Proverbs 20:4

Pro 20:4 The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; [therefore] shall he beg in harvest, and [have] nothing.

Ver. 4. The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold.] So the spiritual sluggard either dreams of a delicacy in the ways of God, which is a great vanity; or else, if heaven be not to be had without the hardship of holiness, Christ may keep his heaven to himself. The young man in the gospel went away grieved that Christ required such things that he could not be willing to yield to. {Mat 19:22} The Hebrews have a common proverb among them: He that on the even of the Sabbath hath not gathered what to eat, shall not at all eat on the Sabbath; meaning thereby that none shall reign in heaven that hath not wrought on earth. "Man goeth forth," saith the Psalmist, "to his work, and to his labour until the evening." {Psa 104:23} So till the sun of his life be set, he must be working out his salvation. "This is to work the work of him that sent us," as our Saviour did. Which expression of "working a work": notes his strong intention upon it, as "to devise devices," {Jer 18:18} notes strong plotting to mischief the prophet. So "with a desire have I desired," &c.; {Luk 22:15} "yea, how am I straitened, till it be accomplished" {Luk 12:50} Lo, Christ thirsteth exceedingly after our salvation, though he knew it should cost him so dear. Is not this check to our dulness and sloth?

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Pro_20:4

The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.

The present and the future

The present is intimately related to the future; and the future will faithfully reflect the character. Here is a principle from the operation of which none can escape. Life stands in the same relation to eternity as the time of ploughing does to the harvest. If this life is spent in neglect of the soul, there will be eternal poverty.

I. Lifes ploughing-time, or the period of preparation.

1. Note, that life is the seed-time is universally recognised and taught. The armer knows the time for preparing the soil, and is himself responsible if he does not improve it.

2. The ploughing-time is short, not too long if it is all well spent; the seasons quickly succeed each other. How short is life--

(1) Comparatively. Fifty, sixty, seventy years, what is it to look back upon?

(2) Actually in numberless instances.

(3) Possibly in your case how uncertain is the time of death!

3. Though short, it is long enough. Life is short; there is no time to lose, but to each is given space for repentance.

4. Unlike the farmer, who may miss one harvest but secure the next, our opportunity once lost never returns.

II. The paltry reasons assigned as an excuse for neglect. The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold. It is palpably unreal, the true reason is unconfessed; but it is found in the fact that the man is a sluggard--he loves not his work. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

The sluggard in harvest

This saying inculcates the lesson that men should diligently seize the opportunity whilst it is theirs. The sluggard is one of the pet aversions of the Book of Proverbs. The text contains principles which are true in the highest regions of human life. Religion recognise the same practical common-sense principles that daily business does.

I. The principles which are crystalised in this picturesque saying.

1. Present conduct determines future conditions. Life is a series of epochs, each of which has its destined work, and that being done, all is well; and that being left undone, all is ill. What a man does, and is, settles how he fares. The most trivial act has an influence on all that comes after, and may deflect a mans whole course into altogether different paths. There come to each of us supreme moments in our lives. And if, in all the subordinate and insignificant moments we have not been getting ready for them, but have been nurturing dispositions and acquiring habits, the supreme moment passes us by, and we gain nothing from it. The mystic significance of the trivialities of life is that in them we largely make destiny, and that in them we wholly make character.

2. The easy road is generally the wrong road. There are always obstacles in the way to noble life. Self-denial and rigid self-control, in its two forms--of stopping your ears to the attractions of lower pleasures, and of cheerily encountering difficulties--is an indispensable condition of any life which shall at the last yield a harvest worth the gathering. Nothing worth doing is done but at the cost of difficulty and toil.

3. The season let slip is gone for ever. Opportunity is bald behind, and must be grasped by the forelock. Life is full of tragic might-have-beens.

II. Flash the rays of these principles on one or two subjects.

1. In business, do not trust to any way of getting on by dodges, or speculation, or favour, or anything but downright hard work.

2. In your intellects. Make a conscience of making the best of your brains.

3. In the formation of character. Nothing will come to you noble, great, elevating, in that direction unless it is sought, and sought with toil. Dont let yourselves be shaped by accident, by circumstance. You can build yourselves up into forms of beauty by the help of the grace of God.

4. Let these principles applied to religion teach us the wisdom and necessity of beginning the Christian life at the earliest moment. There is a solemn thought still to consider. This life, as a whole, is to the future life as the ploughing-time is to the harvest. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

A beggar in harvest

No life is really secular. The sanctification of our labour for the bread that perisheth is one of the purposes of our holy religion. The principles set forth in this text in relation to earthly business have also their application to the spiritual life.

1. Human co-operation is necessary in the beginnings of the religious life. God does not save men as a rule by sudden movements of His Spirit upon their souls without their co-operation with Him. Spiritual ploughing consists of self-examination in the light of Gods Word, followed by self-condemnation, the confession and renunciation of sin, and the other exercises of repentance.

2. Human co-operation in the Divine life is necessary all the way from the beginnings of repentance up to the throne of glory.

3. The text teaches not only the necessity for diligence, but also for courage. The sluggard was afraid of the cold.

4. The ploughing must be done at the right season. Youth is the best time for spiritual ploughing. (G. A. Bennetts, B. A.)

The soul-sluggard

The words sluggard and sluggish are the same derivation. We speak of sluggish water, stagnant, covered with green, breeding disease and death. What a contrast to a fountain of clear, sparkling water, dancing in the sunlight, quickening everything it touches into life! The souls harvest is in eternity. Why does the sinner neglect preparation for this harvest? Let us look at a few of his reasons.

1. He says that his heart is cold; he has not the proper feeling. He forgets--

(1) That duty is a debt. The taxpayer does not wait for feeling before he pays the assessment.

(2) Work in the line of duty brings feeling, warmth. Friction begets heat. If you lack feeling, search for some unpleasant duty and discharge it.

2. The sinner urges, The Church is cold. He says, No one speaks to me about my soul. Does the traveller at the railway station wait till the train starts and the ticket-office closes because no one speaks to him? It is frivolous reasoning, that because Church members fail in their duty I have a right to fail in mine.

