A Manifold Drunkenness
1 Thessalonians 5:7
For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.


The drunkenness here spoken of is not that from wine only, but that also which comes of all vices. For riches and the desire of wealth is a drunkenness of the soul, and so carnal lust; and every sin you can name is a drunkenness of the soul. On what account, then, has he called vice sleep? Because, in the first place, the vicious man is inactive with respect to virtue; again, because he sees every thing as a vision; he views nothing in its true light, but is full of dreams and oftentimes of unreasonable actions; and if he sees anything good he has no firmness. Such is the present life. It is full of dreams and fantasy. Riches are a dream, and glory, and everything of that sort. He who sleeps sees not things that are and have a real subsistence, but things that are not he fancies as things that are. Such is vice and the life that is passed in vice. It sees not things that are, but things that are fleeting and fly away, and that soon.

( Chrysostom.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.

WEB: For those who sleep, sleep in the night, and those who are drunk are drunk in the night.




Why Christians Should not Sleep
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