Proverbs 22:13
The slacker says, “There is a lion outside! I will be slain in the streets!”
BSB
ASV
The sluggard saith, There is a lion without; I shall be slain in the streets.
KJV
The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.
The point of the satire is the ingenuity with which the slothful man devises the most improbable alarms. He hears that “there is a lion without,” i. e., in the broad open country; he is afraid of being slain in the very streets of the city.
1834–1892
THIS slothful man seems to cherish that one dread of his about lions as if it were his favorite aversion and he felt it to be too much trouble to invent another excuse. Perhaps he hugs it to his soul all the more because it is a home-born fear, conjured up by his own imagination, and as mothers are said to love their weakest children best, so is he fondest of this most imbecile of excuses! At any rate, it serves him for a passable excuse for laziness, and that is what he wants.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk5
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Proverbs 15:19The way of the slacker is like a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.
leads to
And there will be a highway called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not travel it—only those who walk in the Way—and fools will not stray onto it.
Thorns and snares lie on the path of the perverse; he who guards his soul stays far from them.
And whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.”
The slacker says, “A lion is in the road! A fierce lion roams the public square!”
Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path, because of my oppressors.