3. It is even urged by the impenitent that God is cold--indifferent to their salvation. They wait until He is ready--until He moves upon their hearts.

Observe--

1. The reasons urged by the impenitent are but shallow pretexts to hide their disinclination. The man would not plough because he was a sluggard.

2. Therefore, says the text, shall he beg. The begging is the effect of a sufficient cause. Eternal death is not the result of an accident.

3. They that beg in harvest shall beg in vain, and have nothing. The prayer of Dives was not answered. (P. S. Davis.)

Good effects of honest and earnest toil

I. Plenty. We must not think that diligence is only manual; it is also mental. It implies thought, forethought, planning, arranging. The general rule is that they who work obtain the things needful for this life, at least in sufficiency.

II. Power. It is industry, rather than genius, which commends us to our fellow-men, and leads us to positions of influence and power.

III. Personal worth. It is diligence, the capacity of taking pains, that gives to a man his actual worth, making him compact and strong and serviceable. The greatest gifts are of little worth, unless there is this guarantee of the conscientious and intelligent employment of them. (R. F. Horton, D. D.)

Duty sacrificed to convenience

There are two powers constantly pressing their claims on men: those of duty and convenience. These two generally come into collision here. The sacrificing of duty to convenience is an immense evil, because--

I. It involves a sacrifice of the cultivating season. Sluggard neglects the seed-time. It is so with men who postpone their day of religious decision. The whole of their earthly life is intended as a season for cultivation. But a very large portion of the cultivating season is already gone. The residue of their time is very short, and very uncertain.

II. Because it involves a disregard of existing facilities. The sluggard had everything else necessary to cultivate his land. He disregarded all, because it was rather cold. It is so with those who are putting off religion.

III. Because it involves the decay of individual qualification for the work. The qualification for any work consists in a resolute determination, and a sufficiency of executive energy. While the sluggard was waiting, these two things were decreasing.

IV. Because it involves the loss of great personal enjoyment. He would lose the joy arising from fresh accessions of manly power; from the consciousness of having done his duty; a freedom to engage in any other affair; prospect of reward.

V. Because it involves a certainty of ultimate ruin. Destitution. Degradation. Misery of these enhanced by their being--

1. Self-created.

2. Unpitied.

3. Irretrievable. Physical indolence brings physical ruin, moral indolence moral ruin. (Homilist)

.

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Pro 20:4. The sluggard will not plough by reason of cold — The cold of the ploughing season, being in the latter end of autumn, and toward winter, or early in the spring. He hates and avoids all laborious and difficult work, although his own necessity and interest oblige him to do it; therefore shall he beg, and have nothing — And not obtain any alms; not even in harvest, that time of plenty and bounty, because men’s hearts are justly hardened against that man, who, by his own sloth and wilfulness, hath brought himself to want.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Proverbs

A STRING OF PEARLS

THE SLUGGARD IN HARVEST

Pro 20:4.

Like all the sayings of this book, this is simply a piece of plain, practical common sense, intended to inculcate the lesson that men should diligently seize the opportunity whilst it is theirs. The sluggard is one of the pet aversions of the Book of Proverbs, which, unlike most other manuals of Eastern wisdom, has a profound reverence for honest work.

He is a great drone, for he prefers the chimney-corner to the field, even although it cannot have been very cold if the weather was open enough to admit of ploughing. And he is a great fool, too, for he buys his comfort at a very dear price, as do all men who live for to-day, and let to-morrow look out for itself.

But like most of the other sayings of this book, my text contains principles which are true in the highest regions of human life, for the laws which rule up there are not different from those which regulate the motions of its lower phases. Religion recognises the same practical common-sense principles that daily business does. I venture to take this as my text now, in addressing young people, because they have special need of, and special facilities for, the wisdom which it enjoins; and because the words only want to be turned with their faces heavenwards in order to enforce the great appeal, the only one which it is worth my while to make, and worth your while to come here to listen to; the appeal to each of you, ‘I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye yield yourselves to God’ now.

My object, then, will be perhaps best accomplished if I simply ask you to look, first, at the principles involved in this quaint proverb; and, secondly, to apply them in one or two directions.

I. First, then, let us try to bring out the principles which are crystallised in this picturesque saying.

The first thought evidently is: present conduct determines future conditions. Life is a series of epochs, each of which has its destined work, and that being done, all is well; and that being left undone, all is ill.

Now, of course, in regard to many of the accidents of a man’s condition, his conduct is only one, and by no means the most powerful, of the factors which settle them. The position which a man fills, the tasks which he has to perform, and the whole host of things which make up the externals of his life, depend upon far other conditions than any that he brings to them. But yet on the whole it is true that what a man does, and is, settles how he fares. And this is the mystical importance and awful solemnity of the most undistinguished moments and most trivial acts of this awful life of ours, that each of them has an influence on all that comes after, and may deflect our whole course into altogether different paths. It is not only the moments that we vulgarly and blindly call great which settle our condition, but it is the accumulation of the tiny ones; the small deeds, the unnoticed acts, which make up so large a portion of every man’s life. It is these, after all, that are the most powerful in settling what we shall be. There come to each of us supreme moments in our lives. Yes! and if in all the subordinate and insignificant moments we have not been getting ready for them, but have been nurturing dispositions and acquiring habits, and cultivating ways of acting and thinking which condemn us to fail beneath the requirements of the supreme moment, then it passes us by, and we gain nothing from it. Tiny mica flakes have built up the Matterhorn, and the minute acts of life after all, by their multiplicity, make up life to be what it is. ‘Sand is heavy,’ says this wise book of Proverbs. The aggregation of the minutest grains, singly so light that they would not affect the most delicate balance, weighs upon us with a weight ‘heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.’ The mystic significance of the trivialities of life is that in them we largely make destiny, and that in them we wholly make character.

