Proverbs 6:6 to 11 · Passage · Diligence
The Sluggard in Proverbs
Proverbs gathers its warnings against laziness around one figure, the slacker, and sets him against the ant and the diligent.
Of all the creatures Proverbs could have set before a lazy man, it chose an insect that no one commands.
Walk in the manner of the ant, O slacker; observe its ways and become wise.
- The passage
- Proverbs 6:6 to 11, Proverbs 24:30 to 34, Proverbs 26:13 to 16
- Book
- Proverbs
- Hold in memory
- Proverbs 6:6, Proverbs 13:4
Summary
The slacker of Proverbs could work and will not. Each saying sets a scene from his day, in bed, at the table, on the road or by his field, and closes on what the habit costs him. Against him Proverbs sets the diligent and the upright, whose work is steady and whose road is open.
- The Hebrew word for the slacker, atsel, belongs to Proverbs alone.
- In the paired sayings the diligent end with plenty, rule and satisfaction.
- The slacker's laziness costs others as well, from the one who sends him on an errand to the land that falls to ruin.
- He deceives himself, so his excuses and his self-regard keep him from learning.
- The New Testament carries the warning into the parable of the talents and the life of faith.
The Ant and the Slacker in Proverbs 6
The father of Proverbs sends the slacker to watch an insect, and then asks him how long he will sleep.
Diligence is steady work done in its season. Proverbs sets it before the reader mostly through its opposite, the slacker, who appears from chapter 6 to chapter 26.
The question is what the sayings show about the slacker and what they teach the diligent person in his place. The ant of chapter 6, the paired sayings, the field of chapter 24 and the four sayings of chapter 26 answer it. Albert Barnes, Gregory, Adam Clarke, John Gill and Bede read the portrait, and Bede and Clarke read it of the soul.
The lesson opens in the middle of a father's warnings to his son, just after the warning against pledging security for a neighbor's debt. Albert Barnes, in his Notes on Proverbs 6:6, writes that "The point of comparison with the ant is not so much the foresight of the insect as its unwearied activity during the appointed season".
How long will you lie there, O slacker? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit.The father turns from the ant to the sleeper, and the warning shows how a habit of small delays ends in want.
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, puts the fault in the timing of the sleep. "If the sluggard would work in the day, and sleep at night, it would be all proper", he writes, and "The ant yields him a lesson of reproach".
The Hebrew word the Berean text renders slacker is atsel, which the STEP Bible lexicon from Tyndale House glosses as indolent. Its tagging finds the word in 14 verses.
The Slacker Set Against the Diligent
Six sayings of Proverbs set the slacker beside the diligent or the upright.
Each pair sets the slacker's habit beside the habit that answers it.
| The habit | The slacker | The other line | Verse |
|---|---|---|---|
| His hands | Idle hands make one poor | diligent hands bring wealth | Proverbs 10:4 |
| His standing | laziness ends in forced labor | The hand of the diligent will rule | Proverbs 12:24 |
| His food | A lazy man does not roast his game | a diligent man prizes his possession | Proverbs 12:27 |
| His desire | The slacker craves yet has nothing | the soul of the diligent is fully satisfied | Proverbs 13:4 |
| His road | like a hedge of thorns | the path of the upright is a highway | Proverbs 15:19 |
| His giving | his hands refuse to work | the righteous give without restraint | Proverbs 21:25 to 26 |
Four of the six sayings set the slacker against charuts, the Hebrew word for diligent. In Proverbs 10:4, Proverbs 12:24 and Proverbs 12:27 the word for the idle or lazy one is remiyyah, which means deceit in the Psalms and Job.
The Field of the Slacker
In chapter 24 the teacher walks past a neglected farm and draws his lesson from what he sees.
I went past the field of a slacker and by the vineyard of a man lacking judgment. Thorns had grown up everywhere, thistles had covered the ground, and the stone wall was broken down.The scene shows neglect by its results, so the reader judges the owner by the state of his land.
