Proverbs 23:30

Proverbs 23:30, in plain English

Here's your answer: the people who spend their time seeking out alcohol, constantly tasting new drinks, lingering over wine—they're the ones living this wretched existence.

Why it's here

The teacher is describing habitual drinking, not occasional wine with a meal. 'Mixed drinks' suggests seeking novelty and intensity—always chasing a stronger high. These people have made alcohol their project, their focus. Notice he doesn't say they're bad people; he's describing what happens when one thing becomes your center.

Who's speaking

The wisdom teacher providing the answer to his own question, pointing directly at the behavior that leads to ruin.

Where it sits in the story

Throughout Scripture, there's a distinction between wine as a blessing and drunkenness as a sin. The problem isn't the substance itself but when it becomes what you're devoted to instead of what you're supposed to be devoted to.

The scholarly reading

Those who linger obsessively over wine, sampling mixed drinks with prolonged intention, are the very ones whose misery was just catalogued—they are enslaved to appetite.

Language and setting

The phrase 'those who linger' (ʾel-hamtiqîm) suggests not festive celebration but compulsive lingering—the etymology relates to 'tattooing' or 'marking,' implying a habitual etching of desire into one's being. The 'mixed drinks' (mišrēqaḥ) were compounds of wine with spices, honey, and water—deliberately crafted to enhance palatability and mask the wine's strength. The context reveals the insidious nature of the problem: it begins as sophistication and connoisseurship but becomes bondage.

Voice

The wisdom teacher, now providing the answer to the rhetorical questions: these are the people whose misery stems from deliberate, repeated choices to indulge.

Significance

This verse illustrates the biblical principle of habituation—that repeated choices gradually reshape one's character and bind one in invisible chains. It grounds later Christian concern with what Augustine called 'the chains of custom' and prefigures Paul's warning that 'no one is enslaved by what he has overcome' (2 Peter 2:19).

28Like a robber she lies in wait and multiplies the faithless among men.

29Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has needless wounds? Who has bloodshot eyes?

30Those who linger over wine, who go to taste mixed drinks.

31Do not gaze at wine while it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.

32In the end it bites like a snake and stings like a viper.

Read all of Proverbs 23 — Do not wear yourself out to get rich. Have the wisdom to show restraint. Riches sprout wings and fly away like an eagle.