And now, whilst this is true about all life, it is especially true about youth. You have facilities for moulding your being which some of us older men would give a great deal to have again for a moment, with our present knowledge and bitter experience. The lava that has solidified into hard rock with us is yet molten and plastic with you. You can, I was going to say, be anything you make up your minds to; and, within reasonable limits, the bold saying is true. ‘Ask what thou wilt and it shall be given to thee’ is what nature and Providence, almost as really as grace and Christ, say to every young man and woman, because you are the arbiters, not wholly, indeed, of your destiny, and are the architects, altogether, of your character, which is more.

And so I desire to lay upon your hearts this threadbare old truth, because you are living in the ploughing time, and the harvest is months ahead. Whilst it is true that every day is the child of all the yesterdays, and the parent of all the to-morrows, it is also true that life has its predominant colouring, varying at different epochs, and that for you, though you are largely inheriting, even now, the results of your past, brief as it is, still more largely is the future, the plastic future, in your hands, to be shaped into such forms as you will. ‘The child is father of the man,’ and the youth has the blessed prerogative of standing before the mouldable to-morrow, and possessing a nature still capable of being cast into an almost infinite variety of form.

But then, not only do you stand with special advantages for making yourselves what you will, but you specially need to be reminded of the terrible importance and significance of each moment. For this is the very irony of human life, that we seldom awake to the sense of its importance till it is nearly ended, and that the period when reflection would avail the most is precisely the period when it is the least strong and habitual. What is the use of an old man like me thinking about what he could make of life if he had it to do over again, as compared with the advantage of your doing it? Yet I dare say that for once that you think thus, my contemporaries do it fifty times. So, not to abate one jot of your buoyancy, not to cast any shadow over joys and hopes, but to lift you to a sense of the blessed possibilities of your position, I want to lay this principle of my text upon your consciences, and to beseech you to try to keep it operatively in mind-you are making yourselves, and settling your destiny, by every day of your plastic youth.

There is another principle as clear in my text-viz., the easy road is generally the wrong one. The sluggard was warmer at the fireside than he would be in the field with his plough in the north wind, and so he stopped there. There are always obstacles in the way of noble life. It is always easier, as flesh judges, to live ignobly than to live as Jesus Christ would have us live. ‘Endure hardness’ is the commandment to all who would be soldiers of any great cause, and would not fling away their lives in low self-indulgence. If a man is going to be anything worth being, or to do anything worth doing, he must start with, and adhere to this, ‘to scorn delights and live laborious days.’ And only then has he a chance of rising above the fat dull weed that rots in Lethe’s stream, and of living anything like the life that it becomes him to live.

Be sure of this, dear young friends, that self-denial and rigid self-control, in its two forms, of stopping your ears to the attractions of lower pleasures, and of cheerily encountering difficulties, is an indispensable condition of any life which shall at the last yield a harvest worth the gathering, and not destined to be

‘Cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete.’

Never allow yourselves to be turned away from the plain path of duty by any difficulties. Never allow yourselves to be guided in your choice of a road by the consideration that the turf is smooth, and the flowers by the side of it sweet. Remember, the sluggard would have been warmer, with a wholesome warmth, at the ploughtail than cowering in the chimney corner. And the things that seem to be difficulties and hardships only need to be fronted to yield, like the east wind in its season, good results in bracing and hardening. Fix it in your minds that nothing worth doing is done but at the cost of difficulty and toil.

That is a lesson that this generation wants, even more than some that have lived. I suppose it is one of the temptations of older men to look askance upon the amusements of younger ones, but I cannot help lifting up here one word of earnest appeal to the young men and women of this congregation, and beseeching them, as they value the nobleness of their own lives, and their power of doing any real good, to beware of what seems to me the altogether extravagant and excessive love, and following after, of mere amusement which characterises this day to so large an extent. Better toil than such devotion to mere relaxation.

The last principle here is that the season let slip is gone for ever. Whether my text, in its second picture, intends us to think of the sluggard when the harvest came as ‘begging’ from his neighbours; or whether, as is possibly the construction of the Hebrew, it simply means to describe him as going out into his field, and looking at it, and asking for the harvest and seeing nothing there but weeds, the lesson it conveys is the same-the old, old lesson, so threadbare that I should be almost ashamed of taking up your time with it unless I believed that you did not lay it to heart as you should. Opportunity is bald behind, and must be grasped by the forelock. Life is full of tragic might-have-beens. No regret, no remorse, no self-accusation, no clear recognition that I was a fool will avail one jot. The time for ploughing is past; you cannot stick the share into the ground when you should be wielding the sickle. ‘Too late’ is the saddest of human words. And, my brother, as the stages of our lives roll on, unless each is filled as it passes with the discharge of the duties, and the appropriation of the benefits which it brings, then, to all eternity, that moment will never return, and the sluggard may beg in harvest, that he may have the chance to plough once more, and have none. The student that has spent the term in indolence, perhaps dissipation, has no time to get up his subject when he is in the examination-room, with the paper before him. And life, and nature, and God’s law, which is the Christian expression for the heathen one of nature, are stern taskmasters, and demand that the duty shall be done in its season or left undone for ever.

II. In the second place, let me, just in a few words, carry the lamp of these principles of my text and flash its rays upon one or two subjects.

Let me say a word, first, about the lowest sphere to which my text applies. I referred at the beginning of this discourse to this proverb as simply an inculcation of the duty of honest work, and of the necessity of being wide awake to opportunities in our daily work. Now, the most of you young men, and many of you young women, are destined for ordinary trades, professions, walks in commerce; and I do not suppose it to be beneath the dignity of the pulpit to say this: Do not trust to any way of getting on by dodges or speculation, or favour, or anything but downright hard work. Don’t shirk difficulties, don’t try to put the weight of the work upon some colleague or other, that you may have an easier life of it. Set your backs to your tasks, and remember that ‘in all labour there is profit’; and whether the profit comes to you in the shape of advancement, position, promotion in your offices, partnerships perhaps, wealth, and the like, or no, the profit lies in the work. Honest toil is the key to pleasure.

