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Proverbs 20:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Proverbs 20:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Chapter 20
Who Can Find Someone Truly Faithful?[a]
1 Wine encourages recklessness and strong drink leads to brawls;
anyone who allows them to seduce him is not wise.[b]
2 The anger of a king is like the roar of a lion;
he who provokes him places his life in jeopardy.
3 It is honorable to avoid strife,
but every fool is quarrelsome.
Footnotes
- Proverbs 20:1 In the midst of these stand-alone proverbs, a few present the ideal figure of a king who dispenses justice (vv. 8, 26, 28); others delicately note commercial customs (v. 14), flog idlers again (vv. 4, 13), and return to trickery used in weights and measures (v. 23) or in fraud of any kind (vv. 17, 21). If one saying justifies corporal punishment (v. 30), others inveigh against the desire for vengeance (vv. 3, 22). Then amidst these sayings for familial, social, and even economic life, there appears a more profound reflection on the mystery of life in which God is at work (vv. 24, 27). A witness of a deep moral and religious sense, verse 9 recognizes the ineradicable tendency of human beings toward evil, from which they cannot free themselves by their own powers.
- Proverbs 20:1 Those who drink too much wine or hard liquor become scoffers and brawlers (see Hos 7:5). Drunkenness leads to poverty (Prov 23:20-21), strife and brawling (Prov 23:29-30), and perversion of justice (Prov 31:4-5).
