Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 24:30

I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;

30 34. The Sluggard’s Vineyard. Comp. Pro 6:6-11, and notes.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

The chapter ends with an apologue, which may be taken as a parable of something yet deeper. The field and the vineyard are more than the mans earthly possessions. His neglect brings barrenness or desolation to the garden of the soul. The thorns are evil habits that choke the good seed, and the nettles are those that are actually hurtful and offensive to others. The wall is the defense which laws and rules give to the inward life, and which the sluggard learns to disregard, and the poverty is the loss of the true riches of the soul, tranquility, and peace, and righteousness.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Pro 24:30-34

I went by the field of the slothful.

The moral sluggard

Take these words as a pointed reproof of the negligent and immoral head of a family. The cause of prevailing irreligion is the deplorable negligence of masters and heads of families, in cultivating that field which is more immediately placed under their inspection and care.

1. The fatal consequences of irreligious sloth and negligence in those whom Providence hath raised up to be the heads of families. Families are the nurseries of the Church and state: it is from them that every department of life is filled up. Who is the slothful man? It is the moral sluggard whom the inspired writer has in view–the man who shows his children and servants, by all his pursuits, that this world is all for which they need to care. He neglects the important seasons and opportunities for moral culture. He does not teach them the duties which they owe to one another and to society. He may permit them to be instructed by others, but he does not support the instruction by his own influence and example. See the consequences of this negligence illustrated in the sluggards garden. Being destitute of rule, management, or control, his children absorb every wrong sentiment with their earliest sense, and are more and more corrupted with every breath they draw. There is no order, calmness, moderation, or self-command among the members of his family.

2. The futility of such apologies as are usually made for this negligence. They have not time; they have not capacity; or they do not feel under obligation in this direction. (James Somerville.)

The sluggards farm

On one occasion Solomon looked over the broken wall of a little estate which belonged to a farmer of his country. It consisted of a piece of ploughed land and a vineyard: One glance showed him that it was owned by a sluggard, who neglected it; for the weeds had grown right plentifully, and covered all the face of the ground. From this Solomon gathered instruction. Men generally learn wisdom if they have wisdom. Some look only at the surface, while others see not only the outside shell but the living kernel of truth which is hidden in all outward things. We may find instruction everywhere. We may gather rare lessons from things that we do not like.

I. The description of a slothful man. Solomon was right when he called him a man void of understanding. Not only does he not understand anything, but he has no understanding to understand with. He is empty-headed if he is a sluggard. As a rule we may measure a mans understanding by his useful activities. Certain persons call themselves cultured, and yet they cultivate nothing. If knowledge, culture, education do not lead to practical service of God, we cannot have learned what Solomon calls wisdom. True wisdom is practical; boastful culture vapours and theorises. Wisdom ploughs its field, hoes its vineyard, looks to its crops, tries to make the best of everything; and he who does not do so, whatever may be his knowledge of this, of that, of the other, is a man void of understanding.

1. Because he has opportunities which he does not use.

2. Because being bound to the performance of certain duties he did not fulfil them.

3. Because he has capacities which he does not employ.

4. Because he trifles with matters which demand his most earnest heed. The Christian who is slothful in his Masters service has no idea what he is losing.

II. Look at the sluggards land.

1. Land will produce something; some kind of fruit, good or bad. If you are idle in Gods work you are active in the devils work.

2. If the soul be not farmed for God, it will yield its natural produce. What is the natural produce of land when left to itself?

3. If we are slothful, the natural produce of our heart and of our sphere will be most inconvenient and unpleasant to ourselves.

4. In many instances there will be a great deal of this evil produce.

III. There must be some lesson in all this.

1. Unaided nature will always produce thorns and nettles, and nothing else.

2. See the little value of natural good intentions. This man, who left his field and his vineyard to be overgrown, always meant to work hard one of these fine days. Probably the worst people in the world are those who have the best intentions but never carry them out. Take heed of little delays and short puttings-off. You have wasted time enough already; come to the point at once before the clock strikes again. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The broken fence

The slothful man did no hurt to his fellow-men. He was not grossly vicious; he had not energy enough to care for that. He always let well alone, and for the matter of that, he let ill alone. Yet he always meant to be right.

I. Look at this broken fence. In the beginning it was a good fence, a stone wall. Mention some of the stone walls that men permit to be broken down when they backslide.

1. Sound principles instilled in youth.

2. Solid doctrines which have been learned.

3. Good habits once formed.

4. Week-night services are a stone wall.

5. So is Bible-reading.

6. So is a public profession of faith.

7. So is firmness of character.

II. The consequences of a broken-down fence.

1. The boundary has gone. He does not know which is his Lords property, and which remains an open common.

2. The protection is gone. When a mans heart has its wall broken all his thoughts will go astray, and wander upon the mountains of vanity. Nor is this all, for as good things go out, so bad things come in.

3. The land itself will go away. In many parts of Palestine the land is all ups and downs on the sides of the hills, and every bit of ground is terraced, and kept up by walls. When the walls fall the soil slips over terrace upon terrace, and the vines and trees go down with it; then the rain comes and washes the soil away, and nothing is left but barren crag which would starve a lark. Then I charge you, be sternly true to yourselves and God. Stand to your principles in this evil and wicked day. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The sluggards field

The royal philosopher has his attention drawn to a field and a vineyard in ruins.

1. Each man has a field and a vineyard entrusted to his care–the immortal soul.

2. He is provided with various implements of husbandry, with good seed, sure directions, and animating promises.

3. See the soul, the vineyard of such a labourer. The effects will generally be commensurate with the means used. As we sow we reap.

4. Observe the deplorable condition of the soul described in the text. Here is a desolate and neglected soul which once was cultivated–the backslider. Whence the cause of this sad change? What is the miserable end to be dreaded? (F. Close, M.A.)

The field of the sluggard

The passage is an exquisite picture. The moral of it might have been set boldly in unimaginative prose. Many persons have eyes to see things, but they do not think about what they see. If a really good man sets his heart within him to search through those things that his eyes show him, he is bound to see God. The man who saw this neglected vineyard with his inner eyes saw all that physical ruin and loss and mischief sprang from moral causes. Suffering in our physical and eternal life generally does spring from something wrong in our moral character. This vineyard had gone to ruin because its master was not man enough; he was a sluggard, an indolent fellow. It is a bad thing for a man to be too much his own master. That ruined vineyard had the roots of its ruin in that mans character. He began to be too fond of ease, indulgence, and bodily comfort; he began to lose the pluck and spirit and enterprise that make a man take his pleasure out of his work. If you have not eyes to see what lies in your drudgery and toil, you will not come to much in this world. The progress of becoming a sluggard was a gradual one, and the progress of damage was slow but sure. The man might have taken warning, but there was a process of dilapidation going on in his character. That was the mischief. You cannot scamp your outside work without ruining your character. And it was little bit by little bit. Learn it is a very difficult thing rightly and wisely to see your neighbours faults; but it is a much more difficult thing, though a much more necessary thing, to see your own. (W. E. Elmslie, D.D.)

Character

These words illustrate that field which every man has to cultivate–the field of character. We do not start life with characters ready made. What we have at the outset are but germs and possibilities. Until we have developed these germs for ourselves, their full value is not obtained. God has given life, powers, opportunities; out of these character is formed. This is a mans own property, whether it is good or bad. Character is the true gauge of a mans worth. Character is the only property we can take with us when we leave this world. Some mens fields are partly neglected.

1. There is no fence.

2. There is no fruit.

How comes this waste of precious ground? Traced to one source–self-indulgence. This reveals itself in various ways. In procrastination. In an easy assent to the popular misrepresentations of Christianity. In taking up doubts at second-hand, and parading them as though proof of their superior wisdom. But self-indulgence in every form will bring ruin. And the ruin of self-indulgence is fast approaching. Thy poverty shall come as one that travelleth. There may be seeming delay about its arrival; but there is also certainty. It is even now upon the road. (J. Jackson Goadby.)

The sluggards garden

The owner of this miserable garden was a sluggard. He would not work. So the deterioration went on unchecked, until what was once a beautiful, productive, cleanly-kept garden became a place of the rankest weeds. Here, in this text, is an important principle. People are always complaining that they possess few opportunities for their improvement. Wise men can go to school anywhere. We may learn by other mens mistakes. There are many sluggards.

1. The home sluggard. Usually a woman. Neglected homes lie at the root of much of the misery, sin, and unhappiness of the world to-day.

2. The sluggard in the battle of life. A good-for-nothing–a waster of time, money, and precious opportunities. God has not given us life to idle away. Maybe that something of this sluggish disposition lies within us all, and must be continually struggled with. The men who have done most in life, achieved the greatest fame, and gained its best prizes, have all been steady workers, diligent plodders.

3. The sluggard in the field of conscience. Weeds always grow quickly, though imperceptibly. There is a law of degeneration. It may be stated in this way: Let a thing alone, and it is certain to deteriorate. It is thus in the realm of conscience. There is nothing more dangerous than procrastination in the affairs of the soul and conscience. Many a man is aware of evil habits, and intends to give them up by and by. They never are given up in that way. Let your life alone, and you will awaken some day in awful astonishment at the depths to which you have sunk. Give up indolence and procrastination, then. (Wm. Hay, B.D.)

Idleness

I. It is foolish. Solomon characterises this indolent man as one void of understanding. therein do you see this mans folly? In the flagrant neglect of his own interests. You may cultivate your field by proxy, but you can only cultivate your soul yourself.

II. It is procrastinating.

III. It is ruinous.

1. Consider the wretched condition to which his estate was reduced. Lo, it was all grown over with thorns, etc. It might have waved in golden grain.

Two things suggested by the words.

1. That the ruin is gradual in its approach. It does not burst on you at once, like a thunder-storm.

2. The ruin is terrible in its consummation. As an armed man. It will seize you as with the grasp of an indignant warrior. (D. Thomas, D.D.)

The sluggards vineyard

I. Survey this waste vineyard.

1. We can see nothing but weeds. The outgrowths of the depraved heart yield no real revenue to man. Covetousness, malice, vain thoughts, evil desires, unbelief.

2. How luxuriantly they grow! Our evil propensities must, if unchecked by grace, increase.

3. There are various kinds of growth. Thorns and nettles. There may be a man of one book, business, virtue–but not of one evil propensity.