Then, let me apply the text in a somewhat higher direction. Carry these principles with you in the cultivation of that important part of yourself-your intellects. What would some of us old students give if we had the flexibility, the power of assimilating new truth, the retentive memories, that you young people have? Some of you, perhaps, are students by profession; I should like all of you to make a conscience of making the best of your brains, as God has given them to you, a trust. ‘The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold.’ The dawdler will read no books that tax his intellect, therefore shall he beg in harvest and have nothing. Amidst all the flood of feeble, foolish, flaccid literature with which we are afflicted at this day, I wonder how many of you young men and women ever set yourselves to some great book or subject that you cannot understand without effort. Unless you do you are not faithful stewards of the supreme gift of God to you of that great faculty which apprehends and lives upon truth. So remember the sluggard by his fireside; and do you get out with your plough.

Again I say, apply these principles to a higher work still-that of the formation of character. Nothing will come to you noble, great, elevating, in that direction, unless it is sought, and sought with toil.

‘In woods, in waves, in wars, she wont to dwell,

And will be found with peril and with pain;

Before her gate high Heaven did sweat ordain,

And wakeful watches ever to abide.’

Wisdom and truth, and all their elevating effects upon human character, require absolutely for their acquirement effort and toil. You have the opportunity still. As I said a moment ago-you may mould yourselves into noble forms. But in the making of character we have to work as a painter in fresco does, with a swift brush on the plaster while it is wet. It sets and hardens in an hour. And men drift into habits which become tyrannies and dominant before they know where they are. Don’t let yourselves be shaped by accident, by circumstance. Remember that you can build yourselves up into forms of beauty by the help of the grace of God, and that for such building there must be the diligent labour and the wise clutching at opportunity and understanding of the times which my text suggests.

And, lastly, let these principles applied to religion teach us the wisdom and necessity of beginning the Christian life at the earliest moment. I am by no means prepared to say that the extreme tragedy of my text can ever be wrought out in regard to the religious experience of any man here on earth, for I believe that at any moment in his career, however faultful and stained his past has been, and however long and obstinate has been his continuance in evil, a man may turn himself to Jesus Christ, and beg, and not in vain, nor ever find ‘nothing’ there.

But whilst all that is quite true, I want you, dear young friends, to lay this to heart, that if you do not yield yourselves to Jesus Christ now, in your early days, and take Him for your Saviour, and rest your souls upon Him, and then take Him for your Captain and Commander, for your Pattern and Example, for your Companion and your Aim, you will lose what you can never make up by any future course. You lose years of blessedness, of peaceful society with Him, of illumination and inspiration. You lose all the sweetness of the days which you spend away from Him. And if at the end you did come to Him, you would have one regret, deep and permanent, that you had not gone to Him before. If you put off, as some of you are putting off, what you know you ought to do-namely, give your hearts to Jesus Christ and become His-think of what you are laying up for yourselves thereby. You get much that it would be gain to lose-bitter memories, defiled imaginations, stings of conscience, habits that it will be very hard to break, and the sense of having wasted the best part of your lives, and having but the fag end to bring to Him. And if you put off, as some of you are disposed to do, think of the risk you run. It is very unlikely that susceptibilities will remain if they are trifled with. You remember that Felix trembled once, and sent for Paul often; but we never hear that he trembled any more. And it is quite possible, and quite likely, more likely than not, that you will never be as near being a Christian again as you are now, if you turn away from the impressions that are made upon you at this moment, and stifle the half-formed resolution.

But there is a more solemn thought still. This life as a whole is to the future life as the ploughing time is to the harvest, and there are awful words in Scripture which seem to point in the same direction in reference to the irrevocable and irreversible issue of neglected opportunities on earth, as this proverb does in regard to the ploughing and harvests of this life.

I dare not conceal what seems to me the New Testament confirmation and deepening of the solemn words of our text, ‘He shall beg in harvest and have nothing,’ by the Master’s words, ‘Many shall say to me in that day, Lord! Lord I and I will say, I never knew you.’ The five virgins who rubbed their sleepy eyes and asked for oil when the master was at hand got none, and when they besought, ‘Lord! Lord! open to us,’ all the answer was, ‘Too late! too late! ye cannot enter now.’ Now, while it is called day, harden not your hearts.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 21

IDLENESS

"After the autumn gathering the slothful does not plough; he asks in the harvest, and there is nothing."- Pro_20:4

WE have already in the sixth lecture caught a glimpse of the sluggard; and in the ninth we have seen in passing that diligence in work is enjoined by the teacher; but we must give a more concentrated attention to this subject if we would realize the stress which this book of Wisdom lays on work as the grand condition of life in this earnest world. They who will not work have no place in an order of things which is maintained by work, and in which the toil itself is the great discipline of character and the preparation of joy: It is no churlish or envious spirit which pronounces a doom on the idle, but it is the very necessity of the case; that idleness which in moments of excessive strain we so eagerly covet is, if it is accepted as the regular and continuous state of the soul, a more ruinous and miserable curse than the hardest labor. By a law which we all break at our peril, we are required to have an honest end and a strenuous occupation in our life; and we are further required to labor diligently for the end, and to spare no pains to achieve it. We have many faculties lying dormant, and we must wake them into activity; we have many gifts half used or not used at all; we must turn them all to account, if we would be wholesome, happy, and in the true sense successful.

