Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? Who hath complaining? who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?

Who hath woe? whose father hath woe? who hath contentions? who falls into pits? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? who hath plaint? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?

Who says, Oh! who says, Ah! who has violent arguments, who has grief, who has wounds without cause, whose eyes are dark?

Who crieth: 'Woe'? who: 'Alas'? Who hath contentions? who hath raving? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?

Who has woe? Whose father has woe? Who has quarrels? Who falls into pits? Who has wounds without cause? Who has watery eyes?

Woe sorrow - The words in the original are interjections, probably expressing distress. The sharp touch of the satirist reproduces the actual inarticulate utterances of drunkenness.

Who hath wo? - I believe Solomon refers here to the natural effects of drunkenness. And perhaps אוי oi, which we translate wo, and אבוי aboi, which we translate sorrow, are mere natural sounds or vociferations that take place among drunken men, either from illness, or the nauseating effects of too much liquor. As to contentions among such, babblings on a variety of subjects, which they neither understand nor are fit to discuss; wounds, got by falling out about nothing; and red eyes, bloodshotten with excess of drink, or black and blue eyes with fighting; - these are such common and general effects of these compotations, as naturally to follow from them. So that they who tarry long at wine, and use mixed wine to make it more inebriating, (see Proverbs 9:2), are the very persons who are most distinguished by the circumstances enumerated above. I need scarcely add, that by wine and mixed wine all inebriating liquors are to be understood.

Who hath woe?.... In this world and in the other, in body and soul; diseases of body, distress of mind, waste of substance, and all manner of evils and calamities; if any man has these, the drunkard has: from whoredom, the Holy Ghost proceeds to drunkenness, which generally go together; and dissuades from it, by observing the mischiefs that come by it;
who hath sorrow? through pains of body, with the headache, &c. or through the agonies of the mind, and tortures of conscience, for sin committed; or through poverty and want, so Aben Ezra derives the word from one that signifies "poor"; and so it may be rendered, "who hath poverty" (n)? the drunkard; see Proverbs 23:21;
who hath contentions? quarrels and lawsuits, which often come of drunken bouts;
who hath babbling? or "loquacity" (o)? which drunkards are subject to; much vain babbling, foolish talk, scurrilous language, scoffs, jeers, especially at religion and religious men; and sometimes such men are full of talk about religion itself, and make great pretensions to it, and the knowledge of it, in their cups, when out of them they think and talk nothing about it;
who hath wounds without cause? from words, oftentimes, drunkards go to blows upon the most frivolous accounts; fight with one another for no reason at all, and get themselves beaten and bruised for nothing;
who hath redness of eyes? the drunkard has, inflamed with wine or strong drink; which, drank frequently and to excess, is the cause of sore eyes, as well as of weakening the sight; or, however, leaves a redness there, and in other parts of the face, whereby those sons of Bacchus may be known: so it is observed (p) of Vitellius the emperor, that his face was commonly red through drunkenness. Hillerus renders it, "blackness of eyes"; such as comes from blows received; taking the word to be of the same signification with the Arabic word which so signifies: this agrees with the preceding clause; and is countenanced by the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions.
(n) "cui egestas", Montanus, Amama; "cuinam penuria", Vatablus. (o) "loquacitas", Pagninus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Mercerus; so the Targum. (p) Sueton. Vita ejus, c. 17.

Solomon warns against drunkenness. Those that would be kept from sin, must keep from all the beginnings of it, and fear coming within reach of its allurements. Foresee the punishment, what it will at last end in, if repentance prevent not. It makes men quarrel. Drunkards wilfully make woe and sorrow for themselves. It makes men impure and insolent. The tongue grows unruly; the heart utters things contrary to reason, religion, and common civility. It stupifies and besots men. They are in danger of death, of damnation; as much exposed as if they slept upon the top of a mast, yet feel secure. They fear no peril when the terrors of the Lord are before them; they feel no pain when the judgments of God are actually upon them. So lost is a drunkard to virtue and honour, so wretchedly is his conscience seared, that he is not ashamed to say, I will seek it again. With good reason we were bid to stop before the beginning. Who that has common sense would contract a habit, or sell himself to a sin, which tends to such guilt and misery, and exposes a man every day to the danger of dying insensible, and awaking in hell? Wisdom seems in these chapters to take up the discourse as at the beginning of the book. They must be considered as the words of Christ to the sinner.