4. They are all harmful. Thorns to lacerate; nettles to sting.

5. The wall is broken. Anybody might sow there, or water the unprofitable crop–except the good sower, and he must enter by the door. God saves us from our sluggishness, not in it.

II. Why it remains in this deplorable condition. Ignorance that will not learn, and slothfulness that will not work.

III. Expostulate with the sluggard.

1. The vineyard is not your own.

2. Think what this vineyard might produce. Grapes for the cup of the King–fruit for days of sickness–refreshment for old age.

3. In its present state it is harmful to your neighbours. The thistle-down will float far and wide.

IV. In conclusion, some words of earnest counsel.

1. Come forth from your couch of indifference and resolutely inspect this desolate scene.

2. Do not seek to satisfy conscience by pulling a weed here and there. It must be thoroughly delved; ploughed up. Ye must be born again.

3. Do not be content with showing a few wild grapes. (R. A. Griffin.)

The vineyard of the sluggard

Some preachers teach morality without showing its vital connection with the gospel. Some fall into the opposite error, and fail to exhibit the ethical side of the gospel.

I. The field of the sluggard teaches that it is wrong to abuse what we regard as our own. The sluggard might contend that the garden was his own. The assumption is unfounded, and even blasphemous.

1. It is a sigh of gross disloyalty to God, who prefers an absolute claim to our life and service.

2. It involves a serious loss to our fellow-creatures, because the wind carries the seeds of our neglect into our neighbours garden. Apply to moral influence.

II. The possession of advantages, so far from absolving us from the necessity of labour and self-culture, renders them more necessary. The area of our responsibility coincides with the area of our possessions.

1. The cultivation of the body is a sacred obligation.

2. The mind is a vineyard that ought to be cultivated.

3. There is, too, the vineyard of the heart.

III. Neglect, as well as wilful wickedness, move in the direction of destruction. Observe that not only was the soil covered with noxious growths, but the means of protection were destroyed.

IV. Good men will learn from the follies and miseries of wicked men. Such instruction is gathered by observation and reflection. The two principal methods of acquiring wisdom. Observation collects facts, reflection arranges and applies them, converting them into solid nutriment for mind and heart. (Preachers Magazine.)

The slothful pastor

1. To every minister of God there is entrusted a field and a vineyard.

2. God supplies his labourer with various implements of husbandry, with good seed and providential opportunities.

3. God makes special promises to every devoted husbandman.

4. What a blessed sight is the field and vineyard of such a labourer!

5. But consider the different picture drawn in the text. What is so affecting as the contemplation of a neglected parish? How is this to be accounted for? This is the field of the slothful, and the vineyard of the man void of understanding.

What is the peoples duty, in the consideration of such a subject as this?

1. Let us all be anxious to avail ourselves of the religious privileges which we possess.

2. If it is our misfortune to have a slothful husbandman, let us not desert the Church, but unite in prayer for him and wait on God in meek submission to His will. (F. Close, M.A.)

The fools vineyard

In every age the sluggard and the fool have had their place, as well as the labourer and the wise man.

I. The scene shows us that if we will not have flowers and fruits we shall certainly have thorns and nettles. We cannot set aside the laws of nature. There is a law of growth in the very ground. It is the same with the character of man. We cannot simply do nothing. Life has its laws. We may pay them no heed, but they will assert themselves notwithstanding.

1. A man may resolve not to cultivate his mind. What then? The weeds of false notions, the thorns and nettles of prejudice, will prove his intellectual indolence.

2. A man may neglect to cultivate his moral nature. He will have nothing to do with religion. What then? Look at his false ideas, his superstition, his narrowness, his want of veneration, his superficial judgments, the weeds that have grown up.

II. The sluggard and the fool cannot hide the results of their neglect.

1. We cannot confine the results of a wasted life within our own bounds.

2. This being the case, we have not a right to do with what we call our own as we please. There is nothing which we can strictly call our own. Society will not allow us to do what we please with our own.

III. It is possible to be right in some particulars and to be grievously wrong in others. The legal right of the slothful man to the possession of the field might be undisputed. The vineyard might have fallen into the hands of the fool by strict lawful descent. So far so good. The case is on this side perfectly sound. Yet possession was not followed by cultivation. It is not enough to possess; we must increase. You ought not to allow even a house to fall into decay. There is no right of abuse. You have not a right to be dirty, to be ignorant, to be careless of life; on that line no rights have ever been established.

IV. The scene shows that even the worst abuses may be turned to good account. The good man is an example; the bad man is a warning.

1. You will see that the finest possessions may be wasted; property, talent, influence, opportunity.

2. You will see that wickedness always moves in the direction of destruction. It must do so. All indolence must go down. All sin forces itself in the direction of perdition. How did the wise man know that the man was void of understanding? By the state of his vineyard. Know a man by his surroundings, know him by his habits; there is character in everything. (J. Parker, D.D.)

Mental cultivation essential to the souls salvation

The immortal soul, although one and indivisible as its Author, yet, like a large estate, is divided into various sections, as the understanding, the memory, and the affections.

1. The intellectual faculty is the understanding. If not cultivated, it will produce an attendant crop of evil thoughts and vain imaginations, which, like thorns and nettles, will injuriously affect the soul.

2. Another property of the soul to be cultivated is the memory, and unless that is attended to, all the other would be like casting seed by the wayside.

3. Another section of the soul is that of the affections which are ever disposed to run wild, and want continual pruning and training, to guide them in a right direction. The heart is liable to alight upon objects that may pierce it with many sorrows, to prevent which the most efficient remedy is to have the mind occupied as much as possible in contemplation of eternal blessings. If the mind were to dwell on the attributes of the Deity, especially as the God of love, it would expand with delight as the blossom to the sun. (William Neville, M.A.)

Practical views of human life

How much have we profited, in the character of servants of God, by what we have seen of men? How much more wise in the best sense, conscientious, apt, effectually warned? The world should be regarded as an extensive outer department of the great school of religion. The things which the servant of God is taught in the inner school he is to observe illustrated, exemplified, proved, and enforced in this wide, outer department. When the learner in Gods peculiar school goes out to observe mankind he will think of the manner and cautions and rules for turning what he sees to the most beneficial account, and the most instructive points to fix his attention upon. An obvious one is, let not his observing be merely of the nature of speculation, not simply a seeing and judging what men are. Our knowledge of men must be diligently applied to a salutary use, especially for ourselves. Another point of admonition is–against prejudice and arrogance in observing and judging. Men often have some prepossession, and everything is forced into conformity to that. Or they have a set of judgments, estimates, shaped ready in their minds, and upon the slightest circumstance they will instantly fix one of them on a fellow-mortal. Some men assume to have an infallible insight, and perfect comprehension on all occasions; and pronounce as if there could be no appeal. Another warning is, beware of taking pleasure in perceiving and ascertaining what is wrong in man. Another rule is, take care that observations on other men are not suffered to go to the effect of our being better pleased with ourselves. There is a strange tendency to a gratified pride in our own supposed virtues; and to a most indulgent judgment of the things which even the grossest self-love cannot wholly approve. Our whole system and practice in the observation of the world should be resolutely formed on this principle, that our own correction is the grand object to be faithfully and constantly kept in view. Some more special observations may be given. Think of the probable difference between our judgments of the persons we look upon and their own judgments of themselves. In observing mankind we perceive, to a great extent, a sad deficiency or depravation of conscience; what a trifle they can make of many most important discriminations between good and evil. From this sight should not a solemn admonition come to us? One of the most conspicuous things to be noticed in looking on mankind is–how temptation operates and prevails. From this there should be an instructed vigilance for ourselves and appropriate prayers. A mournful thing to notice will be the great errors, the lapses, of good men. Reflect how unsafe any man, every man, is, but as God preserves him. Observe, too, the effect of situation and circumstance. How much they form mens notions, consciences, and habits as to good and evil. Observe errors of judgment–opinions; how they arise, become fixed, or are perverted. Take note of all worthier things, exemplary virtues, graces, wisdom. It is delightful to turn for instruction to these. (John Foster.)