I observed and took it to heart; I looked and received instruction:The teacher learns by looking, as the slacker of chapter 6 was told to learn by watching the ant.
The lesson he draws in Proverbs 24:33 to 34 repeats word for word the two lines that close the ant's lesson in Proverbs 6:10 to 11. The same warning closes a scene of the field and a scene of the bed.
Ecclesiastes makes the same point about a house.
Through laziness the roof caves in, and in the hands of the idle, the house leaks.The Teacher carries the lesson of the ruined field indoors, where neglect does its damage slowly.
The Excuses of the Slacker
The four sayings of Proverbs 26:13 to 16 show the slacker's fears, his bed, his dish and his opinion of himself.
The slacker says, “A lion is in the road! A fierce lion roams the public square!”The excuse stands first of the four sayings, because fear is the slacker's first defense against work.
Proverbs 22:13 gives the same excuse in other words. Gregory, in the Book of Pastoral Rule, writes that the slothful man "sets before him some that are difficult, but is inconsiderately afraid of others". So he "satisfies himself that he has good reason for remaining torpid".
As a door turns on its hinges, so the slacker turns on his bed.The verse stands for the slacker's busy idleness, motion that produces nothing.
The slacker buries his hand in the dish; it wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.The saying carries laziness into the slacker's own meal, so the habit at last works against his own good.
The slacker is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly.The last of the four sayings moves from the body to the mind, which is why the slacker cannot be taught.
Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the slacker to those who send him.The saying turns from the slacker himself to the man who relies on him, and so widens the harm.
Proverbs 26:15, Proverbs 26:16, Proverbs 10:26
A Farmer at His Work or a Soul Before God
Commentators read the slacker as a picture of a man who will not work and also as a picture of a soul slow to seek God.
Proverbs speaks of plowing, harvest, a dish and a field, and it also calls the slacker a man lacking judgment, so readers have taken the sayings at two levels.
The man who will not do his workJohn Gill on Proverbs 26:14; Albert Barnes on Proverbs 22:13
On this reading the sayings describe a man's daily work and its results. John Gill, in his Exposition of the Old Testament, says the slacker on his bed "turns himself from side to side" and does not "go about his business". On Proverbs 22:13 Barnes reads the saying as satire and writes that "The point of the satire is the ingenuity with which the slothful man devises the most improbable alarms".
The objection: Proverbs 24:30 calls the owner of the field "a man lacking judgment", and Proverbs 26:16 makes his fault a matter of self-deceit, so the sayings reach beyond his farm to his mind.
The soul slow in the things of GodBede, Commentary on Proverbs; Adam Clarke on Proverbs 13:4
Bede, in his Commentary on Proverbs, reads Proverbs 13:4 of the lazy person "who wants to reign with God but does not want to work for God". Clarke applies the same verse to religious people who "desire, but do not stir themselves up to lay hold upon the Lord".
The objection: the sayings name fields, seasons and food, and their warnings are poverty and hunger in this life, so the spiritual reading adds a second sense that the text does not state.
The Slacker in the New Testament
The portrait of Proverbs ends in poverty, and Jesus' parable of the talents ends with a master's verdict on a servant who hid what he was given in the ground.
‘You wicked, lazy servant!’ replied his master. ‘You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed.The master's charge treats idleness as a moral fault, which carries the sluggard sayings into the judgment of Christ's servants.
We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure. Then you will not be sluggish, but will imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.The letter moves the contrast of Proverbs from the field to faith and hope.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The tagged Hebrew Old Testament, with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses (STEP Bible, Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- STEP Bible TBESH, entry h6102 (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, on Proverbs 6:6 and 22:13.
- Gregory the Dialogist (Gregory I of Rome), The Book of Pastoral Rule, part 3, chapter 15.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, on Proverbs 6:10 and 13:4.
- John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748 to 1763), on Proverbs 26:14.
- Bede, Commentary on Proverbs, on Proverbs 13:4.
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