Chap. 20
Verse 1
This proverb warns against the debauchery with which free-thinking is intimately associated.
Wine is a mocker, mead boisterous;
And no one who is overtaken thereby is wise.
The article stands with יין. Ewald maintains that in 10:1-22:6 the article occurs only here and at Pro 21:31, and that it is here, as the lxx shows, not original. Both statements are incorrect. The article is found, e.g., at Pro 19:6; Pro 18:18, Pro 18:17, and here the personification of “wine” requires it; but that it is wanting to שׁכר shows how little poetry delights in it; it stands once for twice. The effects of wine and mead (שׁכר from שׁכר, to stop, obstruct, become stupid) are attributed to these liquors themselves as their property. Wine is a mocker, because he who is intoxicated with it readily scoffs at that which is holy; mead is boisterous (cf. הומיּה, Pro 7:11), because he who is inebriated in his dissolute madness breaks through the limits of morality and propriety. He is unwise who, through wine and the like, i.e., overpowered by it (cf. 2Sa 13:28), staggers, i.e., he gives himself up to wine to such a degree that he is no longer master of himself. At Pro 5:19 we read, שׁגה ב, of the intoxication of love; here, as at Isa 28:7, of the intoxication of wine, i.e., of the passionate slavish desire of wine or for wine. The word “Erpicht” [avidissimus], i.e., being indissolubly bound to a thing, corresponds at least in some degree to the idea. Fleischer compares the French: être fou de quelque chose. Isa 28:7, however, shows that one has to think on actual staggering, being overtaken in wine.
Verse 2
Pro 20:2 2 A roaring as of a lion is the terror of the king; And he that provoketh him forfeiteth his life.
Line first is a variation of Pro 19:12. The terror which a king spreads around (מלך, gen. subjecti., as, e.g., at Job 9:34 and generally) is like the growling of a lion which threatens danger. The thought here suggested is that it is dangerous to arouse a lion. Thus מתעבּרו does not mean: he who is angry at him (Venet.: χολούμενος αὐτῷ), but he who provokes him (lxx, Syr., Targ., Jerome, Luther). התעבּר signifies, as we saw at Pro 14:16, to be in a state of excessive displeasure, extreme anger. Here the meaning must be: he who puts him into a state of anger (lxx, ὁ παροξύνων αὐτόν, in other versions with the