The sluggards garden

The scene is familiar in Syria, where the intense heat and frequent rains so stimulate all wild and natural growths that a few months of neglect suffice to convert even the most carefully tilled plot and the most carefully tended vineyard into a scene of desolation. Under the pressure of an Eastern climate noxious weeds and brambles suck the soils fertility from wholesome plants and flowers with an astonishing and alarming rapidity. Not that similar catastrophes are unknown even in England; but, with us, it takes longer to produce them. Most of us must have seen plots where once a fair garden grew, which, in the course of a few years neglect, were all overrun with coltsfoot, dock, nettles, groundsel, and other foul weeds. It is not simply, as a careful observer has pointed out, that land once under the plough or the spade loses, when it is left untended, the special and wholesome growth with which it has been planted. The deterioration goes farther than that. For the flora which follows the plough, or the spade, is much more varied and delicate and beautiful than that of the unbroken land. And when tilled land is suffered to fall back into the hands of Nature, all these more delicate and beautiful wild flowers are supplanted by gorse and bramble, nettle and dock, and, above all, by the close, wiry grass which usurps and covers so many of our commons. Even where the plants in a neglected garden are not altogether supplanted and dispossessed, an ominous process of degeneration sets in. The flowers, once tended with so much care and grown to such perfection, revert to an earlier and inferior type; they lose form, colour, perfume; the large voluptuous garden roses, with their infinite variety and infinite wealth of hue, sink back into the primitive dog-rose of our hedges, and the whole race of choice, cultivated geraniums into the cranesbill of the copse and the wayside. This, then, is the parable. Neglect a garden, and it soon loses all its value, all its distinction. It is either overrun with wilder and less worthy growths, or the plants which once either gave it beauty or ministered to the wants of man degenerate into a baser type, and no longer yield fruit that he cares to eat or flowers that he cares to pluck. And the moral is as simple and direct as it well can be (Pro 24:33-34). It is a warning to the man void of understanding and energy, that an utter destitution, a shameful misery, is the proper and inevitable result of his folly and sloth. We need not go far to find facts which prove the truth of this warning, and the need for it. If we go into the nearest workhouse ward, it is not too much to say that half the miserable paupers we meet there ought not to be there; they have sunk into pauperism not by sheer misfortune, not by the pressure of accidents they were unable to resist, but by a creeping indolence, by self-neglect, by vice, by the failure of speculations to which they were driven by their impatience of honest labour with its slow rewards, by a love of pleasure or self-indulgence which held them back from that whole-hearted industry and devotion to daily toil by which alone men can thrive. If we go to any dock or labour yard in which men earn a miserable pittance by unskilled and precarious labour, again we are well within the mark if we reckon that half the men we find there ought never to have been there, and would not have been there had they diligently availed themselves of the opportunities of the several positions from which they have fallen. If we go into any family, shall we not find in it a lad who has no decided leaning to any vocation, who doesnt much care what he does, and who in his heart of hearts would rather do nothing at all, whether for himself or for the world, if only he could live by it? If we go into any school or college, shall we not be still more fortunate if, for one boy or man bent on study, bent on learning and acquiring as much as he may, and so cultivating all the good growths and habits of the soul, we find no more than one who is content to scramble through his work anyhow, who will not learn a jot more than he can help, who throws away opportunity after opportunity, and is throwing away, with his opportunities, his chances of service and distinction? No thoughtful observer of human life will for a moment admit that laziness is a defunct sin, or that the sluggard is rapidly becoming extinct. He is everywhere; and, wherever he is, the process of degeneration has set in and needs to be checked. And how shall it be checked, how shall the man void of understanding be recovered to a useful and diligent life, if not by the warning that, by the very course and constitution of his nature, indolence breeds its own punishment? The moral, then, is by no means tame or impertinent to the present conditions of men. But we need not confine ourselves to the Hebrew poets point of view. As we stand by his side, and look with him over the wall of the once fair garden, now all overgrown with nettles that sting and thorns that tear, we may raise the law of which he speaks to its highest plane, and view it in its more directly spiritual aspect. Emphatic as is the direct teaching of this proverb, says Dr. Plumptre, it may be taken as a parable of something yet deeper. The field and the vineyard are more than the mans earthly possessions. His neglect brings barrenness or desolation in the garden of the soul. Nor is it in the least difficult to trace the working of this law in the garden of the soul. It is not enough that we once believed and obeyed. It is not enough that we once waged open war against evil, and ardently pursued that which is good. If we have settled down into a quiet and easy enjoyment of our very religion; if we are not watchful and diligent, resolute and untiring; if we cannot work in all weathers; if we shrink from every call to do something for God and man, or begin to calculate how little we can do, instead of how much; if we make no sacrifice for the sake of truth and righteousness, or mourn and complain over every sacrifice we are compelled to make; if we cease to strive vigorously, with clear and firm determination, against the evil forces and inclinations by which we are constantly beset; if we no longer care to learn any new truth that may break forth from Gods holy Word or from the patient researches of men; if, instead of recognising and rejoicing in any new aspect of duty, any new form of service, we are growing lax and indifferent even in the discharge of duties we once loved–sluggardliness is beginning to eat into our heart, our faith, our life; the good growths of the soul are beginning to deteriorate and decay, and its evil growths to wax bold and masterful. If nothing less will rouse and arrest us, let us remember that, by the very course and constitution of nature, by a law which admits of no exception, mere indolence, mere neglect, merely being quiet and at ease, mere failure to grow and make increase to ourselves in good thoughts, good feeling, good deeds, is to sink toward the evils we most dread, from which we have been redeemed, and which ought not therefore any longer to have power over us. It is to revert to our original and inferior type; and to revert to that will only too surely be the first step toward sinking to a type still lower and more hopeless. A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to rest when they ought to be lifted up for the labour which is prayer, and our poverty may come on us apace, and our want–the lack and destitution natural and inevitable to our sinking and neglected condition–may spring upon us like an armed man. (S. Cox, D.D.)

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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 30. I went by the field of the slothful] This is a most instructive parable; is exemplified every day in a variety of forms; and is powerfully descriptive of the state of many a blackslider and trifler in religion. Calmet has an excellent note on this passage. I shall give the substance of it.

Solomon often recommends diligence and economy to his disciples. In those primitive times when agriculture was honourable, no man was respected who neglected to cultivate his grounds, who sunk into poverty, contracted debt, or engaged in ruinous securities. With great propriety, a principal part of wisdom was considered by them as consisting in the knowledge of properly conducting one’s domestic affairs, and duly cultivating the inheritances derived from their ancestors. Moses had made a law to prevent the rich from utterly depressing the poor, by obliging them to return their farms to them on the Sabbatic year, and to remit all debts at the year of jubilee.

In the civil state of the Hebrews, we never see those enormous and suddenly raised fortunes, which never subsist but in the ruin of numberless families. One of the principal solicitudes of this legislator was to produce, as far as possible in a monarchical state, an equality of property and condition. The ancient Romans held agriculture in the same estimation, and highly respected those who had applied themselves to it with success. When they spoke in praise of a man, they considered themselves as giving no mean commendation when they called him a good husbandman, an excellent labourer. From such men they formed their most valiant generals and intrepid soldiers. CATO De Re Rustica, cap. 1. The property which is acquired by these means is most innocent, most solid, and exposes its possessor less to envy than property acquired in any other way. See CICERO De Officiis, lib. 1. In Britain the merchant is all in all; and yet the waves of the sea are not more uncertain, nor more tumultuous, than the property acquired in this way, or than the agitated life of the speculative merchant.

But let us look more particularly into this very instructive parable:-

I. The owner is described.

1. He was ish atsel, the loitering, sluggish, slothful man.

2. He was adam chasar leb, a man that wanted heart; destitute of courage, alacrity, and decision of mind.

II. His circumstances. This man had,

1st, sadeh, a sowed field, arable ground. This was the character of his estate. It was meadow and corn land.

2. He had kerem, a vineyard, what we would call perhaps garden and orchard, where he might employ his skill to great advantage in raising various kinds of fruits and culinary herbs for the support of his family.

III. The state of this heritage:

1. “It was grown over with thorns.” It had been long neglected, so that even brambles were permitted to grow in the fields:

2. “Nettles had covered the face thereof.” It was not weeded, and all kinds of rubbish had been suffered to multiply:

3. “The stone wall was broken down.” This belonged to the vineyard: it was neither pruned nor digged; and the fence, for want of timely repairs, had all fallen into ruins, Pr 24:31.

IV. The effect all this had on the attentive observer.

1. I saw it, echezeh anochi, I fixed my attention on it. I found it was no mere report. It is a fact. I myself was an eyewitness of it.

2. I considered it well, ashith libbi, I put my heart on it. All my feelings were interested.

3. I looked upon it, raithi, I took an intellectual view of it. And

4. Thus I received instruction, lakachti musar, I received a very important lesson from it: but the owner paid no attention to it. He alone was uninstructed; for he “slumbered, slept, and kept his hands in his bosom.” Pr 24:33. “Hugged himself in his sloth and carelessness.”

V. The consequences of this conduct.

1. Poverty described as coming like a traveller, making sure steps every hour coming nearer and nearer to the door.

2. Want, machsor, total destitution; want of all the necessaries, conveniences, and comforts of life; and this is described as coming like an armed man keish magen, as a man with a shield, who comes to destroy this unprofitable servant: or it may refer to a man coming with what we call an execution into the house, armed with the law, to take even his bed from the slumberer.

From this literal solution any minister of God may make a profitable discourse.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

30, 31. A striking picture ofthe effects of sloth.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

I went by the field of the slothful,…. This very probably was a real matter of fact; King Solomon’s way lay at a certain time by the field of a slothful man, who never went into it himself, there being a lion in the way; and which he took no care of to manure and till, to plough and sow, but let it lie waste and uncultivated; an emblem of a carnal and worldly professor, and especially an unregenerate man, neglecting the affairs of his soul, his heart remaining like the fallow field unopened and unbroken, hard, obdurate, and impenitent; nothing sown in it, no seed of grace; nor has the seed of the word any place in it, but falling on it lies like seed by the wayside, caught up by every bird;

and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; as the slothful man is, that takes no care to plant and dress it, that it may bring forth fruit to his own profit and advantage; and as every unregenerate man is, who is unconcerned about his soul, and the welfare of it; whatever understanding he may have of things natural and civil, he has no knowledge of spiritual things, of God in Christ, of himself, his state and condition; of Christ, and the way of peace, life, and salvation by him; of the Spirit, and his work of grace upon the heart; and of the Gospel, and the mysteries of it; and so has no regard to the vineyard of his soul, and the plantation and fruitfulness of it; see So 1:6.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

A Mashal ode of the slothful, in the form of a record of experiences, concludes this second supplement ( vid., vol. i. p. 17):

30 The field of a slothful man I came past,

And the vineyard of a man devoid of understanding.

31 And, lo! it was wholly filled up with thorns;

Its face was covered with nettles;

And its wall of stones was broken down.

32 But I looked and directed my attention to it;

I saw it, and took instruction from it:

33 “A little sleep, a little slumber,

A little folding of the hands to rest.

34 Then cometh thy poverty apace,

And thy want as an armed man.”

The line 29b with is followed by one with . The form of the narrative in which this warning against drowsy slothfulness is clothed, is like Psa 37:35. The distinguishing of different classes of men by and (cf. Pro 24:20) is common in proverbial poetry. , at the close of the first parallel member, retains its Pathach unchanged. The description: and, lo! ( , with Pazer, after Thorath Emeth, p. 34, Anm. 2) it was… refers to the vineyard, for (its stone wall, like Isa 2:20, “its idols of silver”) is, like Num 22:24; Isa 5:5, the fencing in of the vineyard. , totus excreverat ( in carduos ), refers to this as subject, cf. in Ausonius: apex vitibus assurgit ; the Heb. construction is as Isa 5:6; Isa 34:13; Gesen. 133, 1, Anm. 2. The sing. of does not occur; perhaps it means properly the weed which one tears up to cast it aside, for (Arab.) kumash is matter dug out of the ground.

(Note: This is particularly the name of what lies round about on the ground in the Bedouin tents, and which one takes up from thence (from kamesh , cogn. , ramasser , cf. the journal , 1871, p. 287b); in modern Arab., linen and matter of all kinds; vid., Bocthor, under linge and toffe.)

