Drunkenness (Hastings' Dictionary)

The spectacle of men beside themselves through alcoholic drink has been familiar from the beginning of history, and all languages have terms in wliich to describe it. It is a subject that appears in the Bible, as in other ancient writings. 1. Some of the terms used in the Scriptures in connexion with drunkenness. — The Heb. has no word tliat describes this vice, like the Eng. wonls •drunken,' 'drunkard,' 'drunkenness,' 'inebriate,' In terms derived from the phynical act of drinking. It has two stems in common use {[shAkdh] and ihAtlUih, .ijp and ni\v) referring to the act of drink, ing J and each denotes inilitlcrently the drinking of water or wine or other liquids, drinking by men or by animals or by the ground. From one of these stems comes the word mashkeh, not often nsed, denoting a butler or cupbearer, one who serves wine at table (Neh 1", Gn 40' etc.). From the other comes the word mishteh, much used, denoting a formal feast, a banquet. This is often tr by tlie Gr. tAt-oj, and once ( Est T') by avturbmov. Like the Gr. word, it has in it the idea of a social feast as a gathering where men drink together. This shows that the idea of social drinking is older than the dillerentiation of the Heb. language. Hence it is the more remarkable that the words of these Heb. stems never, of themselves, denote either vicious carousal or intoxication. They are sometimes used in connexion with carousal or intoxication, but in such cases the author always adds other words to indicat the vicious meaning. Even Ec 10" is not an exception to this. See Banquet. A different stem is rdwdh ("n-i), occurring 14 times as a verb, and 6 times in all in the form of three different nouns. The idea is that of being brimful, or saturated, or soaked (Ps 23°, Job 37", Is 58" 16» 34"' etc.). It is possible to tr. the Heb., in every passage where these words occur, without recognizing an allusion to drunkenness. But LXX commonly tr. them by derivatives of fieffvcii or viva, and they are no doubt to be re- garded as denoting drunkenness. It is as when we speak of a habitually drunken man as a soaker, or as sodden with drink (Jer 46'", La 3"). Another stem, sdbhA (k??), is used in all 8 or 9 times. Its meaning is nearly that of our Eng. ' to guzzle,' that is, to drink intoxicants greedily, with stupefying effect. The active participle denotes the guzzler as in the act, the passive participle describes him as affected by the liquor, the noun denotes either the liquor or the act of guzzling (Is 56", Dt 2r'», Pr 23'»-^', Nah l'«. Is !■», Hos 4'»). More important than all these is the stem sh/ikhar {-\iv)- The verb means to become in- toxicated, and in common use are the nouns shekhdr, 'intoxicating liquor' (see STRONG Drink); shikkor, 'drunkard,' and Ai^^r(5n, 'drunkenness.' Many hold that the word is the same with our sugar, and that group of words in the Western languages. If so, the Heb. word and the Western word start together with the fact that sugar is present at the formation of alcohol, but follow entirely different lines of meaning. The usage of the Heb. stem is abundant and clear, leaving no doubt as to its meaning. Hebrew-speaking people were familiar with the spectacle of men overcome by alcohol, and they used the words of this stem to express this familiar fact. In NT, and in Gr. VSS of OT, qnite a variety of terms are used, but we need mention only one group : iJU9ri, ' habitual intoxication ' ; ntBiiw, ' to be intoxicated ' ; iieBvaKui, ' to make intoxicated ' ; /uSia/m, 'an intoxicant'; fUdvaoi, 'intoxicated.' In their meaning and use (both literal and meta- phorical) the words of this groui) are similar to those of the Heb. group last mentioned. 2. Particulars given in the Bible concerning drunkenness. — The OT and NT passages that give these particulars, though numerous, are too familiar to need direct citation. If one needs to refer to them, they are easily found by the help of a concordance. Of apocr. passages one will ea.sily recall the contest concerning wine, kings, women, and truth, in 1 Es S"- ; tlic drunkenneR.s of Holofemes, as described in Jtli 12' 13'; tlie many references to drinking usages in Sir ; and other like passages. These various canon, or apocr. passages mention abundantly many of the familiar physical effects of drunkenness ; staggering, reefing, dizziness, incoherent speech, redness of eyes, vomiting, stupid sleep, insensibility to blows, insatiable appetite for more