The slogan stitches together a wise man’s advice, a frightened city’s party cry and a rich man’s last plan. Scripture blesses the first and warns about the other two.
The phrase eat drink and be merry is not one verse. It blends Ecclesiastes 8:15, where enjoying food and drink is a gift from God, with Isaiah 22:13, 1 Corinthians 15:32 and Luke 12:19, where the same words become the motto of people who have stopped thinking about God and the people around them.
So the Bible says yes and no. Yes to joy received from God’s hand. No to pleasure used as a way of not looking at God, at death, or at your neighbor.
The food is the same in every one of these passages. What changes is who the person thinks gave it to them, and who else they think it is for.
Most people add a tail to the line: eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. That sentence is nowhere in Scripture. It is a patchwork.
The English wording mostly comes from the King James Version. Ecclesiastes 8:15 says that “a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry,” and in Luke 12:19 the rich man tells his soul to “take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” The “tomorrow we die” half belongs to Isaiah and Paul. English speakers sewed the pieces into one proverb and lost track of which piece was a blessing.
The Teacher commends enjoying food, drink and work as what God has given for the days of your life. God is in the sentence.
A city under threat throws a feast instead of turning to God. The prophet treats their party cry as sin, not wisdom.
Paul quotes Isaiah to show where life ends up if the dead are not raised. It is the logic of a world without resurrection, and he rejects it.
Jesus puts “eat, drink and be merry” in the mouth of a man talking only to himself about his barns. God calls him a fool that same night.
One of these four is a gift and three are warnings. Quoting the slogan without knowing which one you mean is how a warning ends up printed on a kitchen sign.
“So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes 8:15The man speaking calls himself Qoheleth, usually rendered the Teacher or the Preacher. The book never actually names Solomon, which we walk through in who wrote Ecclesiastes. “Under the sun” is his phrase for life as anyone can observe it from ground level, where the wise and the foolish die alike and nothing you build can be held on to.
His key word is hevel, the word English Bibles give as “meaningless” or “vanity.” It means breath or vapor. Not worthless. Brief, and impossible to grip.
And he did try gripping. In chapter 2 he runs the exact experiment the slogan recommends. “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.” His verdict on the whole project: “everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Pleasure as a life plan failed him.
So in 8:15 he is not recommending the party he already tried. He is recommending something smaller. Eat your bread. Drink your cup. Find some satisfaction in your work. And he says where it comes from: “This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?” (Ecclesiastes 2:24 to 25).
The strongest scholarly reading pushes against any cheerful version of this. The late Michael V. Fox, one of the leading modern interpreters of the book, writes that “Qohelet has little happiness and no joy. But he does have much pleasure, at least of a superficial sort, and he decides to ‘make do’ with this.”
We think he has the tone right. The Teacher is no party host. He has stared at death and decided that bread and work and the people you love are still worth receiving with thanks. That is why his advice is not hedonism. Hedonism makes pleasure the goal. The Teacher treats it as a gift from a Giver, taken with open hands while you have breath.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
The second half of the slogan comes from Isaiah 22, and the scene is grim. Jerusalem is under threat, and most commentators connect the chapter with the Assyrian crisis in Hezekiah’s day. The people have inspected the walls, torn down houses to shore them up and built a reservoir for water, “but you did not look to the One who made it.”
God called them “to weep and to wail,” to put on sackcloth. They threw a feast instead.
“But see, there is joy and revelry, slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine! ‘Let us eat and drink,’ you say, ‘for tomorrow we die!’”
Isaiah 22:13That is not gratitude. It is numbness, a feast held so nobody has to hear the call to turn back.
Paul picks up the same words in 1 Corinthians 15:32, and his wording matches the Greek translation of Isaiah. Some in Corinth were saying there is no resurrection of the dead. Paul follows that idea all the way down: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” If death has the last word, grab what you can. Then he tells them to come back to their senses.
Life is a dead end, so squeeze it. God is left out of the sentence, and so is everyone not invited to the feast. This is Isaiah’s city and Paul’s hypothetical.
Life is short, so receive it with thanks. God is the Giver, the day is His, and the table has room. This is the Teacher, and it is the direction Jesus takes it.
Paul’s answer is not “stop enjoying things.” It is Christ raised. If the tomb is empty, life is not a race to consume before the lights go out. Joy can be received instead of grabbed.
Jesus tells this parable after a man asks Him to make his brother split an inheritance. He starts with a warning: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
“And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’”
Luke 12:19 to 20Notice what the man is not condemned for. The harvest is good, and the ground produced it, which is God’s doing. Eating and drinking are not the problem either. The problem is the conversation. My crops, my barns, my grain, and he talks the whole thing over with himself. No God in the plan, no workers, no neighbor.
God’s verdict is not a threat of torment. His life is demanded that night, and the barns go to somebody else. Jesus draws the line in verse 21: “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” We follow that thread further in store up treasures in heaven and money is the root of all evil.