The ancients interpret it by urticae ; and , plur. (as from ), R. , to burn, appears, indeed, to be the name of the nettle; the botanical name (Arab.) khullar (beans, pease, at least a leguminous plant) is from its sound not Arab., and thus lies remote.

(Note: Perhaps , vid., Lagarde’s Gesamm. Abhandl. p. 59.)

The Pual sounds like Psa 80:11 (cf. , Psa 72:20); the position of the words is as this passage of the Psalm; the Syr., Targ., Jerome, and the Venet. render the construction actively, as if the word were .

In Pro 24:32, Hitzig proposes to read : and I stopped (stood still); but is trans., not only at Ecc 7:9, but also at Ecc 2:15: to hold anything fast; not: to hold oneself still. And for what purpose the change? A contemplating and looking at a thing, with which the turning and standing near is here connected, manifestly includes a standing still; , after , is, as commonly after ( e.g., Job 35:5, cf. Isa 42:18), the expression of a lingering looking at an object after the attention has been directed to it. In modern impressions, are incorrectly accentuated; the old editions have rightly with Reba; for not ‘ , but are connected. In Pro 8:17, this prominence of the personal pronoun serves for the expression of reciprocity; elsewhere, as e.g., Gen 21:24; 2Ki 6:3, and particularly, frequently in Hosea, this circumstantiality does not make the subject prominent, but the action; here the suitable extension denotes that he rightly makes his comments at leisure (Hitzig). is, as at Pro 22:17, the turning of attention and reflection; elsewhere , to receive a moral, Pro 8:10, Jer 7:28, is here equivalent to, to abstract, deduce one from a fact, to take to oneself a lesson from it. In Pro 24:33 and Pro 24:34 there is a repetition of Pro 6:9-10. Thus, as Pro 24:33 expresses, the sluggard speaks to whom the neglected piece of ground belongs, and Pro 24:34 places before him the result. Instead of of the original passage [Pro 6:9-10], here , of the coming of poverty like an avenging Nemesis; and instead of , here (the Cod. Jaman. has it without the ), which might be the plene written pausal form of the sing. ( vid., at Pro 6:3, cf. Pro 6:11), but is more surely regarded as the plur.: thy deficits, or wants; for to thee at one time this, and at another time that, and finally all things will be wanting. Regarding the variants and (with in the original passage, here in the borrowed passage with ), vid., at Pro 10:4. is translated in the lxx by ( vid., at Pro 6:11); the Syr. and Targ. make from it a , tabellarius , a letter-carrier, coming with the speed of a courier.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

      30 I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;   31 And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.   32 Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.   33 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:   34 So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.

      Here is, 1. The view which Solomon took of the field and vineyard of the slothful man. He did not go on purpose to see it, but, as he passed by, observing the fruitfulness of the ground, as it is very proper for travellers to do, and his subjects’ management of their land, as it is very proper for magistrates to do, he cast his eye upon a field and a vineyard unlike all the rest; for, though the soil was good, yet there was nothing growing in them but thorns and nettles, not here and there one, but they were all overrun with weeds; and, if there had been any fruit, it would have been eaten up by the beasts, for there was no fence: The stone-wall was broken down See the effects of that curse upon the ground (Gen. iii. 18), “Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee, and nothing else unless thou take pains with it.” See what a blessing to the world the husbandman’s calling is, and what a wilderness this earth, even Canaan itself, would be without it. The king himself is served of the field, but he would be ill served if God did not teach the husbandman discretion and diligence to clear the ground, plant it, sow it, and fence it. See what a great difference there is between some and others in the management even of their worldly affairs, and how little some consult their reputation, not caring though they proclaim their slothfulness, in the manifest effects of it, to all that pass by, shamed by their neighbour’s diligence. 2. The reflections which he made upon it. He paused a little and considered it, looked again upon it, and received instruction. He did not break out into any passionate censures of the owner, did not call him any ill names, but he endeavoured himself to get good by the observation and to be quickened by it to diligence. Note, Those that are to give instruction to others must receive instruction themselves, and instruction may be received, not only from what we read and hear, but from what we see, not only from what we see of the works of God, but from what we see of the manners of man, not only from men’s good manners, but from their evil manners. Plutarch relates a saying of Cato Major, “That wise men profit more by fools than fools by wise men; for wise men will avoid the faults of fools, but fools will not imitate the virtues of wise men.” Solomon reckoned that he received instruction by this sight, though it did not suggest to him any new notion or lesson, but only put him in mind of an observation he himself had formerly made, both of the ridiculous folly of the sluggard (who, when he has needful work to do, lies dozing in bed and cries, Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, and still it will be a little more, till he has slept his eyes out, and, instead of being fitted by sleep for business, as wise men are, he is dulled, and stupefied, and made good for nothing) and of certain misery that attends him: his poverty comes as one that travels; it is constantly coming nearer and nearer to him, and will be upon him speedily, and want seizes him as irresistibly as an armed man, a highwayman that will strip him of all he has. Now this is applicable, not only to our worldly business, to show what a scandalous thing slothfulness in that is, and how injurious to the family, but to the affairs of our souls. Note, (1.) Our souls are our fields and vineyards, which we are every one of us to take care of, to dress, and to keep. They are capable of being improved with good husbandry; that may be got out of them which will be fruit abounding to our account. We are charged with them, to occupy them till our Lord come; and a great deal of care and pains it is requisite that we should take about them. (2.) These fields and vineyards are often in a very bad state, not only no fruit brought forth, but all overgrown with thorns and nettles (scratching, stinging, inordinate lusts and passions, pride, covetousness, sensuality, malice, those are the thorns and nettles, the wild grapes, which the unsanctified heart produces), no guard kept against the enemy, but the stone-wall broken down, and all lies in common, all exposed. (3.) Where it is thus it is owing to the sinner’s own slothfulness and folly. He is a sluggard, loves sleep, hates labour; and he is void of understanding, understands neither his business nor his interest; he is perfectly besotted. (4.) The issue of it will certainly be the ruin of the soul and all its welfare. It is everlasting want that thus comes upon it as an armed man. We know the place assigned to the wicked and slothful servant.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

Lessons From the Sluggard

Verses 30-34 repeat and emphasize the lessons to be learned from the slothful:

1) Man is blessed with life and the opportunity to work. It is the Divine plan that he work for his own substance, and that of others, Gen 3:17-19; 2Th 3:10.

2) Because it is left untended, the slothful man’s field and vineyard is soon overgrown by thorns and nettles (Gen 3:18) and the protective fence of stones crumbles and falls, permitting animals to forage on any remaining produce.

3) The passer-by observes this condition and gleans from it the lesson that repeated procrastination of necessary activity in order to sleep, loaf or avoid the rain and cold leads inevitably to absolute poverty, Pro 6:10-11; Pro 10:4; Pro 13:4; Pro 18:9; Pro 20:4; Pro 21:25.

NOTE: The N. T. warns of the more tragic waste of the life of the spiritual sluggard who is dull of hearing (fails to listen to and study the WORD); and fails to recognize the urgency of time which requires faithful obedience to the Scriptures, Heb 5:11; Heb 6:12; Rom 13:11; 1Th 5:6-8.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Pro. 24:30-34

THE SLUGGARDS VINEYARD

I. We have here a precious possession in the hands of an unworthy proprietor. A vineyard is not a heritage of little or no valueif rightly cared for and cultivated it will yield to its owner the means of obtaining an honest living, and, it may be, put him in possession of wealth. Many a toiling, struggling man without an inch of ground on Gods earth to call his own would feel as if he had nothing left to desire if he had such a barrier between himself and poverty, and would joyfully toil from dawn to sunset to make the best of that which Gods providence had entrusted to him. But here is property which would be prized and cultivated by many in the hands of one who neglects and wastes it. The picture of our text is a parabolic representation of what is before our eyes every day. A vineyard of bodily strength is given to a man who by dissipation breaks down its wall and invites disease to enter. A vineyard of opportunities is inherited by a slothful youth who is too indolent and careless to improve them. The vineyard of a vast fortune or of a position of great influence is entrusted to one who is void of understandingwho does not realise his responsibility to God or to men.

II. We have man, by neglecting to use Gods gifts, limiting Gods power to bless him. It was Gods purpose that this vineyard should bring forth better things than thorns and nettles. He desired to see it covered with choice vines, whose branches should be loaded with clusters of refreshing fruit. But this could not be unless man would be a co-worker with Him. God did his part. The rain watered the soil, the sun shone upon it, but man refused to dig and plant, to weed and cultivate. And by withholding his power to labour he limited Gods power to bless. Men do the same in other fields of labour, and in connection with other opportunities of receiving the Divine blessing. Many good gifts come alike to the slothful and to the industrious manto him who diligently keeps his vineyard and to him who neglects it. God makes His sun to shine, and sends His rain upon the fields of both. But in the one case sun and rain find a soil prepared to receive the full benefit of the blessings they can give, and in the other they can only strengthen the hold of the weeds upon the earth, and so increase the unfruitfulness of the vineyard. So men often limit Gods power to bless them by His providence. Opportunities are given to them of bringing great blessings upon themselves or upon others, but only on condition that they labour earnestly and diligently at some work which God gives them to do. They may be called only to the special cultivation of their own intellectual and spiritual powers, or they may also be in a position to transform others from weeds in the social and moral vineyard into plants of beauty and trees yielding fruit. But whether the field open to them is a wide one, or comparatively narrow, all Gods willingness to give the increase will be of no avail if they refuse to till the ground and sow the seed.

III. We have a swift and sure-footed avenger advancing to awaken the slothful sleeper. That slumber, though long and deep, will not go on for ever. It would indeed be unjust to the active and industrious man if the slothful never felt the consequences of his indolence. But this would be contrary to the laws by which God governs the world. One of these laws is, that bodily want, or intellectual or spiritual beggary, will in due time overtake him who neglects to exercise the faculties and capabilities which God has given him to enrich every part of his nature.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

This is a picture of sloth. At the same time it is a picture of sloth under attacks upon our faith. The world moves on, and, in our laziness, our garden gets all choked with new dogmas against the gospel. The writer has already said that we are not to yield to them that are given to change (Pro. 24:21). He has also said that we are not to answer them with deceit (Pro. 24:23): and, now, what remains? Why, that we baffle them, that we work as hard as they do. I know no proverb more useful for the men of our times. We lie upon our lees till we think philosophy a sort of wickedness; till we think quiet under its advances a sort of Christian faith. We let science work on, till, by sap and mine, it is near our citadel. Great bodies of learned work are built up while the Church sleeps. If she fights, it is with a sort of chicane, with the gongs and bright paper, like a Chinese troop; when duty plainly is, to work up abreast of science. If the Church has more light, she must expect more contest. If she has better arms, she must expect more battles; with more mind, of course more to oppose; otherwise she has less to do than less capable believers. The worlds science must be met by the Churchs science, and new, sturdy brambles in her prolific fields must be ploughed under by improved implements. Otherwise, old-time arguments, and a sort of a chicane of a retort; responses like those of women, rather intended to say No than to be an actual reply, become indicative of a sluggard-Church, and of a garden cumbered like that before us. Slothful, literally sluggard man. Man is here the better sort of man (see Millers comment of Pro. 24:5); in the last clause it is a common man. The first has a field, the other a vineyard. All classes of men are bound to read up and get rid of occasions for cavil. The wall; necessary to keep a church at all. Let scientists trample in upon the vineyard with nothing but a few old clothes to scare them, and presently we will have no Church whatever. Not stone wall (E. V.), but the wall, as to its stones, pulled down. It will not slowly crumble, but interested parties will help it when it begins to totter. I saw, or looked. Seeing such things requires an effort. Not the slothful mans business alone! but mine! I am sufficiently like him. A vineyard with brambles, like that of Geneva, or England, or that of the cis-Atlantic Socinian States, is a picture for all mankind. Come, etc., sauntering along, Hithpael of walk. Armed man. Both these descriptions mean

(1) slowness, and

(2) certainty;

(1) unobserved ease of gait; but,
(2) doomlike certainty in coming. A Church that enjoys her ease may super-eminently prosper. Her foe may be behind the hill, and her doom may be sauntering noiselessly up, but their coming is as certain as the dawn. A little sleep more, and the thing has been actually achieved.Miller.

Let us learn from the scene described:

1. How gradual may be the approaches of the evils of sloth, while, at the same time, they are irresistible in the end. This is the lesson of the thirty-fourth verse. The traveller approaches by degrees. When comparatively at a distance, he appears harmless; but, when he has advanced a certain length, he is discovered to be an armed man,all resistance to whom is too late, and consequently vain. Famine, though gaunt, is irresistibly mighty. Who can stand before it? Not the man of habitual sloth. The very habit has the more thoroughly incapacitated him for plucking up any spirit to ward off the final ravages of the frightful enemy. He succumbs, sinks, and dies.

2. Our souls are committed by God to our own spiritual cultivation. This is no sinecure. They will not thrive themselves. If we would have them as a watered garden, and as a field which the Lord hath blessed, we must apply spiritual activity and labour, to stock them with the appropriate graces, affections, and virtues, and to promote the growth and productiveness of them all. We must sow the seed, and seek by prayer the showers of the Divine blessingthe promised influences of the Divine Spirit. We must watch over the germination, the springing, the growth, and the fructifying of the seed. Without this all will be stunted and sterile. The noxious and unsightly weeds of sin will spring and luxuriate, and overspread the soil; all growing that ought not to grow, and nothing growing that should. Let parents apply the principle to the spiritual instruction of their children. Your families are as vineyards committed to your care and culture. Imagine not that, when left to themselves, they will spontaneously yield good fruit. The experience of all generations reads you an opposite lesson. You must enclose; you must dig, and sow, and water, and watch, and protect the springing blade, till it comes to the ear, and the full corn in the ear. You must train from their earliest germs your tender plants, and guard, and support, and prune them, and clear and manure the soil around them. The incessant care of both parents must be bestowed upon this; and all little enough. They must look for the help and for the blessing of God. O see to it, that the verses before us be not a just description of any of your familiesfrom your parental negligence, indifference, and sloth. Let every family be as a sacred enclosure for God; fenced in from the blasts and blights of the world, where the plants of his right hands planting are reared from the seed, for future productiveness.Wardlaw.

Pro. 24:32. The owner did nothing for the farm, and the farm did nothing for the owner. But even this neglected spot did something for the passing wayfarer, who had an observant eye and a thoughtful mind. Even the sluggards garden brought forth fruit, but not for the sluggards benefit. The diligent man reaped, and carried off the only harvest that it borea warning. The owner received nothing from it; and the onlooker received instruction. People complain that they have few opportunities and means of instruction. Here is one school open to all. Here is a school-master who charges no fee. If we are ourselves diligent, we may gather riches even in a sluggards garden. He who knows how to turn the folly of his neighbours into wisdom for himself, cannot excuse defective attainments by alleging a scarcity of the raw material.Arnot.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

(30) I went by the field of the slothful . . .The parable of the vineyard let out to husbandmen for them to render the fruits in due season (Mat. 21:33), and of the thorns which choked the word (ibid., Pro. 13:7), suggest a spiritual meaning for this passage. It warns us not to allow the weeds of evil habits to spring up in the garden of the soul through sloth, nor to suffer Gods protecting care (the wall) to be withdrawn from us because we have not sought it constantly in prayer.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

30-34. This is a most instructive parable, and needs little explication, though much might be said in amplification. A few notes must suffice.

I went by Not casually and carelessly, but as a diligent observer.

All grown over The “thorns” in the vineyard and the “nettles” in the field had crowded out the grain which the one should have produced, and the fruit which ought to have adorned the other, and both which should have enriched their owner. The language is very forcible. Then I gazed; I considered, or set my heart; I saw, I received admonition. His solemn premonition to the sluggard follows. Comp. Pro 6:9. As one that travelleth Probably a highwayman.

An armed man A man of the shield possibly alluding to the king’s executioners. These last two verses are the same as Pro 6:10-11, where see notes.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

v. 30. I went by the field of the slothful, where he could well observe the effect of sloth, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding, one too lazy to work because he lacked in wisdom;

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

DISCOURSE: 808
THE SLUGGARDS VINEYARD

Pro 24:30-34. I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding: and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep; so shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.

IF we have an observant eye, and a mind open to receive instruction, there is not any thing in the creation which may not afford us some useful lessons. We may learn as much from what we see, as what we hear: and as much from what is evil, as from what is good. Indeed it is a mark of true wisdom to exact a tribute, as it were, from every thing which comes within our reach, and to suffer nothing to pass without contributing its quota to our stock of useful knowledge. Solomon has set us a good example in this respect: he saw a vineyard that had been shamefully neglected: and instead of turning away from it, as incapable of affording either pleasure or profit to his mind, he set himself to consider it well, and to derive instruction from it. Surely then we cannot be unprofitably employed while we consider,

I.

The sight which he observed

It is not uncommon to see ground ill cultivated, or business neglected; but as persons reprehensible for inattention to their worldly concerns are comparatively few, we apprehend that the remedying of the evils arising from it comes rather within the province of private admonition than of public discussion. We shall therefore take occasion from the text to speak of a vineyard which all ought to cultivate, but which all are too prone to neglect. This vineyard is the soul; which, with the generality, lies,

1.

Uncultivated

[A man possessed of a common vineyard, ought to procure good plants for it, and to water it regularly, and to weed it carefully, in order that it may yield him its fruits of increase [Note: Mat 21:33.]. And we have the same labour to perform for our souls. We ought to get it filled with the choicest graces from heaven. We should water it with prayers and tears, and seek to have it nourished with the influences of the Holy Ghost, which when duly sought, will descend on it as the dew, and distil upon it as rain upon the new-mown grass. We should be daily occupied in pulling up the thorns and nettles that spontaneously rise, and which, if suffered to remain, will materially impede the growth of every good plant. But is there not reason to fear that the greater part of us have shewn ourselves slothful, and void of understanding? Have we not been shamefully remiss in our attention to these great concerns? Have not the fruits produced by us, been grapes of Sodom, and clusters of Gomorrha? Have not unbelief and impenitence, pride and anger, envy and malice, covetousness and impurity, with ten thousand other noxious weeds, been suffered to spring up and grow within us, till they have even covered the face of the ground? Alas! the proofs of spiritual sloth are but too evident in us all.]

2.

Unprotected

[Whatever care a man should take of his vineyard, he would lose his labour, if he should forget to fence it in; the wild beast of the field would soon root it up and devour it. What then can be expected to spring up in our souls, when they are left at the mercy of every enemy that chooses to tread them down? We should long since have fortified them with holy purposes and resolutions. These, it is true, can avail nothing, if made in our own strength; but, if made in reliance upon God, they will be no slight barrier against the invading foe. Joshua [Note: Jos 24:15.], David [Note: Psa 119:106.], Nehemiah [Note: Neh 6:11.], Paul [Note: Act 21:13.], found them useful and effectual for their preservation. We should also have had our souls strengthened by the grace of Christ. That would have proved sufficient for us: it would have been even as a wall, yea, as a wall of fire, round about us. Above all, we should have taken care to have them encompassed by Gods holy covenant, which is ordered in all things and sure. Inclosed by that, we might defy all the assaults of earth and hell.

But have we been careful thus to protect our souls? Have we not rather left them open to the incursion of our enemies, the sport of every temptation, the prey of every lust?]
Such a melancholy sight should make us doubly attentive to,

II.

His reflections upon it

Solomon was more desirous to benefit himself, than to criminate others, even though their conduct was justly reprehensible. His reflections therefore on the sight which he beheld, were of a general nature respecting the evil and danger of sloth. The state of our souls may well lead us to similar reflections, and convince us that sloth is,

1.

Deceitful

[The slothful man does not intend to involve himself in ruin: he only pleads for a little more indulgence of his indolent habits: but, alas! His little slumber insensibly becomes a great deal; his time passes away, and his work is left undone. The rest which he takes, instead of refreshing him, enfeebles all his powers, and indisposes him for action; so that, though he never intends to plunge himself into difficulties, he does it most effectually. And how lamentably does an indisposition to spiritual labour deceive us! No man intends to destroy his own soul: he only pleads for a little more delay, a little more slumber: he thinks he shall awake time enough to do all that is necessary. Thus, while he sleeps, the thorns and nettles grow, and seed, and multiply, and take such deep root, that they can scarcely ever be eradicated: in the mean time, every good desire that may at any time have sprung up within him, is choked; and the decaying wall that should protect him falls to the ground. Ah! how many thousands have perished, like Felix, while they were waiting for a more convenient season! There has always been some lion in the way [Note: Pro 26:13-15.], whenever the time came for labour and exertion: and thus they have lost the only season which the great Husbandman had allotted for the performance of their work.]

