to guzzle strong drink: heavy, habitual drinking, always named as a fault
This is not the Bible's ordinary word for drinking. Hebrew already has that word (שָׁתָה), used of water at a well, of wine at a feast, and of the cup at a covenant meal, and it carries no criticism at all. This word is narrower and never neutral. It pictures someone putting away strong drink in quantity, and doing it as a settled habit rather than on one bad evening. All five times it appears, it appears inside an accusation.
Its closest relative is a noun from the same family (סֹבֶא), which names the drink itself, a strong fermented brew. Scholars increasingly think the noun came first and the verb grew out of it, because the same root turns up across the ancient Near Eastern languages as the word for beer and for the tavern keeper who sold it. That shapes the flavor of the verb. It is less "to be intoxicated" than "to put away the strong stuff," with the disrepute of the tavern hanging on it.
In the law and in the wisdom books the word is half of a fixed pair. The hard drinker travels with the glutton (זָלַל), and together the two words name one recognizable character: the son who is eating and drinking through the family's living. Proverbs states the outcome not as a moral lecture but as a plain economic forecast, that such a man will be stripped of what he owns and dressed in rags. Deuteronomy 21:20 puts the same pair in the mouths of parents bringing a charge against a son they can no longer control.
The prophets take the word up the social ladder. In Isaiah 56:12 it is the leaders themselves who call out the invitation, promising each other a bigger day of drinking tomorrow while the people they were posted to guard go unwatched. In Nahum 1:10 it describes an army so soaked with drink that it will burn like dry straw.
Nuances
Whether the phrase ukhesovam sevuim at Nahum 1:10 is original or an accidental scribal duplication generated from the preceding sirim sevukhim, "entangled thorns."
- contestedDelete the phrase as dittography from the preceding "entangled thorns": the four words share consonantal clusters in a way that invites scribal echo, the Septuagint has no equivalent, and the resulting Hebrew is otherwise unintelligible.; Hermann Gunkel, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 13 (1893), 235; Wilhelm Rudolph, Micha, Nahum, Habakuk, Zephanja (KAT 13/3, 1975); J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL, 1991); BDB, s.v. סָבָא (Brown-Driver-Briggs)
- contestedRetain the received text as deliberate sound-play: a fourfold sibilant sequence picturing the Ninevite army as a stupefied, drink-sodden mass consumed like dry straw, difficulty here being a mark of the poet's originality rather than of corruption.; Klaas Spronk, Nahum (Historical Commentary on the Old Testament, 1997), 6, 57; Duane L. Christensen, Nahum (Anchor Yale Bible 24F, 2009); O. Palmer Robertson, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (NICOT, 1990); Marvin A. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets (Berit Olam, 2000)
Disputed
Whether the root is primarily nominal, naming a specific fermented drink (probably beer) from which the verb "to guzzle" is derived, or primarily verbal, with the noun sove "liquor" derived from the verb.
- majorityNominal first. The Akkadian verb sabu "to draw beer" is treated as denominal from the beverage and profession nouns sabu "beer" and sabu / sabitu "tavern-keeper, alewife," and a newly published Amorite-Akkadian bilingual vocabulary glosses an Amorite sabu with Sumerian GESTIN "wine" while expressly naming Hebrew סָבָא and סֹבֶא as cognate.; The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. S, ed. Erica Reiner (1984), s.v. sabu A, sabitu, sabu B; A. R. George and M. Krebernik, "Two Remarkable Vocabularies: Amorite-Akkadian Bilinguals!", Revue d'Assyriologie 116 (2022); HALOT, s.v. סָבָא / סֹבֶא (Koehler-Baumgartner); Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Meyer and Donner (2013), s.v. סבא
- minorityVerbal first. The verb "imbibe, drink largely" is basic, and the noun "drink, liquor (apparently strong, choice)" is derived from it.; BDB, s.v. סָבָא, סֹבֶא (Brown-Driver-Briggs)