This picture is often sadly realized now.
mixed wine--(Compare Proverbs 9:2; Isaiah 5:11).

The author passes from the sin of uncleanness to that of drunkenness; they are nearly related, for drunkenness excites fleshly lust; and to wallow with delight in the mire of sensuality, a man, created in the image of God, must first brutalize himself by intoxication. The Mashal in the number of its lines passes beyond the limits of the distich, and becomes a Mashal ode.
29 Whose is woe? Whose is grief?
Whose are contentions, whose trouble, whose wounds without cause?
Whose dimness of eyes?
30 Theirs, who sit late at the wine,
Who turn in to taste mixed wine.
31 Look not on the wine as it sparkleth red,
As it showeth its gleam in the cup,
Glideth down with ease.
32 The end of it is that it biteth like a serpent,
And stingeth like a basilisk.
33 Thine eyes shall see strange things,
And thine heart shall speak perverse things;
34 And thou art as one lying in the heart of the sea,
And as one lying on the top of a mast.
35 "They have scourged me-it pained me not;
They have beaten me - I perceived it not.
When shall I have wakened from sleep?
Thus on I go, I return to it again."
The repeated למי
(Note: We punctuate למי אוי, for that is Ben Asher's punctuation, while that of his opponent Ben Naphtali is למי־אוי. Vid., Thorath Emeth, p. 33.)
asks who then has to experience all that; the answer follows in Proverbs 23:30. With אוי, the אבוי occurring only here accords; it is not a substantive from אבה (whence אבון) after the form of צחק, in the sense of egestas; but, like the former [אוי], an interjection of sorrow (Venet. τίνι αἲ, τίνι φεῦ). Regarding מדינים (Chethı̂b מדונים), vid., at Proverbs 6:14. שׂיח signifies (vid., at Proverbs 6:22) meditation and speech, here sorrowful thought and sorrowful complaint (1-Samuel 1:16; Psalm 55:18; cf. הגה, הגיג), e.g., over the exhausted purse, the neglected work, the anticipated reproaches, the diminishing strength. In the connection פּצעים חנּם (cf. Psalm 35:19) the accus. adv. חנם (French gratuitement) represents the place of an adjective: strokes which one receives without being in the situation from necessity, or duty to expect them, strokes for nothing and in return for nothing (Fleischer), wounds for a long while (Oetinger). חכללוּת עינים is the darkening (clouding) of the eyes, from חצל, to be dim, closed, and transferred to the sensation of light: to be dark (vid., at Genesis 49:12; Psalm 10:8); the copper-nose of the drunkard is not under consideration; the word does not refer to the reddening, but the dimming of the eyes, and of the power of vision. The answer, Proverbs 23:30, begins, in conformity with the form of the question, with ל (write למאחרים, with Gaja to ל, according to Metheg-Setzung, 20, Michlol 46b): pain, and woe, and contention they have who tarry late at the wine (cf. Isaiah 5:11), who enter (viz., into the wine-house, Ecclesiastes 2:4, the house of revelry) "to search" mingled drink (vid., at Proverbs 9:2; Isaiah 5:22). Hitzig: "they test the mixing, as to the relation of the wine to the water, whether it is correct." But לחקור is like גּבּרים, Isaiah 5:22, meant in mockery: they are heroes, viz., heroes in drinking; they are searchers, such, namely, as seek to examine into the mixed wine, or also: thoroughly and carefully taste it (Fleischer).
The evil consequences of drunkenness are now registered. That one may not fall under this common sin, the poet, Proverbs 23:31, warns against the attraction which the wine presents to the sight and to the sense of taste: one must not permit himself to be caught as a prisoner by this enticement, but must maintain his freedom against it. התאדּם, to make, i.e., to show oneself red, is almost equivalent to האדים; and more than this, it presents the wine as itself co-operating and active by its red play of colours (Fleischer). Regarding the antiptosis (antiphonesis): Look not on the wine that is..., vid., at Genesis 1:3; yet here, where ראה means not merely "to see," but "to look at," the case is somewhat different. In 31b, one for the most part assumes that עינו signifies the eye of the wine, i.e., the pearls which play on the surface of the wine (Fleischer). And, indeed, Hitzig's translation, after Numbers 11:7 : when it presents its appearance in the cup, does not commend itself, because it expresses too little. On the other hand, it is saying too much when Bttcher maintains that עין never denotes the mere appearance, but always the shining aspect of the object. But used of wine, עין appears to denote not merely aspect as such, but its gleam, glance; not its pearls, for which עיני would be the word used, but shining glance, by which particularly the bright glance, as out of deep darkness, of the Syro-Palestinian wine is thought of, which is for the most part prepared from red (blue) grapes, and because very rich in sugar, is thick almost like syrup. Jerome translates עינו well: (cum splenduerit in vitro) color ejus. But one need not think of a glass; Bttcher has rightly said that one might perceive the glittering appearance also in a metal or earthen vessel if one looked into it. The Chethı̂b בכיס is an error of transcription; the Midrash makes the remark on this, that בּכּיס fits the wine merchant, and בּכּוס the wine drinker. From the pleasure of the eye, 31c passes over to the pleasures of the taste: (that, or, as it) goeth down smoothly (Luther); the expression is like Ecclesiastes 7:10. Instead of הלך (like jâry, of fluidity) there stands here התהלך, commonly used of pleasant going; and instead of למישׁרים with ל, the norm בּמישׁרים with ב of the manner; directness is here easiness, facility (Arab. jusr); it goes as on a straight, even way unhindered and easily down the throat.
(Note: The English version is, "when it moveth itself aright," which one has perceived in the phenomenon of the tears of the wine, or of the movement in the glass. Vid., Ausland, 1869, p. 72.)
Proverbs 23:32 shows how it issues with the wine, viz., with those who immoderately enjoy it. Is אחריתו [its end] here the subject, as at Proverbs 5:4? We must in that case interpret ישּׁך and יפרשׁ as attributives, as the Syr. and Targ. translate the latter, and Ewald both. The issue which it brings with it is like the serpent which bites, etc., and there is nothing syntactically opposed to this (cf. e.g., Psalm 17:12); the future, in contradistinction to the participle, would not express properties, but intimations of facts. But the end of the wine is not like a serpent, but like the bite of a serpent. The wine itself, and independent of its consequences, is in and of itself like a serpent. In accordance with the matter, אחריתו may be interpreted, with Hitzig (after Jerome, in novissimo), as acc. adverb. = באחריתו, Jeremiah 17:11. But why did not the author more distinctly write this word 'בא? The syntactic relation is like Proverbs 29:21 : אחריתו is after the manner of a substantival clause, the subject to that which follows as its virtual predicate: "its end is: like a serpent it biteth = this, that it biteth like a serpent." Regarding צפעני, serpens regulus (after Schultens, from צפע = (Arab.) saf', to breathe out glowing, scorching), vid., at Isaiah 7:8. The Hiph. הפרישׁ Schultens here understands of the division of the liver, and Hitzig, after the lxx, Vulgate, and Venet., of squirting the poison; both after the Arab. farth. But הפרישׁ, Syr. afrês, also signifies, from the root-idea of dividing and splitting, to sting, poindre, pointer, as Rashi and Kimchi gloss, whence the Aram. פּרשׁ, an ox-goad, with which the ancients connect פרשׁ (of the spur), the name for a rider, eques, and also a horse (cf. on the contrary, Fleischer in Levy, W.B. ii. 574); a serpent's bite and a serpent's sting (Lat. morsus, ictus, Varro: cum pepugerit colubra) are connected together by the ancients.
(Note: However, we will not conceal it, that the post-bibl. Hebrews. does not know הפרישׁ in the sense of to prick, sting (the Midrash explains the passage by יפרישׁ בין לחיים, i.e., it cuts off life); and the Nestorian Knanishu of Superghan, whom I asked regarding aphrish, knew only of the meanings "to separate" and "to point out," but not "to sting.")
