[549] Prov. xxiii. 33. זָרות must, as in xxii. 14, be rendered "strange women" (Bertheau). The alternative rendering, "the strange, or the rare" (Nowack) is logically inadmissible, because the verse is obviously describing the moral effects of drink, and no one can say that to see strange or rare visions is a moral effect to be specially deprecated. [550] "The primary discomforts of an act of drunkenness," says Dr. G. W. Balfour, "are readily removed for the time by a repetition of the cause. Thus what has been an act may readily become a habit, all the more readily that each repetition more and more enfeebles both the will and the judgment."--Art. "Drunkenness" in _Encycl. Brit._ [551] 2 Tim. iii. 4--φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόθεοι, pleasure-loving rather than God-loving; which means, not that men place pleasure before them consciously as a substitute for God, but only that the instinctive desire of pleasure has not been mastered by the love of God. XXII. _THE TREATMENT OF THE POOR._ "The rich and the needy meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all."--PROV. xxii. 2. "He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed, for he giveth of his bread to the poor."--PROV. xxii. 9. "He that oppresseth the poor, it is for his increase; he that giveth to the rich, it is for want."--PROV. xxii. 16. "Rob not the poor because he is poor, neither oppress the humble in the gate, for the Lord will plead their cause and despoil of life those that despoil them."--PROV. xxii. 22, 23.