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Pro_31:5 Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.
Ver. 5. Lest they drink and forget the law.] Drunkenness causeth forgetfulness (hence the ancients feigned Bacchus to be the son of forgetfulness), and stands in full opposition to reason and religion: when the wine is in, the wit is out. Seneca saith, that for a man to think to be drunk, and yet to retain his right reason, is to think to drink rank poison, and yet not to die by it. {a}
And pervert the judgment, &c.] Pronounce an unrighteous sentence: which when Philip king of Macedon once did, the poor woman whose cause it was, presently appealed from Philip now drunk, to Philip when he should be sober again. The Carthagenians made a law that no magistrate of theirs should drink wine. The Persians permitted their kings to be drunk one day in a year only. Solon made a law at Athens that drunkenness in a prince should be punished with death. See Ecc_10:16-17.
{a} Plutarch in Sympos.