A drunkard wandered into a cemetery — the one place in the ancient world where no sane person would voluntarily spend the night. The dead were there, and so were the spirits, and so were dangers both physical and spiritual that only a man too drunk to know better would ignore.
The Midrash (Tanhuma, Shemini) uses this story to teach about the consequences of intoxication. The drunkard in the cemetery is not merely a comic figure. He is a parable for every person who dulls their senses with wine and wanders into spiritual danger without realizing it.
What happened to the drunkard in the cemetery varies by source. In some versions, he slept among the graves and awoke to terrifying visions. In others, the dead spoke to him, and he heard secrets about the future that he was too intoxicated to remember. In still others, he was simply found in the morning, disheveled and confused, a cautionary spectacle for the entire community.
The sages connected this story to the death of Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, who entered the Tabernacle and offered "strange fire" before God (Leviticus 10:1-2). One interpretation holds that they were intoxicated when they entered — drunk on wine, approaching the holiest place on earth without the sobriety required. God struck them dead.
The drunkard in the cemetery and the priests in the Tabernacle share the same lesson: intoxication and holiness do not mix. The person who approaches sacred space — whether a cemetery where the dead rest or a sanctuary where God dwells — must be fully present, fully aware, fully sober. Anything less is not worship. It is desecration.