The excited condition of the drunkard is now described. First, Proverbs 23:33 describes the activity of his imagination as excited to madness. It is untenable to interpret זרות here with Rashi, Aben Ezra, and others, and to translate with Luther: "so shall thine eyes look after other women" (circumspicient mulieres impudicas, Fleischer, for the meaning to perceive, to look about for something, to seek something with the eyes, referring to Genesis 41:33). For זרות acquires the meaning of mulieres impudicae only from its surrounding, but here the parallel תּהפּכות (perverse things) directs to the neut. aliena (cf. Proverbs 15:28, רעות), but not merely in the sense of unreal things (Ralbag, Meri), but: strange, i.e., abnormal, thus bizarre, mad, dreadful things. An old Hebrews. parable compares the changing circumstances which wine produces with the manner of the lamb, the lion, the swine, the monkey; here juggles and phantoms of the imagination are meant, which in the view and fancy of the drunken man hunt one another like monkey capers. Moreover, the state of the drunken man is one that is separated from the reality of a life of sobriety and the safety of a life of moderation, 34a: thou act like one who lies in the heart of the sea. Thus to lie in the heart, i.e., the midst, of the sea as a ship goes therein, Proverbs 30:19, is impossible; there one must swim but swimming is not lying, and to thing on a situation like that of Jonah; Jonah 1:5, one must think also of the ship; but שׁכב does not necessarily mean "to sleep," and, besides, the sleep of a passenger in the cabin on the high sea is of itself no dangerous matter. Rightly Hitzig: on the depth of the sea (cf. Jonah 2:4) - the drunken man, or the man overcome by wine (Isaiah 28:7), is like one who has sunk down into the midst of the sea; and thus drowned, or in danger of being drowned, he is in a condition of intellectual confusion, which finally passes over into perfect unconsciousness, cut off from the true life which passes over him like one dead, and in this condition he has made a bed for himself, as שׁכב denotes. With בלב, בּראשׁ stands in complete contrast: he is like one who lies on the top of the mast. חבּל, after the forms דּבּר, שׁלּם, is the sail-yard fastened by ropes, חבלים ,sepo (Isaiah 33:23). To lay oneself down on the sail-yard happens thus to no one, and it is no place for such a purpose; but as little as one can quarter him who is on the ridge of the roof, in the 'Alja, because no one is able to lie down there, so little can he in the bower [Mastkorb] him who is here spoken of (Bttcher). The poet says, but only by way of comparison, how critical the situation of the drunkard is; he compares him to one who lies on the highest sail-yard, and is exposed to the danger of being every moment thrown into the sea; for the rocking of the ship is the greater in proportion to the height of the sail-yard. The drunkard is, indeed, thus often exposed to the peril of his life; for an accident of itself not great, or a stroke, may suddenly put an end to his life.
The poet represents the drunken man as now speaking to himself. He has been well cudgelled; but because insensible, he has not felt it, and he places himself now where he will sleep out his intoxication. Far from being made temperate by the strokes inflicted on him, he rejoices in the prospect, when he has awaked out of his sleep, of beginning again the life of drunkenness and revelry which has become a pleasant custom to him. חלה means not only to be sick, but generally to be, or to become, affected painfully; cf. Jeremiah 5:3, where חלוּ is not the 3rd pl. mas. of חיל, but of חלה. The words מתי אקיץ are, it is true, a cry of longing of a different kind from Job 7:4. The sleeping man cannot forbear from yielding to the constraint of nature: he is no longer master of himself, he becomes giddy, everything goes round about with him, but he thinks with himself: Oh that I were again awake! and so little has his appetite been appeased by his sufferings, that when he is again awakened, he will begin where he left off yesterday, when he could drink no more. מתי is here, after Nolde, Fleischer, and Hitzig, the relative quando (quum); but the bibl. usus loq. gives no authority for this. In that case we would have expected הקיצותי instead of אקיץ. As the interrog. מתי is more animated than the relat., so also אוסיף אבקשׁנּוּ is more animated (1-Samuel 2:3) than אוסיף לבקּשׁ. The suffix of אבקשׁנו refers to the wine: raised up, he will seek that which has become so dear and so necessary to him.