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Proverbs 23:29–35, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Proverbs 23:29–35
Appetite, intoxication, desire, and self-government — Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who…
The hangover is interviewed until it names its own source
Who has woe, sorrow, contentions, babble, wounds without cause, redness of eyes? Those who tarry long at the wine, who go to seek mixed wine. Do not look on the wine when it is red, when it gives its color in the cup, when it moves itself aright. At last it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder.
The poem lets the damage speak first: grief, fights, numb talk, injuries you cannot explain, bloodshot eyes. Lingering and hunting mixed wine are the practiced search, not a sip. The cup's beauty is the lure. Serpent and adder are the delayed poison, not a myth about grapes.
Intoxication rents out the eyes, the heart, and the memory
Your eyes will behold strange things, and your heart will utter perverse things. You will be as one who lies down in the middle of the sea, or on top of a mast. They struck me, you will say, and I was not sick; they beat me, and I did not feel it. When I awake, I will seek it yet again.
The drunk person is pictured as sleeping on open water or a ship's spar: exposed, unsteadied, unable to feel blows. The last line is the addiction: waking to hunt the same cup. This is not a joke about light drinking, not a diagnosis of every injury, and not a reason to withhold medical care. Wounds and beatings in this portrait are the cost of the binge, not a permission for anyone to strike a drinker.
How this should shape us
Do not stare a beautiful cup into a hunt. If wine is already biting you or someone you love, get help rather than reciting the poem as mockery. Do not treat numbness after harm as toughness.
Teach it back
Explain Proverbs 23:29–35 in your own words. Identify its form and collection, trace one line from role through contextual meaning and enduring truth to application, name one uncertainty, and reject one misuse explicitly.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful readers disagree?
Best judgment: Interpreters disagree over how much literary meaning adjacent sentence sayings gain from small clusters. This package treats Proverbs 23:29–35 as a useful local cluster while preserving each saying's independent force and marking the boundary as revisable.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Proverbs 23:29–35, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 23:29-23:35
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1152-1156, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 23:29–35
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 23:29–35 and the Sayings of the wise outline
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 23:29–35
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 23:29–35
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, canonical order, paragraph flags, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Exact location: Proverbs 23:29–35, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Proverbs
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology used only for the exact unit's lexical, grammatical, parallel, superscription, number-saying, and acrostic questions.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Prov.xml, OSIS 23:29-23:35
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Proverbs with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-attached textual, lexical, grammatical, syntactic, parallelism, and older-English controls for the exact range.
Exact location: NET Bible Proverbs PDF, printed pp. 1152-1156, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 23:29–35
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Proverbs
K. T. Aitken
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Whole-book and collection orientation, local commentary, social-setting proposals, and named interpretation limits.
Exact location: Aitken, ‘Proverbs,’ Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 405-422, subsection covering 23:29–35 and the Sayings of the wise outline
Open source ↗scholarly monograph chapter abstract and metadata
Context in the Sayings Collections
Stuart Weeks
Oxford University Press, in Early Israelite Wisdom, 2000
Supports: Abstract-level control for the dispute over individual-saying, small-cluster, and collection context; no uninspected detailed claim.
Exact location: Weeks, ‘Context in the Sayings Collections,’ Early Israelite Wisdom (2000), official abstract and chapter pp. 20-40; methodological question applied to Proverbs 23:29–35
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access journal article
The situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth in the Book of Proverbs
G. H. Wittenberg
Scriptura 21, 1987; open archive 2020
Supports: One historical-social account of poverty, wealth, interest, oppression, labor, and differing evaluations within the collection.
Exact location: Wittenberg, ‘Situational context of statements concerning poverty and wealth,’ Scriptura 21, pp. 1-23, especially the sayings and redactional comparison relevant to Proverbs 23:29–35
Open source ↗