-- A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest!
These words are not the wise man's advice but the sluggard's excuse, spoken beside a field of thorns and a broken wall. A small indulgence turns out to explain a whole ruined life.
The wall and the weeds are not the man's problem; they are his portrait. He does nothing scandalous. He simply leaves the work undone.
The slothful man is an object of pity as well as blame. He might be respectable in this way or that. But his field and his vineyard proclaim the fault, and forecast his ruin. Thorns and nettles hold the field where the good grain should wave. The wall is so broken down that it invites damaging men and beasts. It is no example, but a serious warning. The outward discloses the inward. The careless man lives to sleep his life away. He may be innocent of strong drink, or of sensual pleasure, or of wasteful company. His laziness ensures his ruin.
The verse counts everything in small amounts. That is how the damage happens. No one decides to ruin the garden; they decide to leave it until tomorrow.
It is always so. Sloth says, "Put off work till tomorrow. Another time will do just as well." So things are allowed to drift. No weeding. No digging. No sowing. But all the while the nettles are growing; the thorns are silently creeping over the flower beds, and the stone wall is toppling further day by day. Then there is a crash. You rush out to investigate, and you find your neat garden has become a wilderness. All around you are the consequences of your own sheer neglect.
The verse is not an attack on rest. It condemns rest that has taken over — and Solomon, who wrote the warning, did not heed it well enough himself.
Verse 33 shows that Solomon understood this well, but apparently not well enough. Only "a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest" (v. 33) may have serious results. Of course, we need sleep and rest. But if this characterises our lives, it is a different matter. This is especially serious when we sleep about spiritual matters, and so are unaware of grave dangers. It was "while men slept" that the enemy sowed weeds among the wheat (Matt. 13:25).
One writer retells the picture as a visit to a house, not a farm.
I went to the house of young Mr. Slothful. There many other books completely hid his Bible. Thick dust had covered its back and sides, and his regular habits of daily prayer were quite broken down. I saw all this and considered it well, and I knew the reason. Young Mr. Slothful had been indulging in a little more sleep in the mornings. He had been slackening off with the usual duties, and taking a little more self-ease in everything. And now spiritual poverty has come upon him like a robber. He is cold in heart and distant in his ways. But it is all the fruit of his own simple neglect.
The outward decay starts inside. One writer traces the order in which it happens.
The truth is that we begin to be slothful Christians when certain things happen. We stop enjoying the love of God to us in Christ. Christ Himself is no longer the Object and Hope of our hearts. Meditating on the word of God becomes tiresome, and private prayer declines. Private praise and making melody in the heart to the Lord stops. We no longer overflow with love to our Saviour God, to His ways, His people, and His service. How serious this state is! For "slothfulness casts into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger." (Prov. 19:15.) Note that it is a deep sleep; so deep that ordinary means completely fail to wake them.
The same excuse also lulls a conscience that feels no alarm. One writer names where that quiet ends.
Times of misgiving may indeed come, yet relapses follow. The sluggard's plea lulls the conscience: "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest." So all is quiet again, all is peaceful, all is silent — but it is the silence of death.
Commentators differ on the cure. One offers a swap: instead of folding the hands to sleep, "a lot of folding of the hands to pray would be a far better exercise" (Michael Vogelsang). Another looks past effort to Christ Himself, our propitiation — the sacrifice that answers our sins before God.
The true remedy is not industry for self, or activity in the world and the things of the world, but Christ, the life eternal and the only propitiation for our sins to God's glory, the Lord of all, saints or sinners, the fullness of blessing and pattern of service.
- Little. Ruin arrives in small instalments — a little sleep, a little slackening, a little more self-ease — never in one deliberate choice.
- Neglect. This man is no drunkard and no waster; laziness alone breaks his wall, and "the outward discloses the inward."
- Drift. Decline starts inside, when Christ is no longer the heart's Object and private prayer fades.
- Deep. The sleep hardens, until ordinary means fail to wake the sleeper — and that quiet can be the silence of death.