First of all, let us look at the portrait of the sluggard as it is delineated in some of these proverbial sayings. We see him in bed, at the board, in the house, out of doors. He will not get up in the morning; he turns from side to side, just like a door which swings backwards and forwards on its hinges, but of course never gets any further. {Pro_26:14} "Yet a little sleep," he says, "a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in sleep." {Pro_24:34} Or when at last he has brought himself to get up and to sit down to table, he is too lethargic even to eat: "He buries his hand in the dish, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again"; {Pro_19:24} or if he raises the morsel to his lips, he does it with an air of indescribable languor and weariness. {Pro_26:15} Then the time comes for him to go out to his daily duties. But he has a number of ingenious, though utterly absurd, excuses why he should not leave the house: "There is a lion in the streets," he says, "a lion in the way"; {Pro_26:13} "There is a lion without; I shall be murdered in the streets." {Pro_22:13} When he is told that this is a delusion, he is prepared to argue the matter, and to show that his fear is well grounded; he is quite scornful of all the people who assure him to the contrary, because they have been out and seen for themselves: "The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men that can render a reason." {Pro_26:16} And when at length he is launched on the business of the day, arriving late, his wits gone wool-gathering, his will as inactive as his mind is inattentive, he drags through every duty with the air of one who is walking "through a hedge of thorns." {Pro_15:19} Where another person would proceed with easy alacrity, he seems held back by invisible obstacles; his garments are always getting caught in the briars; there is not impetus enough to carry him over the slightest difficulty; and after frequent and somnolent pauses, the end of the day finds him more weary than the busiest, though he has nothing to show but futile efforts and abortive results.

That is a complete picture of the sluggard. We do not of course see him fully developed very often; but we recognize at once the several tendencies in our own characters-the slothfulness, the listlessness, the idle procrastination, the inertia-which may, if unresisted and unconquered, gradually bring us nearer to this finished portrait.

The result of this sluggishness must now be sketched. "Love not sleep," we are told, "lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread." {Pro_20:13} The means of subsistence in this world are the result of labor; toilers win them from the reluctant earth and sea; the only condition on which we can partake in them is that we should toil, either directly in producing the means of subsistence, or indirectly in doing for the producers helpful service for which they are willing to exchange the fruits of their labor. One who sleeps away the golden hours of work, cast by slothfulness into a deep sleep, has no claim whatever on the earth or the community for daily food; he shall suffer hunger. {Pro_19:15} And if by craft or chance he is able to get his bread without any service rendered to the workers, he shall suffer from a soul-hunger more terrible than starvation-the unutterable ennui, weariness, disgust, and self-loathing which an idle and useless life inevitably produces.

As the text reminds us, there is an alternation of seasons. There is a time to plough, when the earth has yielded her full autumn fruits; there is a time to sow; there is a harvest. If a man is too lazy to plough at the right time and to sow at the right time, his fields will of course give him no crops: Slothfulness catcheth not his prey." {Pro_12:27} Nor must we think that God in any grudging spirit has ordered this law of the seasons. The appetite which forces us to labor, because "our mouth craves it of us," {Pro_16:26} the apparent rigor with which nature requires us to be up betimes and not to let the opportunity slip, and the threat of poverty which hangs over our heads if we neglect her requirements, are all parts of a beneficent law, -the law that by work itself our life is sweetened and our spirit is developed. They are not to be congratulated who, escaping the spur of appetite, and liberated" by the toil of others from the rigorous edicts of nature which require the laborious ploughing and sowing, are enabled to eat the bread of idleness. The hardest worker, worn to the bone and ill-remunerated, is really more enviable than they. The abundance of food is a poor equivalent for the loss of discipline which the desire of food was designed to exact through honest and earnest work. Men come to us and say in effect, "Behold after the autumn gathering we did not plough, and we asked in harvest, and got all that our hearts desired," and we are constrained to pity rather than to congratulate them. It is not good for men to slip through the laws of God and nature thus, for their chastisement is heavier in the end than in the beginning.

The truth of this appears when we remember that a worse result of slothfulness than poverty is the spiritual rust, decay, and degradation which slothfulness itself implies: "The desire of the slothful killeth him, for his hands refuse to labor"; {Pro_21:25} "He also that is slack in his work is brother to him that is a destroyer." {Pro_18:9} It is indeed a strange illusion which makes man desire idleness. Idleness is ruin; the soul rusts away like the sword in Hudibras, which-

"… ate into itself, for lack of something else to hew and hack."

It is death, it is deadly; the idle soul slowly dies, and spreads destruction around it. It is the same with a country. Idleness is its ruin: whether it be that the generosity of nature removes the necessity of work, as in the South Seas, where the missionaries find one of their chief difficulties in the absolute laziness resulting from the softness of the climate and the fertility of the soil; or that the vast accumulations of wealth procure idleness for its possessors, and enforce idleness on thousands of the unfortunate unemployed, the melancholy result ensues in the enervation of manhood and the corruption of womanhood. On the other hand, as Thucydides observed in the case of Attica, a rigorous climate and a niggardly soil, eliciting all the energies of the people in order to improve their condition or even to live, have been found favorable to the development of a noble nationality. Slackness of work, from whatever cause it may arise, brings its victims into this sorrowful kinship with the destroyer.

It may be noted that the idle, whether they be rich or poor, are denominated "vain persons," and sensible people are cautioned solemnly to avoid their society, as their emptiness is contagious, and the habits which are quickly acquired in their company lead straight to ruin: "He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread, but he that followeth after vain persons is void of understanding"; {Pro_12:11} "He that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough." {Pro_28:19}

The truth which is here enforced receives ample illustration in our own society. Two centuries ago Daniel Defoe defined the English as the "most lazy diligent nation" in the world. Hard work is common; idleness is equally common. Our people are on the whole highly gifted, and produce rapidly when they give their attention to their work; but we seem to have a strange vein of dissoluteness and laziness running through us, and consequently the worst and most shameful idleness is often found amongst the best workmen, who through their own bad habits have missed their opportunities, and become a burden to themselves and to the community. In no country is the leisured class, of those who do nothing at all, or pass their aimless days in a round of engagements which are only strenuous idleness, so large; in no country is the unemployed or the pauper class so ruinously great in proportion to the population. Hence this curious paradox: the foreigner hears that England is the richest and the most industrious country in the world; he comes to our shores expecting to see cities of gold and fields teeming with produce. On his arrival he becomes aware of a degrading poverty such as cannot be matched in the poorest country on earth; he finds a vast population of the unemployed rich lounging in the streets and the parks, and of the unemployed poor hanging about the doors of the innumerable drink-shops, and infesting every highway and byway of the country. He finds the land of the agricultural districts often lying idle and unproductive; those who till it untaught, ill-fed, and discontented; those who possess it discontented, though well fed and instructed. Our subject does not lead us to inquire into the deeper causes of these anomalies, but it leads us to this observation: we are a "lazy diligent nation" because we have not yet learned, or have forgotten, that the thing most to be dreaded is not poverty, but idleness; and the thing most to be desired is not wealth, but strenuous, earnest, and useful toil.

