SLUGGARD

Proverbs 19:24-25  "A sluggard buries his hand in the dish, He will not even bring it back to his mouth.  Flog a mocker and the simple will learn prudence, Rebuke the discerning, and they will gain knowledge."

It is not too often that I have been so taken with a word that I had to stop and find out more about it, but to me ‘sluggard’ is just such a word. I was fourteen when I first came across it in reading Proverbs. I asked my Dad about it and rather than define it for me he told me to find out what the Bible said about it and report back to him what I learned. It sounded a lot like school to me, but I did not argue or complain about it. I set about finding out what the Bible said about “sluggard.”

“Sluggard” is used fourteen times in the Bible, all in the Old Testament. The Biblical definition is a person who is habitually lazy. The two passages that I found as depicting exactly the Biblical meaning was this one and Proverbs 6:10-11, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.” Pretty self-explanatory, but this person just wants to sleep, that is all he is interested in. So much so that he does not even realize that he is losing everything. Then in today’s passage this person buries his hand in his food, but he is too lazy to lift it to his mouth. They are truly in danger of losing their very life due to their laziness.

After reporting on what I had found out to my Dad, he asked me what had I learned from my study. I told him I had learned two things; 1) God did not look favorably on a sluggard. He did not care for an habitually lazy person, and 2) I would not ever be a sluggard. May it never be!