1 Thessalonians 5:7

For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night The "sons of day" must be wakeful and sober, for the opposite conditions belong to nightand are proper to its children. To be drunken by daywas a monstrous and almost unheard-of thing (comp. Acts 2:15). Negligence and wantonness have no place in those who belong to "the day."

These words look beyond their literal sense, as "sober" in 1 Thessalonians 5:6. Drunkenness signifies the condition of a soil besotted and enslaved by evil. We catch here another echo of our Lord's warnings: "Lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly as a snare" (Luke 21:34; comp. 1 Thessalonians 5:3 above; also Luke 12:45-46; and Romans 13:13). Thus dawn surprises guilty revellers.