Drunkenness
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These also reel with wine and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are confused by wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.
-Isaiah 28:7
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Drunkenness isn’t about drinking
The Bible often warns against drunkenness—but beneath the surface, this language frequently serves as a metaphor for moral compromise, seduction by power, and the corrosive effects of constant favor. In these cases, “drunkenness” has less to do with alcohol and more to do with spiritual disorientation due to excess—whether of wealth, praise, or political alignment. This metaphor has a long history of use and appears not only in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament but also in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish rabbinic thought.
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Pause and wonder, blind yourselves and be blind! They are drunk, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord has poured over you a spirit of deep sleep…
-Isaiah 29:9-10
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This describes Israel’s leaders as spiritually drunk—not through literal alcohol, but through divine judgment and their complicity in corrupt leadership. The metaphor of intoxication here is moral and judicial blindness. [Proverbs 23:31-33] give a simular parallel on how wealth and flattery can cause one to “see strange things”—i.e., distort moral vision.
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For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.
-Isaiah 29:9-10
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Here the cup is a symbol of divine judgment. But consider the inversion: to the wicked, the cup may appear as reward—until it turns bitter at the bottom; that is if they are ever aware they are being drowned in it.
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“Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord’s hand, making all the earth drunken; the nations drank of her wine; therefore the nations went mad.
-Jeremiah 51:7
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Babylon’s “wine” intoxicates the nations—not with alcohol, but with wealth, military power, and cultural seduction. It is a bribe of empire that all nations will eventually succumb to.
Table of Contents
Dead Sea Scrolls: Drunkenness as False Teaching and Seduction
The Dead Sea Scrolls unsurprisingly continue this theme. In the commentary (Pesher) of Habakkuk [1QpHab] which was in their understanding written for the last generation of the Final Jubilee of the Age of Messiah they write:
“Woe to him who causes his neighbor to drink, who pours out his wrath and also makes him drunk, to gaze on their shame… This refers to the Wicked Priest who pursued the Teacher of Righteousness to destroy him in his fury…” [1QpHab (Habakkuk Pesher) VII.1–5]
The Scrolls interpret Habakkuk’s “drunkenness” as coercion and corruption—where “making drunk” means forcing others into error, possibly with favor, pressure, or persecution. This is in contrast with the meek who shal inherit the earth and do no deceive their neighbor for gain, power, or acclaim. This ongoing biblical metaphor reaches its culmination with Revelation where the cup is golden and all the inhabitants of the land is pured out to corrupt and bring them to a final destruction.
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With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries… She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.
-Revelation 17:2, 4
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Summary
When the Bible talks about wine watch out that the drunkenness you read into it isn’t about being sloppy, lewd, or reckless. More often it is being played with wine to gain favor, gain control, and win over people to your way of thinking, acting and economic goals. As seen in Ester where Ahasuerus (Xerxes I) gave a feast to bond and unify the people both great and small to his reign.
Ahasuerus uses wealth, spectacle, wine, and autonomy to seduce loyalty. In Esther’s world, this is not just hospitality—it is imperial pageantry designed to disarm, enchant, and dominate. The wine becomes a tool of manipulation, used:
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To create a euphoric and compliant environment,
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To dissolve social hierarchies temporarily (rich and poor alike who are still under one person, the king),
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To advance the king’s agenda with emotional leverage.
This plying with wine almost lead to the complete murder of all the Hebrews in Persia, a theme that will repeat at the end of the Age.
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If it is pleasing to the king, let it be decreed that they be eliminated, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who carry out the king’s business, to put into the king’s treasuries. Then the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews.
The couriers went out, speeded by the king’s order while the decree was issued at the citadel in Susa; and while the king and Haman sat down to drink, the city of Susa was agitated.-
-Esther 3:9-11, 15
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