Our desperate and eager work is not for the works sake, but in order to get rich; our ambition is to be idle rather than to be employed, to be raised above the necessity of labor which is our health by the possession of wealth which is our ruin. We have cherished the fatal and foolish error that work was degrading, and have ranked those highest who did the least. "Where no oxen are," we have said in our fastidious way, "the crib is clean," forgetting the other side of the matter, that "much increase is by the strength of the ox." {Pro_14:4} Thus we have ignorantly despised the workers who make us rich, looking down upon trade, upon business, and more than all upon manual labor; and have with strange fatuity admired most those who were most useless, whose peculiar boast would be that they never did a days work in their lives.

Happily now there are signs of a revolution in our thought. We are beginning to see that work is good, not for what it earns, but for the occupation and the training which it gives to the body and the mind; and that idleness is an evil, not only where work is a necessity, and the appetite craves it of us, but everywhere and under all circumstances. In useful employment we find our life; in the sluggards life we see our death.

We must observe then the good effects which result from honest and earnest toil. But, first, we cannot help noticing what an important place is here given to agriculture. This is not accidental to the time in which the book was written. It is an eternal principle. Out of the soil comes our wealth; by the soil therefore we live; and accordingly God has ordained that in the tilling of the ground man shall find his wholesomest, sweetest, and most strengthening employment that no community shall inwardly flourish when its agricultural life declines; and that therefore the happiest and soundest society will be that in which the largest proportional number are engaged in producing the fruits of the earth, and are directly and vitally attached to their mother soil. "He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread." {Pro_28:19} When a nation is in the case of the sluggard, when you pass by its fields and its vineyards and see them grown over with thorns and nettles and its stone walls broken down, you will find pauperism coming as a robber, and want, gaunt and hideous, stalking through the land like an armed man. {Pro_24:30-34} "Be thou diligent," therefore we are told, "to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds"-(take care that no foolish pride or negligence prevent you from seeing that the agricultural life is properly maintained, for it is the only sure basis of prosperity); "riches are not forever, and even the government of kings does not endure to all generations." But in the sweet ordinances of nature the great Giver provides His unfailing wealth: "The hay is carried, and immediately the tender grass begins to grow again, and even the barren mountains yield their herbs for ingathering. The lambs appear every spring with their wool for our clothing, and the field will maintain goats equal in value to its own price. And from these miraculous sources of eternal reproduction our food and our maintenance are to be drawn." {Pro_27:23-27}

Thus at the foundation of all industries is the agricultural industry. At the root of all social and economical questions is the land question. When you wish to commend diligence and to discourage idleness in a nation that is "lazy diligent," the first thing is to inquire into the condition or the use of the land. The land is Gods gift to a people. English land is Gods gift to the English people. If it is misapplied, ill-used, neglected; if it does not produce its full tale of wealth; if it does not support its full burden of living creatures, and give employment to its full number of hands, we are flying in the face of Gods ordinances; we must not expect to prosper; His gracious will is frustrated, and we must have the shame and sorrow of seeing our million of paupers, and our second million of enforced idlers, and our myriads of lazy cumberers of the ground, and our whole population disorganized and unsettled, torn with the frenzy of insane work, or gangrened with the corruption of destroying idleness. For the gifts of God are without repentance, and the abuse of His gifts is without remedy.

But turning now to the good effects which result from honest and earnest toil, we are taught to distinguish three more particularly-plenty, power, and personal worth.

First, Plenty. "The soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat." {Pro_13:4} Nor must we think that diligence is only manual; it is also mental. It implies thought, forethought, planning, arranging. We have a contrast drawn between the really diligent man, whose prudence foresees, and whose reflection orders his work for the best ends, and the fussy, unreflecting activity of one who is always busy, but never accomplishes anything. It is only the diligence of the first kind that leads to the desired end; the diligence of mere restlessness is not much better than idleness. We learn that "the thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness, but every one that is hasty hasteth only to want." {Pro_21:5} Effectual labor implies thought; only a wise man, with all his faculties brought into full and harmonious play, can work with any good result, or can thriftily use the fruits of his labor; a foolish, thoughtless, witless person may work hard and earn a good deal of money, but it is gone even faster than it came. Thus "there is precious treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man swalloweth it." {Pro_21:20} There are exceptions, no doubt; but the general rule is borne out by experience, that they who honestly and earnestly use the gifts of mind and body which God has given them, obtain the things which are needful in this life, if not to overflowing, yet in sufficiency; and where means fail we generally have to admit that our own industry or prudence was at fault.

Then, secondly, it is industry rather than genius which commends us to our fellow-men, and leads us to positions of influence and power: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men"; {Pro_21:29} "The hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be put under task-work." {Pro_12:24} It is this golden faculty of persistence, concentration, diligence, which makes every great ruler and leader of men, and raises even the very ordinary person out of the drudgery of mere task-work into the dignity of large and noble and delightful toil.

For, thirdly, it is diligence, the capacity of taking pains, that gives to a man his actual worth, making him compact and strong and serviceable: "The precious substance of men is to be diligent." {Pro_12:27} It is the quality itself which is all-important. The greatest gifts are of little worth, unless there is this guarantee of the conscientious and intelligent employment of them. While if the gifts with which God has endowed us are of the simplest order, if we can only use a spade or a saw or a broom effectively, that faculty diligently exercised is our value to the world; and a great value it is-greater than the value of high genius which is erratic, unbridled. undirected, and uncertain. Of every man or woman in this world the highest praise which can be uttered is that which underlies the commendation of the good wife: "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness." {Pro_31:27} There is the epitome of all trustworthy and honorable character.

