“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions ? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?”
My Notes
What Does Proverbs 23:29 Mean?
The proverb poses a riddle with six questions: Who has woe? Sorrow? Contentions? Babbling? Wounds without cause? Redness of eyes? The answer comes in verse 30: those who linger long at the wine. This is the most vivid description of alcohol abuse in the Bible.
The six symptoms catalogue the full damage of drunkenness: emotional (woe, sorrow), relational (contentions), verbal (babbling), physical (wounds without cause, bloodshot eyes). Every dimension of human life is degraded. The drunk person hurts everywhere, in every way, and can't identify the source.
"Wounds without cause" is particularly striking — injuries the person can't explain because they were too impaired to remember receiving them. The morning-after mystery of unexplained bruises. The proverb doesn't moralize. It observes. And the observation is devastating.
Reflection Questions
- 1.Which of the six symptoms — woe, sorrow, contentions, babbling, wounds, redness — resonates most with a pattern you've seen or experienced?
- 2.Is there something you're 'lingering too long' at — not necessarily alcohol, but anything that's producing these symptoms?
- 3.How does the proverb's clinical observation (rather than moralistic lecture) change how you receive the warning?
- 4.What does it look like to recognize the pattern before the damage becomes visible to everyone else?
Devotional
Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has fights they can't explain? Who has wounds they don't remember getting? Who has bloodshot eyes?
The proverb asks six questions, and the answer to every single one is: the person who lingers too long at the wine.
This isn't a temperance lecture. It's a clinical observation. The writer has watched people destroy themselves and catalogued the damage with precision. Emotional devastation (woe, sorrow). Relational wreckage (contentions — fights you don't know how you started). Verbal chaos (babbling). Physical harm (wounds without cause — you woke up hurt and can't remember why). And the visible evidence (redness of eyes).
Every dimension of your life — emotional, relational, verbal, physical, visible — degraded by the same source. That's what abuse looks like: total system damage traced back to one behavior.
The proverb doesn't command. It asks. It makes you identify the symptoms in yourself before it names the cause. Do you have woe? Do you have sorrow? Are you fighting without knowing why? Are you waking up with damage you can't trace?
If the answer is yes, the next verse names what you already know: you've been lingering too long. Not one drink. Lingering. The problem isn't the substance. It's the lingering — the inability to stop, the pattern of returning, the slow surrender of every faculty to something that promises comfort and delivers destruction.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
Who hath woe?.... In this world and in the other, in body and soul; diseases of body, distress of mind, waste of…
Another continuous exhortation rather than a collection of maxims. Pro 23:16 The teacher rejoices when the disciple’s…
Solomon here gives fair warning against the sin of drunkenness, to confirm what he had said, Pro 23:20.
I. He cautions…
woe … sorrow Lit. oh!… alas!
babbling Rather, contentions, as the same Heb. word is rendered in Pro 18:19; the…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture