Proverbs 6:8

These verses stand between two other warnings in the chapter, one against putting up security for another man’s debt (Proverbs 6:1–5) and one against malice, which ends with the seven things that are an abomination to the LORD (Proverbs 6:12–19). Here the subject is laziness, and the teacher opens with three short commands: “Go”, “consider”, and “be wise”.

“Go” is yâlak, the common verb for going or walking, and it tells the sluggard to get up and move before the lesson has even begun. “Thou sluggard” names him to his face. The Hebrew ʻâtsêl means indolent or slothful, and in Proverbs it describes a settled habit, a man who has made avoiding work his way of life.

“Consider” is râʼâh, the ordinary verb for seeing, used here for looking closely enough to learn. What he is to study is her “ways”, derek, a word for a trodden road that also means a course of life or a way of acting. The sluggard is to watch how the ant lives: what she does, when she does it, and how steadily she keeps at it.

“Be wise” is the verb châkam, to be or become wise and to act wisely. It is the goal of the whole exercise. The wisdom in view is practical, the kind that shows in how a person spends his days, and watching the ant is meant to change the one who watches.

Israel lived by farming, and its year turned on planting, harvest and storing up. A household’s food for the year depended on the work done in season, so a lazy member was a burden on his family and his tribe, and the sluggard was a scorned figure. Ants were common throughout the land, and anyone could watch them carrying food at harvest time, the very season when people were working hardest too. The lesson was as close as the nearest path.

The ant has “no guide, overseer, or ruler”, and the three words between them cover every kind of authority a worker might answer to. A guide, qâtsîyn, is a leader, captain or magistrate, someone who gives the orders. An overseer, shôṭêr, is an official or superintendent, the officer who sees that the work gets done. “Ruler” translates mâshal, the verb to rule or have dominion, here for one who governs. Nobody plans the ant’s day, nobody checks her work, and nobody reigns over her, and she works all the same.

That would have struck the first hearers, who lived in a society where much labour was done under taskmasters, officials and kings. The ant needs none of them, because God has made her to do her work. The sluggard is her opposite, a man who has to be pushed and still lies still. Wisdom grows into a diligence that comes from within, and it keeps working when nobody is watching. Verse 8 then shows what that diligence produces.

“Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” The two halves of the verse say the same thing twice, as Hebrew poetry often does, and the repetition presses the point home. “Provideth” is kûwn, which means to set up, establish, fix or prepare, so the ant is making ready on purpose. “Gathereth” is ʼâgar, to harvest or gather, the plain work of collecting. “Meat” in the KJV is the old word for food of any kind. The Hebrew is lechem, bread or food, and “food” in the second half is maʼăkâl, a word for food as well.

“Summer” (qayits) and “harvest” (qâtsîyr, the reaping, the crop and the harvest time) are the seasons when food is plentiful. In Israel those months of hard work and good yields gave way to leaner times, especially in winter, and a family lived on what it had stored. The ant works while the work can be done. She acts before the need arrives, and that foresight is exactly what the sluggard lacks.

Proverbs puts the same lesson in a saying about sons: “He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame” (Proverbs 10:5). Gathering and sleeping are the two halves of this passage too, with the ant in verse 8 and the sleeper in verse 9. Jesus tells of ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom, the wise who took oil with their lamps and the foolish who neglected to (Matthew 25:1–13). Paul gives the church a blunt rule, “if any would not work, neither should he eat”, and warns that idleness breeds disorder and gossip (2 Thessalonians 3:10–12).

After the ant, the teacher turns on the sluggard with two questions. “How long wilt thou sleep” uses shâkab, to lie down, the word for lying in bed. “Out of thy sleep” uses a different word, shênâh, the noun for sleep itself, which comes from the verb for sleeping. “Arise” is qûwm, to rise or get up. It calls the sluggard out of bed, and with that, it calls him to start the work that is waiting. He is addressed by the same name, ʻâtsêl, that verse 6 gave him.

The questions are rhetorical, asked to stir him. “How long” has the sound of patience worn thin, and “when” presses for an hour when he will actually rise. In a land where the cool hours of the morning were the best time to work, before the heat of the day, a man still in bed was losing the most useful part of it.

The sluggard really is lying in bed, and his sleep also stands for every kind of idleness, the habit of putting off whatever ought to be done. Scripture uses the same picture for the soul. Paul writes, “now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Romans 13:11), and “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14). He tells the church to be “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord” (Romans 12:11).

Verse 10 gives the sluggard’s reply, the way he puts off rising: “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep”. Each phrase opens with the same word, mᵉʻaṭ, “a little”, a small amount or a short time. The sluggard asks only for a little more, and then a little more again, and each request on its own sounds harmless. The repetition shows how those small delays add up until the habit has hold of him.

“Slumber”, tᵉnûwmâh, is drowsiness, a light doze. “Folding” is chibbuq, a clasping, from a root meaning to clasp or embrace, and with yâd, the hand, it pictures hands clasped together and idle. The hand is the tool of work, and in Scripture it often stands for a person’s power and means. To fold the hands is to put them away from the work. Ecclesiastes uses the same picture: “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh” (Ecclesiastes 4:5).

Work is part of the charge God gave man at the beginning, when he put him in the garden of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). The sluggard’s folded hands leave that charge undone.

“So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.” The “so” ties the result to the habit of verse 10, and “thy” makes it the sluggard’s own. Poverty, rêysh, is destitution, and want, machçôwr, is lack, the absence of what one needs. Together they describe both the state of being poor and the felt need of it.

Poverty comes “as one that travelleth”, from hâlak, to walk or go: a traveller on the road, who comes steadily and arrives for certain while the sluggard is still dozing. Then want comes “as an armed man”. The Hebrew is literally a man (ʼîysh) of the shield (mâgên), a warrior equipped for battle. An armed man takes what he likes, and the sluggard is helpless before him. So the picture moves from the steady approach of poverty to its overwhelming arrival.

Proverbs comes back to this lesson when the teacher passes the field of the slothful, sees it overgrown, and closes with the words of verses 10 and 11 again (Proverbs 24:30–34). Jesus’ parable of the talents ends with the master calling the servant who hid his talent “Thou wicked and slothful servant” (Matthew 25:14–30), because the Lord looks for faithful use of all he entrusts to us.

The diligence this passage asks for is seen perfectly in Jesus. As a boy he said, “wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). He said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34), and “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). He knew the time was short: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4). He went about all the cities and villages, teaching, preaching and healing (Matthew 9:35). Like the ant, he needed nobody to drive him. He laid down his life of himself (John 10:18) and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8).

That work is our hope. Those who are in Christ are delivered from the deepest want of all, the poverty of sin and separation from God, by his obedience and his atoning death, and our own diligence follows from what he has done. He is the bread of life (John 6:35), and he has gone to prepare a place for his people (John 14:2–3). He also changes where our work comes from. The ant works from what God put in her, and in the new covenant God writes his law in his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), so that by his Spirit we serve him from within. So Paul can say, “whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23), and call us to be “always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

These verses give us a teacher we can find on any path in summer, and a warning we can hear in our own excuses. The ant shows that God has built order and foresight into his world, down to its smallest creatures, and that a life lived in step with that order bears fruit in its season. The sluggard shows how quietly ruin comes, one small delay at a time, until it arrives like an armed man. When the words “a little more” rise in us on a working morning, verse 10 has already told us where they lead.

Above the ant and the sluggard stands the God who gives work and the seasons for it, who gives sleep to those he loves, and who in Christ has provided what none of us could gather for ourselves. Our diligence is a glad answer to his.