We have been dwelling all this time on a simple virtue of a very mundane type. But all that has been said may be immediately raised to a higher plane by one observation. Our Lord and Master was diligent about His Fathers business, and has left on record this saying: "I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is called today; for the night cometh, in which no one can work." As each one of us comes under his influence and passes into His faith and obedience, the joyful seriousness of our life-work deepens; it is lit by the rich glow of a sunset glory. We want to do diligently what our hand finds to do-to do it earnestly as unto the Lord. By patient and industrious exercise of every faculty which He has given us, we wish to be prepared for any task which He may appoint here or hereafter. Some of us He only apprentices in this world; and according to the faithfulness with which we discharge our humble and unnoticed duties will be the service to which He will one day appoint us. Others are called out of apprenticeship into the rough and eager work of the journeyman, and His eye is always upon us as He tries us to find whether we may ever be appointed over one, or five, or ten cities. A few supreme souls have been called even on earth to shape, to create, to control; a Paul, an Augustine, a Luther, can work with an emancipated hand. But the law is one all through the workshops, the fields, the vineyards of our Lord. The diligent shall stand before Him, and the slothful shall be shamed. He that does not plough will not reap. Wasted opportunities vanish forever, and leave only their doleful record in the emasculated and nerveless soul.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

See here the evil of slothfulness and the love of ease. 1. It keeps men from the most necessary business, from ploughing and sowing when the season is: The sluggard has ground to occupy, and has ability for it; he can plough, but he will not; some excuse or other he has to shift it off, but the true reason is that it is cold weather. Though ploughing time is not in the depth of winter, it is in the borders of winter, when he thinks it too cold for him to be abroad. Those are scandalously sluggish who, in the way of their business, cannot find in their hearts to undergo so little toil as that of ploughing and so little hardship as that of a cold blast. Thus careless are many in the affairs of their souls; a trifling difficulty will frighten them from the most important duty; but good soldiers must endure hardness. 2. Thereby it deprives them of the most necessary supports: Those that will not plough in seed-time cannot expect to reap in harvest; and therefore they must beg their bread with astonishment when the diligent are bringing home their sheaves with joy. He that will not submit to the labour of ploughing must submit to the shame of begging. They shall beg in harvest, and yet have nothing; no, not then when there is great plenty. Though it may be charity to relieve sluggards, yet a man may, in justice, not relieve them; they deserve to be left to starve. Those that would not provide oil in their vessels begged when the bridegroom came, and were denied.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

shall . . . beg--literally, "ask" (in this sense, Psa 109:10).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 4. The sluggard will not plough] For other parts of this character, see the preceding chapter. It is seldom that there is a season of very cold weather in Palestine; very cold days sometimes occur, with wind, rain, and sleet. They begin their ploughing in the latter end of September, and sow their early wheat by the middle of October. And this is often the case in England itself. The meaning of the proverb is: the slothful man, under the pretence of unfavourable weather, neglects cultivating his land till the proper time is elapsed.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

4. cold] Rather, winter, A.V. marg. and R.V. See Gen_8:22, where the Heb. word here used is rendered “winter,” and another Heb. word is used for “cold.”

beg] This rendering, which is retained in R.V. text, gives a forcible picture of the destitution to which the slothful will be reduced: though he beg as a mendicant, men’s hearts, even when enlarged by the plenty of harvest, will have no pity on him. Some, however, take it to mean, when he seeketh in harvest (when others are reaping the fruit of their labour) there shall be nothing, R.V. marg.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold,.... Or, "in the cold"; in the time of cold, as Aben Ezra; in the time of autumn, which is the time of ploughing, when it begins to be cold weather, and winter is drawing on: and this is discouraging to the sluggard, who does not care to take his hands out of his bosom to feed himself, and much less to plough; see Pro 19:24;

therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing; he shall ask of those who have ploughed and sowed, and are now reaping and gathering in their increase at harvest time; but they shall give him nothing; for such as will not work should not eat; and if a man will not plough and sow, he cannot expect to reap, nor should he be encouraged in begging. This holds good in spiritual things; such who have been slothful and sluggish about their spiritual affairs, unconcerned for the grace of God, and indolent in the use of means, or performance of duty, will ask when too late, or of wrong persons, and shall not have it; as the foolish virgins ask oil of the wise, when the bridegroom is come; and the rich man for water from Abraham, when in hell, Mat 25:8.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Plowing time in Palestine is in November and December, when the wind blows commonly from the North.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

By reason of the cold of the ploughing season, which is in autumn and towards winter. He hates and avoids all laborious and difficult work, although his own necessity and interest oblige him to it.

And have nothing; and not obtain an alms; not in that time of plenty and bounty, because men’s hearts are justly hardened against that man who by his own sloth and wilfulness hath brought himself to want.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

4. Not plough by reason of the cold — מחר, (mehhoreph.) The word without the prefix means, the autumn, which is made also to include winter. In Palestine the people begin ploughing in September, and sow their early wheat by the middle of October. Very cold days meantime may occur, with wind, rain, and sleet, but there is seldom a long season of cold weather. There are two important lessons in this proverb. First, An indolent man is deterred by the smallest difficulty from undertaking the most needed work; secondly, He who neglects the work appropriate to the season will suffer the most serious consequences. The principle has its application to the whole of this life, as well as to the particular parts of it. Life is the seed-time, the future life, the harvest. See Land and Book, vol. 207. Comp. 2Th_3:10.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; propter frigus, Vulgate. But prjo (choreph) denotes the time of gathering the autumn; so we would translate, "At the time of harvest the sluggard ploughs not just when the ground is most easily and profitably worked. "The weakness of the coulter and other parts of the plough requires that advantage be taken, in all but the most friable soils, of the softening of the surface by the winter or spring rains; so that the peasant, if industrious, has to plough in the winter, though sluggards still shrink from its cold, and have to beg in the harvest" (Geikie, "Holy Land and Bible," 2:491). Therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing. So the Vulgate, Mendicabit ergo aestate, et non dabitur illi. But this does not accurately represent the meaning of the clause. If ever the prosperous are disposed to relieve the needy, it would be at the time when they have safely garnered their produce; an appeal to their charity at such a moment would not be made in vain. Rather the sentence signifies that the lazy man, having neglected to have his land ploughed at the proper time, "when he asks (for his fruits) at harvest time, there is nothing." He puts off tilling his fields day after day, or never looks to see if his labourers do their duty, and so his land is not cultivated, and he has no crop to reap when autumn comes. "By the street of By-and-by one arrives at the house of Never" (Spanish proverb). Taking a different interpretation of the word choreph, the LXX renders, "Being reproached, the sluggard is not ashamed, no more than he who borrows corn in harvest."

