Proverbs 23:31-32

Look not thou upon the wine Earnestly, so as to inflame thine appetite toward it; in which sense men are forbidden to look upon a woman, Job 31:1; Matthew 5:28. When it is red Which was the colour of the best wines in that country, which therefore are called blood, Genesis 49:11; Deuteronomy 32:14; and such were used by them in the passover. Red wine, it appears, is still more esteemed in the East than white. And, according to Olearius, in his account of his travels, it is customary with the Armenian Christians, in Persia, to put Brazil wood or saffron into their wine, to give it a higher colour, when it is not so red as they wish, as they make no account of white wine. At the last it biteth like a serpent, &c. It hurts the body in many respects, impairs the vigour of the mind, wastes the estate, stains the character, wounds the conscience, and, without repentance, destroys the soul. “Remember,” says Bishop Patrick, in his paraphrase here, “that the pleasure will be attended at last with intolerable pains; when it works like so much poison in thy veins, and casts thee into diseases as hard to cure as the biting of a serpent, or the stinging of a basilisk;” for so the word צפעני, here rendered adder, properly signifies.