Proverbs12chapter 12

"He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread" assumes a specific kind of farming. The hills of Judah and Ephraim were worked in stone-walled terraces that had to be rebuilt after every winter, ploughed with a wooden ard behind a pair of oxen, and sown by hand. The work was constant, and a man who chased "vain persons" instead spent the year on someone else's schedule.

"The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting" describes a real failure. Hunting with snares, nets, and a bow was how a household added meat, but game spoils in a day in that heat. Catching it and not dressing it out means the whole effort rots on the floor.

"A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast" was practical as well as kind. An ox or a donkey was the most expensive thing most families owned — plough, transport, and threshing power in one animal — and the Law itself ordered rest for the animal on the Sabbath and forbade muzzling the ox that treads out the grain.

The court sayings sit alongside the farming ones because the same men did both. "He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: but a false witness deceit" was heard by farmers who would be called as witnesses at the gate about a boundary or a stray animal that same season.