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

4 At the beginning of the harvest the sluggard plougheth not;

And so when he cometh to the reaping-time there is nothing.

Many translators (Symmachus, Jerome, Luther) and interpreters (e.g., Rashi, Zckler) explain: propter frigus; but חרף is, according to its verbal import, not a synon. of קר and צנּה, but means gathering = the time of gathering (synon. אסיף), from חרף, carpere,

(Note: Vid., Fleischer in Levy's Chald. Wrterbuch, i. 426.)

as harvest, the time of the καρπίζειν, the plucking off of the fruit; but the harvest is the beginning of the old Eastern agricultural year, for in Palestine and Syria the time of ploughing and sowing with the harvest or early rains (חריף = יורה, Neh 7:24; Ezr 2:18) followed the fruit harvest from October to December. The מן is thus not that of cause but of time. Thus rendered, it may mean the beginning of an event and onwards (e.g., Sa1 30:25), as well as its termination and onwards (Lev 27:17): here of the harvest and its ingathering and onwards. In 4b, the Chethı̂b and Kerı̂ vary as at Pro 18:17. The fut. ישׁאל would denote what stands before the sluggard; the perf. שׁאלו places him in the midst of this, and besides has this in its favour, that, interpreted as perf. hypotheticum, it makes the absence of an object to שׁאל more tenable. The Chethı̂b, ושׁאל, is not to be read after Psa 109:10 : he will beg in harvest - in vain (Jerome, Luther), to which Hitzig well remarks: Why in vain? Amid the joy of harvest people dispense most liberally; and the right time for begging comes later. Hitzig conjecturally arrives at the translation:

"A pannier the sluggard provideth not;

Seeketh to borrow in harvest, and nothing cometh of it."

But leaving out of view the "pannier," the meaning "to obtain something as a loan," which שׁאל from the connection may bear, is here altogether imaginary. Let one imagine to himself an indolent owner of land, who does not trouble himself about the filling and sowing of his fields at the right time and with diligence, but leaves this to his people, who do only as much as is commanded them: such an one asks, when now the harvest-time has come, about the ingathering; but he receives the answer, that the land has lain unploughed, because he had not commanded it to be ploughed. When he asks, there is nothing, he asks in vain (ואין, as at Pro 14:6; Pro 13:4). Meri rightly explains מחרף by מתחלת זמן החרישׁה, and 4b by: "so then, when he asks at harvest time, he will find nothing;" on the other hand, the lxx and Aram. think on חרף, carpere conviciis, as also in Codd. here and there is found the meaningless מחרף.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

Again (Pro 19:15, Pro 19:24 ) are we instructed by a vivid picture of a most baneful vice. The sluggard always has his excuses ready to shift off any work, that requires exertion. He will not plow by reason of the cold; although the season (our autumn) offered no hindrance, where the heart was in the work. And does not the most trifling difficulty hinder, where the heart is cold in the service of God? Let the professor ask himself — Have his prayers during his whole life cost him exercise answering to one hour’s plowing? What has he given to God but the shadow of duties, when the world has had his full glow and energy? The flesh flinches from suffering; and even, under the wakefulness of temporary conviction, the heart is "sorrowful" at the requisitions of Christianity, which it cannot admit.†1 Farewell heaven for ever, if it must be obtained at such a cost. How affecting is the contrast between our work for Christ, and his work for us — We grudging exercise for him; He so filled with the absorbing interest of his work — "How am I straightened till it be accomplished!" (Luk 12:50 .)

But the sluggard must reap the fruit of his sin. If he will not plow in the seed-time, he cannot reap in harvest. At that happy season — the recompense of the laborer’s toil — he shall beg, and have nothing. ’Men’s hearts are justly hardened against that man, who by his own sloth and sinfulness hath brought himself to want.’†2 And what else can the spiritual sluggard look for? The cold keeps him heartlessly from the house of God. His soul is therefore perishing for lack of good. If wishing would secure heaven, who would miss it? But heartless wishes, without the crucifixion of the flesh, will stop short of the promise. Millions have perished in serious religion, from want of diligence and self-sacrificing devotedness. And what will it be to beg in the great harvest, and beg in vain;†3 then to have all wicked excuses silenced, and the fearful doom pronounced upon the unprofitable servant!†4

Christian professor! is it time to stand idle, when we stand at the door of eternity? — to be slack, when so near our great salvation? (Rom 13:11 .) ’Blessed are those, who have sown much for God in their lifetime. Oh! the glorious harvest that those shall have! The very angels shall help them to take in their harvest at the great day. And oh! the joy that there shall be in that harvest! The angels will help to sing the harvest-song, that they shall sing, who have been sowers of righteousness!†5

Footnotes:

†1 Mat 19:21-22. The shrinking from the cold — (as Melancthon observes in his brief comment on this verse) — is the avoiding the cross.

†2 Poole’s Annotations.

†3 Mat 25:3-9. Luk 16:24 .

†4 Mat 25:26-30.

†5 Burroughs on Hos 10:12 .

Charles Bridges, An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1846) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

v. 4. The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold, the disagreeable weather furnishing him a welcome excuse to keep him from tilling the soil; therefore shall he beg in harvest and have nothing, that is, when he looks for grain in the season of harvest, his field has borne none, that being the reward of sloth.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Because of the winter, a lazy man does not plow Because of the cold, a lazy man sits and does no work, neither does he engage in Torah.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.