stimulant. They speak of its mental effects : exhilaration, jollity, loss of good judg- ment, inconseiiiience of tnonght anil purpose, inability to kee]) secrets, quarrelsomeness, shame- lessness, failure to remember afterwards what occurred while one was drunk, the purposed for- 630 DRUNKENNESS DUMAH getting of one's misery, such facts as the naked- ness of Noah, the helplessness of Amnon, the sodden condition of Nabal. They speak of festal drinking, of usages compelling one to drink, or exempting him from compiDsion (Est 1^), of carousals, dissipations, excess, riot, of the Syrian king drinking uimself drunk in his tent in the face of the enemy, many times of the high-born people of both Israel and Judah as wasting their property and energies in costly drinking feasts, of the connexion of drunkenness with licentious- ness and gambling, of orgies in which the three were mingled (Jl 3^). They speak of the permanent effects of these things on one's condition of life, of the guzzler and the glutton who bring themselves to poverty, to loss of energy, to rags. They speak of sociological effects, of men who by reason of private dissipations neglect public duty, of men who ought to be ambitious to serve God and their country, but whose actual ambitions run in the injustice at home, and boundless defeat and slaughter by foreign invaders. In these and oilier particulars no one can fail to recognize the widespread prevalence of drunken- ness and its evils in the biolical times, and their identity with the same evils as now existing. Especial importance attaches, therefore, to any- thing the Biole has to say in regard to the remedy. The author of Sir says : ' Wine drunk in season and to satisfy is joy of "heart and gladness of soul ; wine drimk largely is bitterness of soul, with provocation and conflict' (31^). Similar passages abound in ancient literature. They commend the moderate use of intoxicants, and condemn the excessive use ; generally drawing the line, how- ever, not between exhilaration and drunkenness, but between dnmkenness that is regarded as occa- sional and seasonable and drunkenness that is habitual and unseasonable. In view of this, it is worth noting that our canonical books contain no such passage. On the other hand, they unquali- fiedly condemn drunkenness. They lay down the proposition, ' Look not on the wine when it is red ' (Pr 23"). In such cases as those of the priests (Lv 10°), of Daniel, of the Rechabites, of the Nazirites, they teach that even total abstinence is sometimes a duty. An account of the intoxicating liquors mentioned in the Bible will be found under the titles Strong Drink and Wine. See also Food. 3. T/t difference between the ancient and the modem problem. — With all their many points of identity, there is a large and important group of differences. Any one w-lio will carefully study all the passages in the Bible which speak of this matter will note that, in a large majority of them, drunkenness is explicitly spoken of as the vice of the wealthy. Perhaps there is not an instance in which habitual drunlcenness is attributed to any who are not wealthy. In modem times, on the contrary, drunkenness is supposed to be muclt more prevalent among the poor than among the well-to-do. This difference is not an accident. It is mainly the result of the cheapening of intoxi- cants, through improved processes of distilling and brewing, introduced within the past two or three centuries. When the price of enough wine or beer to make a man drunk was equal to half a month's wages, and no other intoxicants were to be had, it was impossible for most men to become sodden drunkards. The case is diflerent when an hour's labour will pay for an intoxicating quantity of cheap liquor. In the older time, habitual drunkenness was possible for thousands where it U now possible for hundreds of thousands. This vast modem extension of the domain of intemper- ance should not be forgotten when we study the Bible for practical light on the subject. To this mi^ht be added a large number of important ditlerences of detail between ancient life and modem life that have bearings on the question in hand. The outcome of such a companson ia that drunkenness and its attendant evils, inexcusable, widespread, harmful, and dangerous as they were in the civilizations in which the Scriptures were written, are immeasurably more so in our existing civilization, and we ought to deal with the problem accordingly. W. J. BeeCHEB.