- Christ. The answer is not harder work for self, but Christ Himself — hands folded in prayer instead of sleep.
So shall thy poverty come [as] a roving plunderer, and thy penury as an armed man.
Proverbs 24 ends with a walk past a ruined field, and verse 34 names what finally arrives there: poverty and want. The picture is violent — a robber and an armed man — yet the cause looked harmless: a bit more sleep, a bit more delay.
The scene behind this verse is a farm gone wild. Thorns, nettles and a collapsed wall each carry meaning:
Here we see "thorns," the sign of God's displeasure, instead of the "trees of His own planting." We see "nettles" instead of fruitful branches. And "the stone wall" of separation, once so decided and solid, is now "broken down." So evil associations are easily found inside, and evil intruders are not shut out. All of this comes from spiritual laziness.
Nothing scandalous has happened here. A man can have a clean record and still be heading for ruin:
The slothful man deserves pity as well as blame. He might be respectable in this way or that, but his field and his vineyard announce his fault and predict his ruin... The outward reveals the inward. The careless man lives to sleep his life away: "a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." He may be innocent of strong drink, of sensual pleasure, or of wasteful company. His laziness guarantees his ruin.
The two figures describe two ways loss arrives. One writer traces the same pattern from Israel to the church, using a translation that reads "prowler" where the ESV reads "robber":
Lazy neglect reduced Israel's condition to deep spiritual poverty. In the same way, the public condition of the church has so deteriorated through our own slackness that it bears no resemblance to what was true of the church in the time of the book of Acts. Poverty has come "like a prowler," one who arrives as secretly as he can to rob us of the wealth God gave us at the start. Or it comes "like an armed man," who steals everything he can by force.
Verse 33 is not condemning rest. The warning lands on what rest becomes when it takes over a life:
Only "a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest" (v. 33) may have terrible results. Of course we need sleep and rest. But if this is what marks our lives, that is a different matter. It is worse still when we sleep in regard to spiritual things and so lose all sense of serious dangers. It was "while men slept" that the enemy sowed weeds among the wheat (Matthew 13:25).
The same writer notes that the man who wrote this warning did not keep it. Solomon's many foreign wives began the breaking down of his own wall, letting false religions in, until he was drawn into worshipping idols — he "failed to follow his own instruction, just as mankind generally does."
One writer retells the story in the first person, set in a bedroom rather than a vineyard:
I went to the house of young Mr. Slothful. His Bible lay completely hidden under many other books. Thick dust covered its back and sides, and his regular habits of daily prayer were quite broken down... And now spiritual poverty has come on him like a robber. He is cold in heart and distant in his ways. But it is all the fruit of his own simple neglect. First he simply left off the regular habit once. Then he did the same again, and again, and each time the gap between was shorter. Now the well-ordered Christian life has become a disorderly wilderness of evil weeds.
Standing still is not a neutral position:
It is good to keep in mind that the spiritual life is one of constant activity and effort. If you rest, you rust. You are swimming upstream. If you relax in the struggle, the current sweeps you back, and you will not regain that ground without great effort... The spiritual sluggard shuns self-denial and sacrifice for the sake of self-ease. The result of his laziness is that the works of the flesh choke the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19-21).
The obvious response would be to work harder. Kelly points elsewhere:
The true remedy is not industry for self, or activity in the world and in the things of the world. The remedy is Christ. He is the life eternal and the only propitiation for our sins to God's glory. He is the Lord of all, saints or sinners, the fullness of blessing and the pattern of service.
- Little. Ruin starts in a word verse 33 repeats — "a little." Rest is not the sin; rest that rules a life is.
- Neglect. You do not have to do anything wrong to lose the field. Thorns and a broken wall grow all by themselves while the owner sleeps.
- Exposure. A wall down means intruders in. What the eye sees outside is only reporting what has already happened inside.
- Robbery. Poverty does not knock. It creeps in like a robber. Then it takes what is left like an armed man. Israel fell that way, and the church has too.
- Remedy. The answer to a wasted field is not busier self-effort. It is Christ Himself — the fullness of blessing and the pattern of service.