them is not wise.
The sluggard appears in a seasonal version. The sluggard will not plow by reason of the winter; therefore he shall beg in harvest, and have nothing. Plowing is done in cold, wet weather months before anything grows. His excuse is accurate — it is genuinely unpleasant — and it costs him the harvest, which arrives in fine weather when everyone else is busy and he is not.
One verse describes what a good counselor actually does, and it is the best account of listening in the book. Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. The wisdom is already in the other person. What the understanding man supplies is the bucket. That reframes advice as extraction rather than instruction, and the collection is quietly saying that most people know more than they can reach.
The hardest verse in the run is a question nobody answers: Who can say, "I have made my heart pure. I am clean and without sin"? It sits among sayings about weights, work and children, unmarked and unexplained. The book that has spent twenty chapters telling a man how to live stops for one line to ask whether anyone has managed it.
The buyer's routine is the collection at its most amused. "It's no good, it's no good," says the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasts. He runs the goods down to get the price, and then tells his friends what a bargain he got. Two contradictory statements about the same object, both from the same man, both self-serving, and the collection simply reports them side by side.
settled What this mark means