CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 12:27. The word translated roast does not occur in this sense elsewhere. In the Chaldee of Daniel 3:27, it is used in this sense. It may be read “catcheth not his prey.” The second clause should be, “a precious treasure is diligence,” or “a diligent man.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 12:27
I. Even the slothful man may be sometimes roused to activity. He is here represented as having made an effort, he has “taken spoil in hunting.” There are probably few men who are not sometimes roused to exertion, who do not every now and then make a start towards an industrious life, but they lack perseverance, they do not let one act of industry follow upon another so as to form industrious habits. Therefore—
II. The slothful man loses by negligence what he has gained. “He roasteth not that which he took in hunting.” He is too lazy to finish his work. He neutralises the one action by neglecting to perform the other. The food that he has taken is wasted because he is too lazy to roast it, and therefore he might as well have remained idle altogether.
III. He may thus rob an industrious man. The game which he has taken and wasted might have fallen into better hands. Another man might have taken it and put it to a good use. A man has no right thus to deprive another of what he is too lazy to put to a good use himself.
IV. A diligent habit of life is a fortune in itself.
1. It is a possession of which a man cannot be robbed by any of the mischances of life. A habit is a second nature, and if a man has once acquired the habit of a diligent improvement of his time and opportunities, he can no more lose it than he can his identity. It can be touched by no rise or fall of the market, nor affected by any commercial panic. If he is rich, he will be diligent, and if he become poor he will make the most of what still remains to him.
2. It is a source of continual satisfaction. God has made man for work, and a rightly constituted mind is never so happy as when all its powers are actively employed. It is a great source of consolation in times of sorrow to have acquired industrious, active habits, for they often help a man to forget, or to rise above his trials.
3. It makes a man, in one respect, an imitator of God. The Eternal Ruler of the universe is ever active; diligence is one of His attributes. It is the boast of the Hebrew prophet, concerning the everlasting God, that “He fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isaiah 40:28). Christ declares that He and His Father are unceasing in their activities: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
What a diligent man gains becomes, in his hands, precious by the use he makes of it. It is the means of further increase. And his substance becomes “precious” to others as well as to himself. It is industriously, profitably, benevolently used. In this lies the true value of a man’s substance;—not in the acquisition, but in the use.—Wardlaw.
By translating remiyah the deceitful, instead of the slothful man, which appears to be the genuine meaning of the word, we may obtain a good sense, as the Vulgate has done. “The deceitful man shall not find gain, but the substance of a (just) man shall be the price of gold.” But our version, allowing remiyah to be translated fraudulent, gives the best sense. “The fraudulent man roasteth not that which he took in hunting,” the justice of God snatching from him what he had acquired unrighteously. Coverdale translates “A dis-creatfull man schal fynde no vauntage: but he that is content with what he hath, is more worth than golde.”—A. Clarke.
The substance of a diligent man is great in value, whatsoever it be in quantity, as a small boxful of pearls is more worth than mountains of pebbles. The house of the righteous hath much treasure. He is without that care in getting, fear in keeping, grief in losing—those three fell vultures that feed continually on the heart of the rich worldling, and dis-sweeten all his comforts. Jabal, that dwelt in tents, and tended the herds, had Jubal to his brother, the father of music. Jabal and Jubal, diligence and complacence, good husbandry and a well-contenting sufficiency, dwell usually together.—Trapp.
Is not this a graphical picture of the slothful professor? He will take up religion under strong excitement. He begins a new course, and perhaps makes some advance in it. But, “having no root in himself,” his good frames and resolutions wither away (Matthew 13:20-21). The continued exertion required, the violence that must be done to his deep-rooted habits, the difficulties in his new path, the invitations to present ease, all hang as a weight upon his efforts.… No present blessing can be enjoyed without grasping something beyond (Philippians 3:12-14). Godliness without energy loses its full reward (2 John 1:8).—Bridges.
The impenitent, who wait for something to turn up, are the same type of lazy people as love hunting and fishing better than more regular labour. The wise man goes to the root and says, There are no such hunting gains in the spiritual world. He goes further. He seems to remind his reader that character is all that will be left for a man at the last. He seems to imply that man will bring home from his hunt nothing but “his laziness,” and would ask whether one can “roast” that like a quail or a duck. And though we start at such horrible absurdity, yet it brings out in keen light a very different possibility for diligence. Diligence can be roasted. It earns for us an eternal heaven, and yet, for all it gets, it is itself our richest dainty. “One cannot roast laziness as something he has taken in the chase; but a precious treasure of a man is a diligent one.” It is tantalising to come so near other and important renderings. Many see very plausibly a meaning like this: The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting” (so far the English version), meaning that he is wasteful, and suffers what he has actually now to run to loss; “but the substance of a common man” (making the distinction as in Proverbs 12:14) “is precious” (that is, made account of, and kept) “by a man of diligence.” A sinner throws away treasures; a saint values the very smallest. This would be a fine sense if the verse before meant that the “saint gains from his neighbour.” Per contra, though, there are difficulties. “The slothful man” (E.V.) in the Hebrew is the “sloth” or “laziness” itself. And the word is feminine, and must be the object rather than the subject of the verb. The meaning is, that sloth cannot be roasted and eaten, but diligence can.—Miller.