2.

Ruinous

[The ruin of a man who neglects his farm or merchandize is gradual and irresistible: his circumstances become more and more embarrassed: and at last he is apprehended for debt, immured in a prison, and reduced to utter poverty and want. What a picture does this exhibit of a man who neglects his soul! He does not feel the consequences all at once; but his poverty comes as one that travelleth: it proceeds gradually step by step: it is not one hour, or day, that makes a very great difference to a man that is travelling many hundred miles on foot: but every step in reality brings him nearer to his journeys end: and so it is with the man that indulges spiritual sloth; his ruin approaches, though imperceptibly, every day and hour: but though it comes insensibly, yet it will seize upon him irresistibly, even as an armed man. How glad would many be in their dying hours, if a portion of the time which they have wasted, could be restored to them! How glad would they be if they could recover the seasons they have lost! But death waits not their leisure: when sent, he executes his office, and transmits them, however reluctant, to the tribunal of their Judge. O that we would endeavour to realize these reflections in our minds, that we may not learn the truth and awfulness of them by bitter experience!]

By way of improving this subject, we will entreat you all,
1.

To inquire into the state of your vineyard

[Look well, and compare your ground with that of others; not of sluggards like yourselves, but of the Apostles and primitive Christians. And do not mistake, as, alas! too many do, weeds for plants (worldliness for prudence, levity for chcorfulnes, formality for devotion, or pride and hypocrisy for zeal and piety;) but consult those who are able to instruct you, and by willing to have your vineyard weeded, your plants pruned, your wall reared, and your habits of indolence subdued and reetigied.]

2.

To cultivate it with speed and diligence

[Had we improved our past time with diligence, how different would have been the state of our souls! O think of the time that is irretrievably lost; and the probable shortness of that which remains! Let not sloth deceive you any more. There is not one amongst us who may not see in his own soul what advanees it has made, and what an increase of work it has occasioned. Let us be thankful that the period for cultivation is not yet ended: and let us henceforth walk, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

The Fool’s Vineyard

Pro 24:30-32

By such allusions the Bible constantly shows us how much the generations of mankind resemble one another. In every age the sluggard and the fool have had a place, as well as the labourer and the wise man. In this respect the village has been as the great city, the great city as the greater kingdom, and the kingdom itself has been a world in miniature. Truly, then, we may go back to old scenes and read the unequal and troubled story of our own life. That which is now hath already been; and as for our originalities, the ancients knew them, and pronounced them stale. Any difference that may appear in the history of the world or in the development of human life is rather a difference of incident than of essence. Let us see if many modern experiences have not been anticipated by this dreary scene of the fool’s field, as it was looked upon by the wisest man of his age.

The scene shows that if we will not have flowers and fruits, we shall certainly have thorns and nettles. Let us clearly understand that we are living under an economy which we cannot change, and to which we must submit with grace, or which in its turn will avenge itself upon our negligence and unfaithfulness. We cannot set aside the laws of nature. On they roll, grinding all things that come in their way, or making all things beautiful that were intended by the Creator to assume the image and aspect of loveliness. We can neglect the laws of nature, but we cannot set them aside and expect to realise the advantages of obedience. Man must give in, for law never will succumb. We cannot say to nature, “I am going to sleep, so you must stand still until I awake.” There is a law of growth in the very ground: we may co-operate with it, and turn it to our advantage; we may, so to speak, throw the reins of our discipline upon it, and turn it to good uses; but, though we sit down and fold our hands slumbrously, that great law will go steadily on, and thorns and nettles will show how inexorably it proceeds. It is the same with the character of man. We cannot simply do nothing. Life has its laws. We may pay them no heed, but they will assert themselves notwithstanding, and show by painful proofs that neglect is crime. A man may resolve, for example, not to cultivate his mind. He says he will be a child of nature; he will leave himself to the development of external and internal forces, without any exercise of his own will; he will have no purpose about himself, but at the end will be precisely what nature chooses to make him. Is his mind then simply a blank? Impossible! The weeds of false notions, the thorns and nettles of prejudice, the undergrowths of superstition, will prove his intellectual indolence, and he who would not carry the generous bounty of harvest shall be weighted with noxious and worthless plants. Nature will do nothing for a man except with the man’s own co-operation, and even that co-operation must be modified, cultivated, rearranged day by day, and only as the result of faithful devotion to the altar of wisdom will nature cause all her issues to result in strength and nobleness of manhood. A man may purposely neglect to cultivate his moral nature. He says he will leave all that to the forces that are above him and around him, and they can make of him just what they please. He despises religious service and exhortation; he holds in contempt all ideas of self-control; he derides the suggestion that he should consider the religious aspects of the uncertain future; he says in one decisive sentence that he has made up his mind to have nothing whatever to do with religion. What then? Can he keep himself in a strictly negative condition? Is it possible for an atheist to have no religion? Is he at the end of ten years the innocent lamb that he proposed to himself to become? Look at his false ideas, his superstition, his narrowness, his want of veneration, his superficial judgment, and see how far he has succeeded. We must understand that there will be growth even if we do not attend to cultivation. There is a great law of production evermore in operation. We can use it for our highest purposes, or we can neglect it, and it will avenge our neglect by weeds, thorns, thistles, and all manner of worthless growths. It is impossible to stand still. It is impossible to become merely nothing. There is no law of negation in God’s well-ordered universe. If men would consider this they would be wise; failing to consider it, we can account for nearly all the folly in the world.

The scene clearly shows that the sluggard and the fool cannot hide the results of their neglect. Every man is a living witness to the life which he lives, how secretly soever he may conduct that life. In this case the results were observed and reported. We must see more or less of each other’s work. We are in the same world a small and crowded world it is, too we belong to one another we hold mutual rights of inquiry in short, we cannot hide ourselves from our fellow-men. We cannot confine the results of a wasted life within our own bounds. The drunkard says he injures nobody but himself, than which there is no greater fallacy in all human misthinking. The man deludes himself with the notion that he only is suffering pain of body, wreck of mind, loss of understanding, and forfeiture of property: he little thinks that every child he has will suffer for the outrage of appetite of which he stands convicted. His children will be tainted in health, and will be clouded or dwarfed in mind, in consequence of their father’s excesses. The spendthrift says he is only spending his own money; but in this sense of the term no man has any money of his own to spend. Every penny we hold we should hold in a spirit of trusteeship, and our object should be to discover how much good we may do with it; for it we waste it, not only is the money itself gone but our mental economy is injured, our moral integrity is impaired, our sense of honour has undergone modification or collapse. It is impossible to tell a lie without injuring other people. It is impossible to disobey the laws of cleanliness without affecting the health of society. In the deepest, largest, truest sense, no man liveth unto himself; every breath we draw would seem to affect the atmosphere in which we live. This being the case, we have not a right to do as we please with what we call our own. First of all, there is nothing which we can call our own. Life itself is not. Life is a precious trust. We have to account for life in some cases even to our fellow-men. In ordinary intercourse we see again and again proofs of the fact that society will not allow us to do what we please with our own. Surely a man may say that his own child is his, and his only; but such is not the fact; no man has a child which is exclusively his own; the child sustains not only family but social relations; if you were to attempt to lay violent hands upon your child’s life society would arrest you and forbid you, and, if you persisted in your foul purpose, society would imprison you, or, if you succeeded in it, society would hang you. You cannot do what you like with your own life. If you were to attempt to take it, society would again arrest you and show you that your life is not your own. Let your garden become covered with weeds, let those weeds come to seed, and when the seed is blown into other people’s gardens, see if they do not protest. Surely, a man may say, I have a right to neglect my garden if I please, and let it grow whatever may come by nature. But even your own neighbours would protest against this superficial and mischievous notion. The neighbours would say, If you have a right to injure your own garden, you have no right to injure ours, and no man can let weeds come to maturity in his garden without injuring the gardens of the whole neighbourhood. We are bound together by singular but vital ties, and we cannot touch one of the filaments by which society is connected without sending a thrill to the very centre of social existence. What is true of weeds growing in gardens is true of other nuisances. You may not even build a chimney that will throw its black smoke over your neighbours’ property. Society claims a right of judgment. Public sentiment insists upon being respected. There is not only a written law of protection but an unwritten law of protection; and indeed written laws would have no force and effect but for the laws that are unwritten: it is the spiritual judgment, the moral sentiment, the indwelling and all-ruling conscience that settles and determines public law.

The scene shows how possible it is to be right in some particulars and to be grievously wrong in others. The legal right of the slothful man to the possession of the field might be undisputed. The vineyard might have fallen into the hands of the fool by strictly lawful descent. So far, so good. The case is on this side perfectly sound. Yet possession was not followed by cultivation, and possession without cultivation is of necessity diminution. It is not enough to possess; we must increase. We must make the world a thousand times larger than it is; not in mere miles, but in its power of production. The man who had one talent buried it, and although he restored it, yet was condemned as a negligent, unfaithful, and wicked servant. We do not, if we are wise, allow even a house to fall into decay. There is no right of abuse. Let this be clearly understood; it applies to the whole compass of life: there is no right of abuse in property, in social usage, in social confidence, in personal cultivation. Society holds us all as trustees and stewards, and demands an account of our procedure. Is that dog yours? Surely a man may call a dog his own. Nothing of the kind. Society will protest against its starvation or other cruel treatment. Only let society know that even a dog which you call your own is cruelly treated, and you will find that society will assert its rights and bring you to punishment. You have not a right to be unclean, to be ignorant, to be careless of life; on that line no rights have ever been established. We have only the right to hold property for the good of others, to hold it for cultivation, to hold it for multiplication, in order that social life may be benefited and strengthened by its appropriation. Coming to examine these things in a practical light, apart altogether from theories and exhortations, we see that we are living in an economy that is self-watchful, self-guarded, and self-avenging. It is a solemn and awful thing to live.

