"Do not drink wine or intoxicating drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of meeting, lest you die. [It shall be] a statute forever throughout your generations,

"that you may distinguish between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean,

And it happened when [Ben-Hadad] heard this message, as he and the kings [were] drinking at the command post, that he said to his servants, "Get ready." And they got ready to attack the city.

So they went out at noon. Meanwhile Ben-Hadad and the thirty-two kings helping him were getting drunk at the command post.

So he said, "If they have come out for peace, take them alive; and if they have come out for war, take them alive."

And each one killed his man; so the Syrians fled, and Israel pursued them; and Ben-Hadad the king of Syria escaped on a horse with the cavalry.

The couriers went out, hastened by the king's command; and the decree was proclaimed in Shushan the citadel. So the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed.

Blessed [are] you, O land, when your king [is] the son of nobles, And your princes feast at the proper time -- For strength and not for drunkenness!

But they also have erred through wine, And through intoxicating drink are out of the way; The priest and the prophet have erred through intoxicating drink, They are swallowed up by wine, They are out of the way through intoxicating drink; They err in vision, they stumble [in] judgment.

For all tables are full of vomit [and] filth; No place [is clean.]

While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which [had been] in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.

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

" Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart.

My people ask counsel from their wooden [idols,] And their staff informs them. For the spirit of harlotry has caused [them] to stray, And they have played the harlot against their God.

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

In the day of our king Princes have made [him] sick, inflamed with wine; He stretched out his hand with scoffers.

" Indeed, because he transgresses by wine, [He is] a proud man, And he does not stay at home. Because he enlarges his desire as hell, And he [is] like death, and cannot be satisfied, He gathers to himself all nations And heaps up for himself all peoples.

Then an opportune day came when Herod on his birthday gave a feast for his nobles, the high officers, and the chief [men] of Galilee.

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

Immediately she came in with haste to the king and asked, saying, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter."

Immediately the king sent an executioner and commanded his head to be brought. And he went and beheaded him in prison,