Job 1:13

13. There was a day Literally, Now it was the day; the day of festivity, which in the rotation happened to be at the house of the firstborn. On this account it was probably the most marked of all the feasts of the year. It was a feast, too, in which the drinking of wine is specified, to set forth its sumptuousness and hilarity. These two circumstances heighten the precipice down which the family is so soon to be plunged. In the mention of wine-drinking we have, in part, the reason for Job’s anxiety over these festive occasions, and perhaps also the secret of his standing aloof.

Wine-drinking and its drunken effects, even upon women, are portrayed on the monuments of Egypt. The winepresses and offerings of wine to the gods, pictured in the tombs, establish the making of wine as far back as the fourth dynasty, (about 2450 B.C.) This is supposed to be the remotest period from which the manners of the people were thus perpetuated. The culture of the vine was, without doubt, of a vastly greater antiquity, (Genesis 9:20,) as is seen in the exceptional fact that substantially the same word is used for wine among almost all eastern and western nations. The basis of the word is found, according to Pott and Kuhn, in the Indo-European language, the former making it from we, to weave, the latter from wan, to love. Gesenius and Furst, on the other hand, hold that it is of Semitic extraction, and cognate to יין , either from a root signifying “burning,” or another, “to tread out grapes.” The oneness of the word in the Indo-European and Semitic languages may be illustrated by comparing the Greek οινος , originally foinos, the Latin vinum, the Welsh g-win, with the Hebrew yayin, the Arabic wain, (a bunch of grapes,) Ethiopic wain, (wine.)