The scene shows that even the worst abuses may be turned to good account. “Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.” So even the fool may be accounted a teacher, through no will or purpose of his own. The good man is an eloquent example; the bad man is a loud warning. Keep your eyes open, and you will read moral lessons everywhere; watch the men who go regularly to business, who are faithful to their engagements, who are steadfast, sober-minded, zealous in all goodness, and you will see to what rich estate they will come, not necessarily rich in mere money, but morally and spiritually rich, blessed above all things with a contented and thankful mind. You will see that the finest possessions may be wasted: property, talent, influence, opportunity, may all be thrown away. There is no wealth which may not be utterly exhausted. Beware! even mountains may be levelled even rivers may be dried up. The fool thinks that there is no limit to his wealth, but his very thinking so brings it the more quickly to an end. We prosper in true wealth only by care as to details. A leak will ruin a reservoir. There are many men who pay much attention to what they consider the larger and more important affairs in life, but who allow little things to take their own course. In the result such men are proved to have acted a foolish part. If they had acted from the other point that is to say, if they had been careful about little things they would have found that the great things would have fallen into happy economical arrangement. In looking abroad upon society in all its action, you will see that wickedness always moves in the direction of destruction. It must do so. Remember the awful words, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” not die in the sense of a mere threat, but die as a necessity cannot help dying. Sin is the broad and open way to destruction. “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” All indolence must go down down in moral fibre, down in moral volume, down in moral dignity; all wickedness not only goes down, as if a step at a time, but rolls and plunges down with an infinite and irresistible velocity. All sin forces itself in the direction of perdition. In all this reasoning we are not relying upon our invention or imagination; we are simply writing sententiously the history of the whole world. The proofs which the Christian teacher has to adduce are not always to be found in books, are not always concealed in learned languages, but are often lying upon the wide page of daily life. No man well considers facts, realities, circumstances, within his own knowledge, who does not see that there is a great law in nature and in life, binding and ruling all things, and eventuating in solemn and impartial judgment. How did the wise man know that the man was void of understanding? What right had he to speak of another man as a fool? He spoke because he saw the state in which the vineyard was. We know a man by his surroundings; we know him by his habits; we know him by the very tone of his voice: there is character in everything. Society cannot help judging every one of its members. Does not this social judgment point to a higher arbitrament? Is there not an outline even in all natural economies of great spiritual realities and holy ministries? It is because wise men have diligently considered the bearing of these things that they have felt no difficulty in passing from what is called the material to what is denominated the spiritual. The road has been clear and open, and has invited the pilgrimage of reverent travellers. It is because we have seen sin that we hate it; it is because we have seen righteousness that we are prepared to affirm that all the worlds are related to one another, and that all laws originate in a sublime moral purpose, and that all life is ultimately to be brought not only to social but to divine and unalterable judgment. A man may so live as to be pronounced void of understanding; he may so act as to be pronounced a fool. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Prayer

Almighty God, who can answer thee when thou dost arise to shake terribly the earth? Then are we filled with fear, and cry unto thee for pity, for no answer is found in our mouths concerning thy righteousness and judgment. In such hours thou dost teach us how little and frail we are; and yet in our feebleness thou dost show us how great, we may become by living and moving and having our being in thee, drawing our strength from the fountain of all true power, and living evermore under the benediction of the all-ruling God. But these things are too high for us; we cannot attain unto them; they rise above us and defy our pursuit: what then hast thou done that we may know thee, and approach thee, and look upon thee with the eyes of love? Thou hast sent thy Son, Emmanuel God with us. He took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham; he is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and he condescends to speak our language as if it were his own, and to teach us through the words we know the best. He speaks to us of light and love and peace; of forgiveness, and release, and joy, and holiness: we understand thy Son, this Man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them, turning their common food into sacramental flesh, and their wine into a token of his blood. We love the Saviour; we wonder at the gracious words which proceed out of his mouth; we see him on the hill, and hear him teaching the disciples; we watch him in the house, and mark all his gentle ways; we see him surrounded by sinners, taking up little children and blessing them; going onward to the Cross, his soul exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. We know the power of his resurrection, having had fellowship with his sufferings; now we have peace with God, being justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ. Henceforth we would know no man but Jesus; we would crown him Lord of all; we would wait for his law, we would do his bidding, we would imitate his example, we would fill our memory with his words and enrich our hearts with his promises. This is our one desire, that we may be found not having on our own righteousness, but being clothed with the righteousness of Christ as a man might be clothed with a garment: then shall we be accepted in the Beloved, we shall know that all things are for Christ’s sake, yea, the very church, beautiful in virginity, beautiful with the comeliness of heaven. Enable us to do what appeals to us as thy law and bidding; may we be found constant in our faith, undivided in our consecration, simple in our motive, endeavouring to realise in all things the purpose and decree of heaven. We are of yesterday, what can we know? Tomorrow we shall be gone, what can we do? Help us by thy Spirit to see how every moment may be turned to account, how every breath may become sacred as a prayer, and how our whole life may be lifted up in practical and loving aspiration. Pity us in our sinfulness; wash us, O thou Christ of God, anointed from all eternity, in thine own blood: then shall we be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, the very miracle of thy grace. Holy Spirit, teach us; teach us all the innermost things of the sanctuary; lead us past the first gate, and the second gate, even unto the holy of holies, and having seen what is there, the very secret of God, the very mystery of eternity, we shall be solemn for ever, yet glad with ineffable joy. Come to us, thou Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we shall have strength and rest and hope and joy; we shall have all things, and abound. We commend one another to thy care whilst we tarry at thine altar. Some are sad of heart; some are tired of labour that brings no profit; some are weary because the road is long and the burden is very heavy; others are distracted and disappointed and bewildered because whatever they do comes back upon them only in mockery: some are full of joy because they are the companions of prosperity and honour; when they go abroad success goes with them; when they return at eventide they have to pull down their barns and build greater, so plentiful is the harvest of the day. Look upon us whatever our state. May we not faint in the day of adversity, and thus show that our strength is small; may we not boast in the day of prosperity, and thus in our presumption lose our faith. May we feel that all things work together for good to those whose hearts are in the heart of God. Be with our sick, and heal them at least with hope which is better than health of body. Be with our loved ones who have gone abroad to find honest bread under other skies. Watch over them and bless them night and day. If they are in sore straits, do thou send an angel of deliverance. The Lord thus direct us, guide us, enrich us, sanctify us, wash us in the precious blood of his own dear Son, and make us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Lord, hear our cry, and thy hearing shall be as an answer of peace. Amen.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

Pro 24:30 I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;

Ver. 30. I went by the field of the slothful. ] Not purposely to spy faults – for Nemo curiosus quin malevolus – but my business lay that way, and I was willing to make the best of everything that came before me.

By the vineyard of the man void of understanding. ] Heb., That had no heart; that is, that made no use of it – that was not egregie cordatus homo, as one describes a wise man.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Proverbs

THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN

Pro 24:30 – Pro 24:31 .

This picture of the sluggard’s garden seems to be intended as a parable. No doubt its direct simple meaning is full of homely wisdom in full accord with the whole tone of the Book of Proverbs; but we shall scarcely do justice to this saying of the wise if we do not see in ‘the ground grown over with thorns,’ and ‘the stone wall thereof broken down,’ an apologue of the condition of a soul whose owner has neglected to cultivate and tend it.

I. Note first who the slothful man is.

The first plain meaning of the word is to be kept in view. The whole Book of Proverbs brands laziness as the most prolific source of poverty. Honest toil is to it the law of life. It is never weary of reiterating ‘In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread’; and it condemns all swift modes of getting riches without labour. No doubt the primitive simplicity of life as set forth in this book seems far behind the many ingenuities by which in our days the law is evaded. How much of Stock Exchange speculation and ‘Company promoter’s gambling would survive the application of the homely old law?

But it is truer in the inward life than in the outward that ‘the hand of the diligent maketh rich.’ After all, the differences between men who truly ‘succeed’ and the human failures, which are so frequent, are more moral than intellectual. It has been said that genius is, after all, ‘the capacity for taking infinite pains’; and although that is an exaggerated statement, and an incomplete analysis, there is a great truth in it, and it is the homely virtue of hard work which tells in the long run, and without which the most brilliant talents effect but little. However gifted a man may be, he will be a failure if he has not learned the great secret of dogged persistence in often unwelcomed toil. No character worth building up is built without continuous effort. If a man does not labour to be good, he will surely become bad. It is an old axiom that no man attains superlative wickedness all at once, and most certainly no man leaps to the height of the goodness possible to his nature by one spring. He has laboriously, and step by step, to climb the hill. Progress in moral character is secured by long-continued walking upwards, not by a jump.

We note that in our text ‘the slothful’ is paralleled by ‘the man void of understanding’; and the parallel suggests the stupidity in such a world as this of letting ourselves develop according to whims, or inclinations, or passions; and also teaches that ‘understanding’ is meant to be rigidly and continuously brought to bear on actions as director and restrainer. If the ship is not to be wrecked on the rocks or to founder at sea, Wisdom’s hand must hold the helm. Diligence alone is not enough unless directed by ‘understanding.’

II. What comes of sloth.

The description of the sluggard’s garden brings into view two things, the abundant, because unchecked, growth of profitless weeds, and the broken down stone wall. Both of these results are but too sadly and evidently true in regard to every life where rigid and continuous control has not been exercised. It is a familiar experience known, alas! to too many of us, that evil things, of which the seeds are in us all, grow up unchecked if there be not constant supervision and self-command. If we do not carefully cultivate our little plot of garden ground, it will soon be overgrown by weeds. ‘Ill weeds grow apace’ as the homely wisdom of common experience crystallises into a significant proverb. And Jesus has taught the sadder truth that ‘thorns spring up and choke the word and it becometh unfruitful.’ In the slothful man’s soul evil will drive out good as surely as in the struggle for existence the thorns and nettles will cover the face of the slothful man’s garden. In country places we sometimes come across a ruined house with what was a garden round it, and here and there still springs up a flower seeking for air and light in the midst of a smothering mass of weeds. They needed no kindly gardener’s hand to make them grow luxuriantly; can barely put out a pale petal unless cared for and guarded.

But not only is there this unchecked growth, but ‘the stone wall thereof was broken down.’ The soul was unfenced. The solemn imperative of duty ceases to restrain or to impel in proportion as a man yields slothfully to the baser impulses of his nature. Nothing is hindered from going out of, nor for coming into, an unfenced soul, and he that ‘hath no rule over his own spirit,’ but is like a ‘city broken down without walls,’ is certain sooner or later to let much go forth from that spirit that should have bean rigidly shut up, and to let many an enemy come in that will capture the city. It is not yet safe to let any of the fortifications fall into disrepair, and they can only be kept in their massive strength by continuous vigilance.

III. How sloth excuses itself.

Our text is followed at the distance of one verse with what seemed to be the words of the sluggard in answer to the attempt to awake him: ‘Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.’ They are a quotation from an earlier chapter Pro 6:1 – Pro 6:35 where ‘His Laziness’ is sent to ‘consider the ways of the ant and be wise.’ They are a drowsy petition which does not dispute the wisdom of the call to awake, but simply craves for a little more luxurious laziness from which he has unwillingly been aroused. And is it not true that we admit too late the force of the summons and yet shrink from answering it? Do we not cheat ourselves and try to deceive God with the promise that we will set about amendment soon? This indolent sleeper asks only for a little : ‘A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.’ Do we not all know that mood of mind which confesses our slothfulness and promises to be wide awake tomorrow but would fain bargain to be left undisturbed today? The call ‘Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead!’ rings from Christ’s lips in the ears of every man, and he who answers, ‘I will presently, but must sleep a little longer,’ may seem to himself to have complied with the call, but has really refused it. The ‘little more’ generally becomes much more; and the answer ‘presently’ alas! too often becomes the answer ‘never.’ When a man is roused so as to be half awake, the only safety for him is immediately to rise and clothe himself; the head that drowsily droops back on the pillow after he has heard the morning’s call, is likely to lie there long. Now, not ‘by-and-by’ is the time to shake off the bonds of sloth to cultivate our garden.

IV. How sloth ends.

The sleeper’s slumber is dramatically represented as being awakened by armed robbers who bring a grim awakening. ‘Poverty’ and ‘want’ break in on his ‘folding hands to sleep.’ That is true as regards the outward life, where indulgence in literal slothfulness brings want, and the whole drift of things executes on the sluggard the sentence that if ‘any man will not work, neither shall he eat.’

But the picture is more sadly and fatally true concerning the man who has made his earthly life ‘a little sleep’ as concerns heavenly things, and in spite of his beseechings, is roused to life and consciousness of himself and of God by death. That man’s ‘poverty’ in his lack of all that is counted as wealth in the world of realities to which he goes will indeed come as a robber. I would press upon you all the plain question, Is this fatal slothfulness characteristic of me? It may co-exist with, and indeed is often the consequence of vehement energy and continuous work to secure wealth, or wisdom, or material good; and the contrast between a man who is all eagerness in regard to the things that don’t matter, and all carelessness in regard to the things that do, is the tragedy of life amongst us. My friend! if your garden has been suffered by you to be overgrown with weeds, be sure of this, that one day you will be awakened from the slumber that you would fain continue, and will find yourself in a life where your ‘poverty’ will come as a robber and your want of all which there is counted treasure ‘as an armed man.’

One word more. Christ’s parable of the sower may be brought into relationship with this parable. He sows the true seed in our hearts, but when sown, it, too, has to be cared for and tended. If it is sown in the sluggard’s garden, it will bring forth few ears, and the tares will choke the wheat.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

Pro 24:30-34

Pro 24:30-34

“I went by the field of the sluggard, And by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, The face thereof was covered with nettles, And the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I beheld, and considered well; I saw, and received instruction: Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep; So shall thy poverty come as a robber, And thy want as an armed man.”

This, of course, is another denunciation of sloth and a warning against it. This ranks as one of the favorite subjects in Proverbs. It has already been treated in Pro 10:26; Pro 12:11; Pro 12:24; Pro 12:27; Pro 13:4; Pro 14:4; Pro 14:23; Pro 15:19; Pro 16:26; Pro 18:9; Pro 19:15; Pro 19:24; Pro 20:4; Pro 20:13; Pro 21:25; Pro 22:13. See our comments under those references. Actually, this particular reference is the most colorful of all the denunciations of sloth. “A little folding of the hands to sleep”! Who could ever forget a line like that?

Pro 24:30. There has always been, and there will probably always be, a certain percentage of lazy people. They are also said to be void of understanding; in other words, one with good understanding will not be a sluggard. Such a person has a field (for wheat or some other crop) or a vineyard (of grapes) not because he wants to farm, not to take care of, etc. He may have come into possession of such by inheritance rather than by purchase.

Pro 24:31. The sluggard did not plant a crop: thorns and nettles grew up and took over, and the stone wall around the vineyard to protect the vineyard was broken down here and there and had not been kept in a state of repair. Oh, the way that some people can neglect a place and let it run down! This condition existed because of a mans laziness.

Pro 24:32. Who could keep from noticing the sad condition of both field and wall? The writer says he looked on the situation, pondered over it, and learned from it. Observation is one of wise peoples greatest teachers!

Pro 24:33. What did the onlooker learn? That a lazy person loves to sleep too much.

Pro 24:34. And he learned that such over-sleeping would result in a mans poverty. Robbers (armed men) usually had nothing, for they did not work, and what they got from robbing did not last them too long. Pro 6:10-11 contains the same material as Pro 24:33-34. It is a shame to be poor because of ones refusal to work.

Proverbs of Solomon – Pro 24:1-34

Open It

1. What gives you hope for the future?

2. What sort of people are envied in our society?

3. How responsible do you think most poor people are for their poverty?

Explore It

4. Whom did the author say not to envy? (Pro 24:1-2)

5. What common themes link the proverbs in this chapter together? (Pro 24:1-34)

6. What characters are discussed in these verses? (Pro 24:1-34)

7. How is a household built, established, and furnished? (Pro 24:3-4)

8. What does the wise person have? (Pro 24:5-6)

9. What happens to a person who plots evil? (Pro 24:8-9)

10. What does a persons response to hardship reveal? (Pro 24:10)

11. Whom did the author encourage his reader to rescue and hold back? (Pro 24:11)

12. According to what will each person be repaid? (Pro 24:12)

13. What is sweet to the soul? (Pro 24:13-14)

14. What should we not do when an enemy falls? (Pro 24:17-18)

15. Why should we not envy wicked people? (Pro 24:19-20)

16. Whom should we fear? (Pro 24:21-22)

17. What did the author say was not good? (Pro 24:23-25)

18. What is an honest answer like? (Pro 24:26)

19. What should we not do to our neighbor? (Pro 24:28-29)

20. What did the author learn from observing the field of the sluggard? (Pro 24:30-34)

Get It

21.When have you envied an evil persons life-style, wealth, possessions, privileges?

22. How can we build, establish, and furnish our families with Gods wisdom?

23. Why might someone hold back from helping a person who is in danger?

24. How can we feed our soul with Gods wisdom?

25. Why is it tempting to gloat when someone you dislike fails?

26. What type of people are you tempted to be partial toward?

27. Why do we put off doing difficult or unpleasant tasks even when they are important?

28. In what areas of responsibility do you tend to be lazy?

29. What lessons can we learn from the life of the sluggard?

Apply It

30. What can you do this week to build, establish, or furnish your family with wisdom, understanding, or knowledge?

31. In what one area of your life in which you tend to be lazy do you want to make a concerted effort to be more diligent?

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

went: Pro 6:6-19, Job 4:8, Job 5:27, Job 15:17, Psa 37:25, Psa 107:42, Ecc 4:1-8, Ecc 7:15, Ecc 8:9-11

void: Pro 10:13, Pro 12:11

Reciprocal: Gen 9:20 – planted Psa 112:5 – he will Pro 7:7 – void Pro 10:4 – becometh Pro 12:24 – but Pro 18:9 – that is slothful Pro 19:24 – General Pro 20:13 – Love Pro 21:25 – General Pro 23:21 – drowsiness Ecc 10:18 – General Son 7:12 – let us see Isa 56:10 – loving Luk 16:3 – I cannot Rom 12:11 – slothful 2Th 3:10 – that Heb 6:12 – ye

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE FIELD OF THE SLUGGARD

I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, Io, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, etc.

Pro 24:30-32

I. The scene shows that if we will not have flowers and fruits, we shall certainly have thorns and nettles.

II. The scene shows that the sluggard and the fool cannot hide the results of their neglect.

III. The scene shows how possible it is to be right in some particulars and to be grievously wrong in others.The legal right of the slothful man to the possession of the field might be undisputed. It is not enough to possess; we must increase.

IV. The scene shows that even the worst abuses may be turned to good account.Keep your eyes open, and you will read moral lessons everywhere. (1) You will see that the finest possessions may be wasted: property, talent, inflence, opportunity. (2) You will see that wickedness always moves in the direction of destruction.

Illustration

You see the progress of damage was very slowa little bit of foul ground, a little bit of diminution of juice and sap in the vines, a little bit of loosening about the walls; but here is the mischief: each little bit added to that was gradually running up a wholesale bulk of arrears. Nevertheless, I think the man might have taken warning. But, do you know, there was a process of dilapidation going on in his character? That is the mischief. You cannot scamp your outside work without ruining your own character. This was what was happening as he indulged in indolence, as he permitted that weed of love and ease, as he suffered that noxious nettle of dislike of hard work, to spring here and therethis hour, that half-hour, and so on. You see it was little bit by little bit. He did not feel a sudden degradation take place in his disposition, in his nature.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

Pro 24:30-34. I went by the field of the slothful For the counsel intended to be conveyed by this paragraph, see note on Pro 6:6-11. I looked upon it and received instruction I learned wisdom by his folly, and by his gross idleness was provoked to greater care and diligence.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

"Poverty comes as a robber," in that it overtakes the sluggard surprisingly, and or suddenly. Continued laziness typically leads to poverty.

These sections of 36 wise sayings begin and end with a reference to the poor (cf. Pro 22:22-23; Pro 24:30-34). Poverty has some obvious connections with folly, though not every poor person is a fool.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)