”The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; A lion is in the streets. As the door turneth upon his hinges, So doth the slothful upon his bed. The slothful hideth his hand in his bosom; It grieveth him to bring it again to his mouth.
Proverbs 26:13-15
Each of these proverbs has its own individual meaning. However, as they are so closely related in content and meaning, grouping them into one Exposé was not a stretch, and if you pay careful attention there is a story unfolding.
We begin with a slothful man making excuses as to why he wants to stay inside. Then we see the progression of wanting to stay in bed from there the situation degrades to being excruciatingly laborious for him to feed himself.
As the Author seems intent on painting behaving slothfully as a bad decision, we also see an additional layer of disgust in this passage which leads me to believe this was personal to the Author. It is possible someone he knew and loved destroyed their life this way and the Author was forced to witness the degradation.
It is hard to watch someone you love descend into selfishness or make decisions which destroy their life.
The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit Than seven men that can render a reason.“
Proverbs 26:16
It is my opinion this verse fits into the previous story. Instead of including it in the previous Exposé, I chose, for a very specific reason, to build it an Exposé of its own.
That specific reason is because of the phrase, “seven men.”
Without that phrase the passage might read something like:
“The sluggerd sees himself as being more cunning or shrewd than others.”
To be completely honest, the translation attempt did leave off the “render a reason” phrase. So let us begin by exploring what rendering a reason is.
The idea behind the words looks like this;
To render caries the concept of hunting down to bring back.
And reason is described by employing the basic human sense of taste. In Psalms 34:1 this word is translated, “behavior.” In Proverbs 11:22 it is translated as “discretion.”
It appears the driving force behind the idea of the word is to make a perception, decision or decree. Therefore the idea is intelligence- Being able to perceive and act accordingly.
Having established intelligence, we move on to the phrase, “seven men.”
The term originates from a Hebrew/Chaldee concept of swearing or completing an oath. As this seems a bit confusing, allow me to make it a little more clear.
The phrase could literally say, “every man” or, “any man or, “all men.” This is because the number seven can be used as the collection of completion… or in this case an indefinite number.
The reason behind this verse being separated from the previous ones dealing with the slothful or sluggerd comes from this point- when someone makes their decision and will not hear the truth no matter who attempts to tell them otherwise, they are beyond help.
At this point, there is no use in wasting your time to help or assist or support that person. We can still love them, we can hurt for them but we should not enable them on their path to self destruction.
This is a hard truth. But there is no one so blind as he that will not see.