Deuteronomy 29:19

To add drunkenness to thirst.

The sin of drunkenness

Among the vices which stamp upon human nature its fallen condition, there is not one which causes such misery, or which leads on to such reckless crime, as drunkenness.

1. It is a most selfish as well as degrading vice: it debases man, created in the image of God, lower than the brute creation. God denounces this sin most strongly in His Holy Word. Under the law of Moses, the son who would not obey the voice of his father, but gave himself up to gluttony and drunkenness, was put to death by stoning; and, in the Gospel, drunkenness is classed with murder, as one of the works of the flesh, of which it is said they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Drunkenness is a vice which destroys soul and body. It weakens the intellect, making a man a madman in his rage, and an idiot in his sober moments. It ruins the health, producing the most painful diseases, and causing premature decay and death. It involves his family in poverty and misery. There is no peace in the drunkard’s home. Who can describe all the misery which follows in the train of drunkenness, all the crime to which it leads, all the sorrow which it causes to others? How fitly the words of the text describe it, when Moses warns the Israelites to beware “lest there should be among them a root that beareth gall and wormwood”; or, as the marginal reading is, a poisonful herb. Never did Satan plant a more fearful seed in the human heart than the love of strong drink. Drunkenness is, indeed, a root which beareth gall and wormwood; nothing sweet, or pleasant, or excellent, or beautiful can spring from it, or grow in the heart beside it. Like the deadly upas tree, it poisons all which rests under its shade, or comes near to it. The drunkard cannot be a high-principled, virtuous, or amiable man. In his sober moments the testimony of every drunkard must be, that the root of that fatal passion beareth gall and wormwood--that it is a poisonful herb.

2. The next particular--which the text points out--is the deceptive nature of the vice. Of all self-deceivers, the drunkard is the most deluded, the most blinded. “And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination” (or as the marginal rendering is), “the stubbornness of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst.” There is no man so difficult to convince of his folly and sinfulness as the drunkard, and no man so hard to turn away from his evil course. Satan’s most powerful weapon against our holy religion is drunkenness. A drunkard cannot be a true Christian, a child of God. He is more often an infidel, a blasphemer, and he is on the high road to every kind of sin and crime. Let us not stretch forth our hand to save the far-off heathen idolater, and remain indifferent and effortless about the drunkard dwelling close to us, and even one admitted into the fellowship of the same holy faith as ourselves. (S. Charlesworth.)

Degradation of drunkenness

Drunkenness is the shame of nature, the extinguisher of reason, the shipwreck of chastity, and the murder of conscience. Drunkenness is hurtful to the body; the cup kills more than the cannon; it causes dropsies, catarrhs, apoplexies; it fills the eye with fire, and the legs with water, and turns the body into an hospital. (T. Watson.)