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More Proverbs commentaries
Proverbs 3:1-12
Exhortations to obedience
Proverbs 3:13-20
The high value of wisdom
Proverbs 3:21-26
The value of wisdom in building relationships
Proverbs 3:27-35
How to treat your neighbors
Proverbs 4:1-9
An exhortation to acquire wisdom
Proverbs 4:10-19
How wisdom will keep you out of trouble
Proverbs 4:20-27
The value of wisdom in producing health
Proverbs 5:1-14
Some of the consequences of adultry
Proverbs 5:15-23
Encouragement to moral purity
Proverbs 6:1-11
Warning against laziness
Proverbs 6:12-19
The description of a person who stirs up strife
Proverbs 6:20-35
Instruction about the tragedy of adultery
Proverbs 7:1-5
The son is exhorted to heed the father’s teaching
Proverbs 7:6-23
How naive can you get?
Proverbs 7:24-27
Lives are easily wrecked by immorality
Proverbs 8:1-11
Wisdom offers her service to all
Proverbs 8:12-21
Characteristics of wisdom that can become ours
Proverbs 8:22-36
The involvement of wisdom in Creation
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Warning against laziness
Proverbs 6:1–11
» View this passage in NIV (Bible Gateway)
Sheer laziness has probably been responsible for more shortcuts, not to mention valuable inventions, than we are ready to admit. Most of us are continually on the lookout, at least subconsciously, for easier ways to perform onerous or routine tasks. An example of imagination spur … More
Solomon warns about two practices that lead to poverty. The first talks about unnecessary loss of what you have earned and the second deals with the inability to earn any money at all.
Solomon is warning about a foolish financial entanglement referred to as surety (vv. 1-5). Surety is cosigning someone else’s debt if they fail to pay. Striking hands was a gesture something like shaking hands or in our day “signing on the dotted line.” It is an irresponsible form of generosity that places the cosigner in a financial position over which he has no control and should be avoided. The writer urges that anyone who may have agreed to be surety for another’s debt should seek to get out of that trap as soon as he can. One should free himself from such a debt agreement, even if it brings embarrassment. In fact not even one night should pass before the situation is taken care of.
We find a warning against laziness (vv. 6-11). A lazy, irresponsible person is challenged to learn from the ant and be wise (v. 6). In Palestine there is a species of ants which does not eat meat, but feeds on grain and stores its food in harvest time for the coming winter. Apparently these ants had no leader to direct them or prod them. Yet they work better than many people under a leader! They worked in anticipation of future needs. It is a proper view of future needs that motivates a person to action. Poverty will come on the person who continues to nap when he ought to be working.
Application
Come up with a list of work standards. This is a list of things I will and will not do as I go out into the market place . Also come up with a Scripture reference for each item on the list.
Proverbs 6:1-11 (English Standard Version)
My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, have given your pledge for a stranger, if you are snared in the words of your mouth, caught in the words of your mouth, then do this, my son, and save yourself, for you have come into the hand of your neighbor: go, hasten, and plead urgently with your neighbor. Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber; save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler. Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.
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