The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor. Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray. Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth. In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death (Proverbs 12:24-28).
I chose this passage for one reason: it mentioned sloth twice in close proximity.
Like many other things, remarks (or riddles) about sloth are scattered throughout Proverbs in no seeming order.
Is there a method to Solomon’s apparent madness?
WISDOM & WOMEN
One of the most consistent themes in Proverbs is the importance of listening to and loving the right woman. Wisdom and Foolishness are portrayed as two women competing for a young man’s affection in Proverbs 1-9. That section, the first “book” of Proverbs, has a much more recognizable order. In that book, the young man (“my son” or “my sons”) is encouraged to embrace Wisdom and reject Foolishness and is also advised to love his wife and renounce any other, or to remain capable of becoming a devoted husband by avoiding offers of sex from others.
The last “book” in Proverbs is chapter 31—in which a queen mother advises her son to avoid drinking too much and to look for the right kind of woman to marry. Not all of that passage will apply directly to all prospective brides. Relatively few women have servants, for example. But the principles are for every man. “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vapor, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.“
WISDOM & CREATION
So marriage and the temptations that will hurt a marriage are prominent in Proverbs. But what else can we say? Consider chapter 8. Wisdom tells us that she is God’s order in creation. If you want to live and not die, you need to embrace Wisdom. “All who hate me love death,” says Wisdom. And a little earlier (verses 15-16), Wisdom says she’s the way for a man to practice dominion: “By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; by me princes rule, and nobles, all who govern justly.“
So, whatever else we can say about Proverbs, there is no question that a major purpose is to apply the story of Genesis 1 and 2 to everyday life. All the elements are here: Creation, dominion, marriage, and choosing between life and death. Solomon is writing education riddles about human life designed to remind us how to live as people on a mission from God.
THIS IS WHO WE ARE
Genesis 1:26-28 tell us what human beings are in a passage commonly called “The Dominion Mandate.”
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Men and women are meant to reflect God’s glory by working and transforming creation and uniting in marriage to spread that work of transformation through generations. This is who we as human beings ARE. To the extent we resist and distort that calling we damage ourselves. Of course, not every individual needs to personally cover all aspects of this template. Jesus didn’t and neither did the Apostle Paul as far as marriage is concerned. But this is the design and plan of the human race as a whole.
MORE THAN MARRIAGE
So far, I have established why women are so important to Proverbs. I am speaking from the perspective of the “son” who is the ideal audience for the book. Applying more generically, we can say that marriage is essential to who humans are and what they are supposed to be. Marriage is important because it is intrinsic to the way God created us. Human identity is bound to the Dominion Mandate.
But marriage is not the only essential element in that mandate and thus not the only concern in Proverbs.
THE FIRST PERVERSION IS REFUSING TO WORK
Proverbs 1-9 contains two lengthy temptation warnings. The second temptation described in great detail is the description of the Adulteress in Proverbs 7. You can’t be God’s agent of dominion if you’re sidetracked to destroy your own and other people’s marriages—or your own ability to function within marriage.
But the first lengthy temptation warning is found in the very first chapter. The first thing Solomon tells young men not to do is join a gang and live by robbery.
His description seems extreme. The tempters say, ‘Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood; let us ambush the innocent without reason.”
That temptation to live by plunder may be extreme, but Proverbs displays the extremes to us in order to get us to see the implications of our thoughts and habits. When Wisdom tells the reader that “All who hate me love death,” rarely is she speaking to those who self-consciously want to commit suicide. But there are things that may seem pleasant that will lead there despite your intentions. So if you don’t want to live by plunder you need to cultivate certain habits and resist certain vices. You need to become a certain kind of person.
Solomon also addresses the issues of not only robbery but work and sloth in chapter 10:1-5 in the beginning of the second section of the book
The proverbs of Solomon.
A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. The LORD does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.
But if you’re not going to live by taking from other people you must learn to provide for yourself.
God made us to change and rule over the world by our efforts and and in that context Solomon has to warn against sloth.
WE BECOME WHO WE ARE OR WE DISTORT OURSELVES
Before we marginalize this part of Scripture as “law” versus “Gospel,” or as Old Testament moralism, or as insignificant compared to other parts of the Bible, let’s remember that what we do is who we become.
The theologian Cornelius Van Til explained how this works out as we follow the Dominion Mandate given to Adam and Eve.
The most important aspect of this program is surely that man should realize himself as God’s vicegerent in history. Man was created God’s vicegerent and he must realize himself as God’s vicegerent. There is no contradiction between these two statements. Man was created a character and yet had to make himself ever more of a character. So we may say that man was created a king in order that he might become more of a king than he was…
If man was to perform this, his God-given task, he must himself be a fit instrument for this work. He was made a fit instrument for this work, but he must also make himself an ever better instrument for this work… Finally, he must will to will the will of God for the whole world; he must become an ever better king than he already is. For this reason then the primary ethical duty of man is self-realization. Through self-realization man makes himself the king of the earth, and if he is truly the king of the earth then God is truly the king of the universe, since it is as God’s creature, as God’s vicegerent, that man must seek to develop himself as king.
