Bible Strands
Proverbs 23:35
“They struck me, but I feel no pain! They beat me, but I did not know it! When can I wake up to search for another drink?”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The speaker is a person describing the delirious state of severe intoxication, addressing the reader who is being warned against excessive wine consumption. This occurs immediately after a description of the physical disorientation caused by drinking (Prov 23:34).
The words — The Hebrew verbs הִכּוּנִי (hikkuni) and הָלְמוּנִי (halmuni) both mean "they struck me," paired with בַל (bal) "not" and חָלִיתִי (chaleiti) "I am sick" to express physical numbness. The phrase אָקִיץ (a'eqits) "will I awake" frames the speaker's desperate anticipation of recovery to pursue more alcohol.
The thread — This motif of struck-but-numb denial appears in Jeremiah 5:3, where God strikes a people who feel no pain, and Isaiah 56:12, which echoes the same hedonistic excuse to drink. Paul later quotes the "eat and drink" mentality in 1 Corinthians 15:32 to illustrate despair without resurrection hope.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of how addiction warps perception, making the victim deny harm while eagerly awaiting the next drink. It confronts the reader with the self-deception that sustains destructive habits.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 5:3 O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.
- Isaiah 56:12 “Come, let me get the wine, let us imbibe the strong drink, and tomorrow will be like today, only far better!”
- 1 Corinthians 15:32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for human motives, what did I gain? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
- Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
- Proverbs 27:22 Though you grind a fool like grain with mortar and a pestle, yet his folly will not depart from him.
- Isaiah 22:13 But look, there is joy and gladness, butchering of cattle and slaughtering of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”
- 2 Peter 2:22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”
- Deuteronomy 29:19 because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.’ This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.
- Jeremiah 31:18 I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the LORD my God.
- Ephesians 4:19 Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a craving for more.