At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; Therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing” (Prov. 20:4).
The sluggard in this proverb only offers one excuse. It was too cold to be out there plowing. Why didn’t you plow? Because it was too cold. Seems straightforward, and maybe it was too cold. But given the way it usually goes in the book of Proverbs, probably not.
Only one excuse is offered here, but the inventiveness of the sluggard makes it likely that he has a bag full. It might be too hot next time. Or the plow needs to have some adjustments made. Or he twisted his ankle. Or he had to visit a sick friend. There is always something.
Now the reason that sluggards offer these kinds of excuses is that it often works on their supervisors. The boss frequently doesn’t feel right about cracking down on the person who is a perpetual slacker. Okay. It should be warmer tomorrow.
But the import of this proverb is that there is a supervisor behind the supervisor, and this one—he goes by the name of reality—cuts no slack at all. He just plain doesn’t care.
The harvest gives us no reason why it didn’t come up. It doesn’t know. The seed doesn’t know whether the day for plowing was too hot or too cold. It knows nothing whatever about twisted ankles or sick friends. It just knows that it can’t grow if it is not there, and actually, it doesn’t even know that. It just doesn’t grow, not being there.
And so it is that the sluggard will have to go begging, hat in hand. Just as he gave excuses at the time, he now gives others a string of post mortem reasons. He had a string of unfortunate circumstances conspire against him.
He stuck his finger in the fire, and calls the consequences “bad luck.”