To rejoice, to be glad, to make merry. A good word, not a sinful one.
The rich fool tells himself to be merry, alone, over full barns.
The same verb for the father’s party when the lost son comes home. “Let’s have a feast and celebrate.” It appears four times in that chapter.
The rich man who “lived in luxury every day” while Lazarus lay at his gate.
Luke uses one word for three feasts. One is the joy of a father over a son who came home, which we unpack in the prodigal son. The other two are men celebrating while God and the poor are shut outside, the second of which is Lazarus and the rich man. The merriment itself is never the sin. Who is invited is the whole question.
At Sound of Heaven we read this whole conversation through Jesus, and Jesus did not treat food and wine as spiritually suspect. He was accused of the opposite: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’” His first sign in John’s Gospel was wine at a wedding, and His favorite picture of the kingdom was a banquet full of unlikely guests.
The teaching that enjoyment is less holy than denial is wrong. Ecclesiastes 9:7 says, “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do,” and 1 Timothy 6:17 says God “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” That guilt lands hardest on sincere believers raised to feel watched, who cannot enjoy a birthday dinner without apologizing to God. Guilt over a good meal is not holiness.
The slogan used as a license is also wrong. “You only live once, so take all of it” is Isaiah’s city, not the Teacher’s table. It gets used to excuse excess and to shrug off the people who pay for it, like a family living with someone’s drinking. Scripture does not call that joy. It calls it foolishness.
The Kingdom of God is here now, and Paul says it “is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” The table is not the Kingdom, but where the Kingdom is, the table is where those get served.
For some people, food or drink stopped feeling like a gift long ago and became the way they get through the day. If that is you, nobody here is shaming you. Jesus sat with people exactly where they were.
Freedom is real, and it usually comes with help from other people. You do not have to have it together before you ask for prayer, and you will find honest, shame-free ground on alcohol in what the Bible says about drinking.
In Luke 12, what makes the rich man a fool?
The harvest came from the ground, and Ecclesiastes commends eating and drinking. The folly is a closed circle: my crops, my barns, my soul. Jesus sums it up as storing things up for yourself while not being rich toward God.
Every passage here has a table. The Teacher’s is thankful, Isaiah’s city is numb, and the rich fool’s is set for one. The difference was never the food.
Jesus brings it together. He ate with anyone who would sit with Him, told a story about a father who threw a party for a son who had wasted everything, and on the night before the cross He took bread and a cup and gave them away. The meal He left His followers, which we look at in what the Bible says about communion, is not about grabbing before tomorrow. It is about receiving life from Him and passing it around.
Because He is raised, tomorrow is not the end of the story. Eternal life is His gift, and it begins now. That frees you to enjoy the dinner and the Saturday off without clutching, and to set out one more plate.
For related reading, see the biblical definition of joy, godliness with contentment is great gain and gluttony in the Bible.
Eat, drink and be merry is a blessing when God is the Giver and your neighbor has a seat, and a warning when the feast is a way to forget them both.
Whether simple joys feel off limits or something at the table has you stuck, send us a request and somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
The wording comes mainly from the King James Version. Ecclesiastes 8:15 says a man has “no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry,” and in Luke 12:19 the rich fool tells himself to “eat, drink, and be merry.” The popular ending, “for tomorrow we die,” comes from Isaiah 22:13, which Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15:32. No single verse contains the whole saying. English speakers blended several passages that actually point in different directions.
Yes, but as a warning. In Isaiah 22:13 it is the cry of a city that throws a feast when God had called it to weep and turn back, and the prophet treats it as sin. In 1 Corinthians 15:32 Paul quotes it to show where life would lead if the dead are not raised. He is not recommending it. He is exposing the despair of a life without resurrection, and then he points to Christ, who has been raised.
The Teacher looks at life “under the sun,” short and hard to hold, and concludes that the best thing is to eat, drink and find gladness in your work through all the days God gives you. It is not a call to indulgence. In chapter 2 he tried unlimited pleasure and called it a chasing after the wind. Verse 15 recommends something smaller and steadier: receiving ordinary gifts from God’s hand with thanks while you have them.
In Luke 12:16 to 21 a rich man has a huge harvest, plans bigger barns and tells himself to take life easy, eat, drink and be merry. God calls him a fool, because his life is demanded that very night and his stored goods will pass to someone else. The harvest and the meals are not the sin. The sin is a life planned entirely around himself, and Jesus says such a person is “not rich toward God.”
No. Ecclesiastes 9:7 says to eat your food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart, and 1 Timothy 6:17 says God richly provides everything for our enjoyment. Jesus Himself was criticized for eating and drinking with the wrong people. The line Scripture draws is not between pleasure and holiness. It runs between enjoyment received with thanks and shared with others, and pleasure used to shut out God and neighbor.