⁴ It is not for kings, Lemuel; It is not for kings to drink wine; Nor for princes to say, 'Where is strong drink?'

¹⁷ Happy are you, land, when your king is the son of nobles, And your princes eat in due season, For strength, and not for drunkenness!

¹ Wine is a mocker, and beer is a brawler; Whoever is led astray by them is not wise.

²² Woe to those who are mighty to drink wine, And champions at mixing strong drink;

⁵ Yes, moreover, wine is treacherous. A haughty man who doesn't stay at home, who enlarges his desire as Sheol, and he is like death, and can't be satisfied, but gathers to himself all nations, and heaps to himself all peoples.

¹¹ Prostitution, wine, and new wine take away understanding.

¹² My people consult with their wooded idol, And answer to a stick of wood. Indeed the spirit of prostitution has led them astray, And they have been unfaithful to their God.

⁷ Even these reel with wine, and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they stagger with strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.

⁸ For all tables are full of vomit [and] filthiness, [so that there is] no place [clean].

⁹ "Drink no wine nor strong drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the Tent of Meeting, that you don't die: it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations:

¹⁰ and that you are to make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean;

²¹ Then a convenient day came, that Herod on his birthday made a supper for his nobles, the high officers, and the chief men of Galilee.

²² When the daughter of Herodias herself came in and danced, she pleased Herod and those sitting with him. The king said to the young lady, "Ask me whatever you want, and I will give it to you."

²³ He swore to her, "Whatever you shall ask of me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom."

²⁴ She went out, and said to her mother, "What shall I ask?" She said, "The head of John the Baptizer."

²⁵ She came in immediately with haste to the king, and asked, "I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptizer on a platter."

²⁶ The king was exceedingly sorry, but for the sake of his oaths, and of his dinner guests, he didn't wish to refuse her.

²⁷ Immediately the king sent out a soldier of his guard, and commanded to bring John's head, and he went and beheaded him in the prison,

²⁸ and brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the young lady; and the young lady gave it to her mother.

³ They make the king glad with their wickedness, And the princes with their lies.

⁴ They are all adulterers. They are burning like an oven that the baker stops stirring, From the kneading of the dough, until it is leavened.

⁵ On the day of our king, the princes made themselves sick with the heat of wine. He joined his hand with mockers.

² Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, might drink from it.

³ Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, drank from them.

⁴ They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.

¹⁵ The posts went forth in haste by the king's commandment, and the decree was given out in Shushan the palace. The king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city of Shushan was perplexed.

¹⁶ They went out at noon. But Ben Hadad was drinking himself drunk in the pavilions, he and the kings, the thirty-two kings who helped him.

¹⁷ The young men of the princes of the provinces went out first; and Ben Hadad sent out, and they told him, saying, There are men come out from Samaria.

¹⁸ He said, Whether they are come out for peace, take them alive, or whether they are come out for war, taken them alive.

¹⁹ So these went out of the city, the young men of the princes of the provinces, and the army which followed them.

²⁰ They killed everyone his man; and the Syrians fled, and Israel pursued them: and Ben Hadad the king of Syria escaped on a horse with horsemen.

¹² It happened, when [Ben Hadad] heard this message, as he was drinking, he and the kings, in the pavilions, that he said to his servants, Set [yourselves in array]. They set [themselves in array] against the city.