Warning Against Laziness
August 29, 2022
Commentary
Solomon warns about two practices that lead to poverty. The first talks about unnecessary loss of what you have earned and the second deals with the inability to earn any money at all.
Solomon is warning about a foolish financial entanglement referred to as surety (vv. 1-5). Surety is cosigning someone else’s debt if they fail to pay. Striking hands was a gesture something like shaking hands or in our day “signing on the dotted line.” It is an irresponsible form of generosity that places the cosigner in a financial position over which he has no control and should be avoided. The writer urges that anyone who may have agreed to be surety for another’s debt should seek to get out of that trap as soon as he can. One should free himself from such a debt agreement, even if it brings embarrassment. In fact not even one night should pass before the situation is taken care of.
We find a warning against laziness (vv. 6-11). A lazy, irresponsible person is challenged to learn from the ant and be wise (v. 6). In Palestine there is a species of ants which does not eat meat, but feeds on grain and stores its food in harvest time for the coming winter. Apparently these ants had no leader to direct them or prod them. Yet they work better than many people under a leader! They worked in anticipation of future needs. It is a proper view of future needs that motivates a person to action. Poverty will come on the person who continues to nap when he ought to be working.
Application
Come up with a list of work standards. This is a list of things I will and will not do as I go out into the market place . Also come up with a Scripture reference for each item on the list.
Proverbs 6:1– 11 (NET)
1 My child, if you have made a pledge for your neighbor, if you have become a guarantor for a stranger,
2 if you have been ensnared by the words you have uttered, and have been caught by the words you have spoken,
3 then, my child, do this in order to deliver yourself, because you have fallen into your neighbor’s power: Go, humble yourself, and appeal firmly to your neighbor.
4 Permit no sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids.
5 Deliver yourself like a gazelle from a snare, and like a bird from the trap of the fowler.
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; observe her ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander, overseer, or ruler,
8 yet it would prepare its food in the summer; it gathered at the harvest what it will eat.
9 How long, you sluggard, will you lie there? When will you rise from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to relax,
11 and your poverty will come like a robber, and your need like an armed man.