Man must work out his own will, that is, he must develop his own will first of all. Man’s will needs to become increasingly spontaneous in its reactivity. Man was created so that he spontaneously served God. For this reason he must grow in spontaneity. Whatever God has placed within man by way of activity must also be regarded by him as a capacity to be developed. …
[M]an’s will needs to become increasingly fixed in its self-determination… In proportion that man develops his self-determination does he develop God’s determination or plan for his kingdom on earth. God accomplishes his plans through self-determined characters. An unstable man would be useless in the kingdom of God…
As man approaches his ideal, the realization of the kingdom of God, the area of his activity naturally enlarges itself. Just as the manager of a growing business needs to increase with his business in alertness, stability, and comprehensiveness of decision, so man, with the development of his progress toward his ideal, would have to develop momentum in order to meet his ever increasing responsibility.
We know this has to be true because Jesus himself, though conceived and born ethically perfect, went through that process:
- Luke 2:40- And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.
- Luke 2:52- And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
- Hebrews 2:10- For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation mature through suffering.
- Hebrews 5:8–9- Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.
Adam and Eve, in carrying out the subduing and ruling over the earth in fact and not only in title, would pretty obviously also come to rule themselves in a new and more mature way. And each person, as he grew up and participated in this royal project, would be transformed into a new kind of king.
Thanks to the work of Jesus, that’s still our story and our identity.
So when king Solomon seeks to teach us about how to grow up and become strong, filled with wisdom—he is going to warn us about anything that would warp our growth and ultimately dehumanize us.
OUR DESIRES MUST FIT INTO WHO WE ARE
In a way, it’s quite natural. We all enjoy leisure. There is nothing wrong with that. But like anything else, we may not be able to have as much as we want as soon as we want. And we can mess up our lives if we can’t resist the desire for leisure in order to get what we need. Proverbs 21:25- “The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.” Notice the desire is treated as an external threat that attacks a person. Why? Because the person isn’t acting like an integrated, mature adult. Almost everyone desires leisure but they also desire to be able to have some reasonable chance to provide for themselves and others in the future. They also want to be able to take pride in their accomplishments. Somehow, the desire for relief from work overcomes these other things. He develops bad habits and fails to develop good ones.
So this desire, like many other desires, can become an attacker that can hurt, trap, and destroy a person’s life.
A RULING DESIRE CAN CORRUPT THINKING
This desire will provide rationalizations. Proverbs 20:4- “The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.” Well, who wants to work outside when it’s wet and cold?
Or the desire will cultivate in us real fears that intimidate us, even though the things that intimidate us are not as risky as sloth. Proverbs 22:13- “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!’” Well, maybe. I can’t promise you that if you leave your home to go work tomorrow morning nothing bad will happen to you. But the odds are you already don’t want to go outside for other reasons if you’re thinking of things that might go wrong. So instead of being a courageous king, you are enslaved by anxieties.
And we become resistant to people who want to talk us out of our cherished illusions: “Proverbs 26:16- The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.“
Often people do work, but only for awhile, and then they quit. Thus, the opposite of sloth isn’t “hard work” necessarily. Nor is it “long hours.” Those are necessitated in certain circumstances but not all. Rather, the antithesis of sloth is diligence. Diligence is contrasted with sloth. Proverbs 12:27- Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth. So he’ll bother to hunt but not to cook.
Solomon gets extreme on this point: Proverbs 19:24- “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth.” This ridiculous image emphasizes the point. People start something, then get impatient and discouraged, and quit before they should.
So, while the sluggard might not plant, sometimes he does plant and yet doesn’t bother to harvest: “He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.”
Because sloth is the opposite of diligence, it can be characterized both by a lack of ambition or an unrealistic expectation of quick wealth. Proverbs 21:5- “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” In general, we need to be careful of shortcuts and schemes that offer us things we should know are too good to be true, because there’s something in us that wants to believe. Proverbs 28:19- “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.” Proverbs 12:11 says almost the same thing.
This resistance to high risk high reward schemes (at least supposedly high reward) on the part of the wise may explain some of the seemingly contradictory sayings in Proverbs. Like this pair:
- Proverbs 27:12- The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.
- Proverbs 28:1- The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.
Obviously these have to be applied differently, but it seems that the prudent are less likely to pusue these hasty schemes while the sluggard embraces them. The youths who join a bandit’s gang are ignoring the danger they’re in. On the other hand, being diligent involves confidence and faith that God will take care of you. Others let their fears put them at risk of impoverishment. They fear “the lion outside” that may not even exist.
BECOMING A BETTER RULER
But if you reject sloth you become a less slothful person. If you practice diligence, you develop the ability to be diligent and the faith and patience required by that attitude, habit, and skill.
And this has spiritual implications. It may or may not lead to economic success. Financial success is more likely but Solomon denies the wise always get rich and the foolish always get poor. Solomon considers wisdom as preferable to all other wealth. Sometimes wisdom and wealth don’t coincide.
But the issues of diligence and sloth are used by Jesus to illustrate the basics of living the Christian life, like in his parable in Matthew 25:
Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
At a certain level, slothfulness translates into unbelief and faith in Jesus Christ is displayed as diligence.
Galatians 6:9–10- And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
How could one follow Paul’s instructions in Romans 12 without developing diligence?
Romans 12:11-12- Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
So these are things God wants us to work on, promising to help us, and in so doing, gets us to work on ourselves and the kind of people we are.