Proverbs 12:24 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The hand of the diligent shall bear rule Industry is the way to preferment. An instance of which we have 1 Kings 11:28, where we learn that Solomon advanced Jeroboam because he saw he was an industrious young man. Men that take pains in an honest employment, and especially those that labour to be useful to others, will thereby gain such an interest and reputation, as will give them a superiority over all about them. Thus many have risen strangely; and he that has been faithful in a few things has been made ruler over many things. And those who are diligent while they are young, frequently procure that wealth and power which enable them to rule, and so to rest, when they are old; but the slothful shall be under tribute Or, rather, the deceitful, as רמיה signifies. He terms the slothful deceitful, because deceit and idleness are generally companions; and such persons seek to gain by fraud, by their shifts and arts of dishonesty, what they either cannot, or will not, get by honest labour.