Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:
The verse pictures brief extra sleep and drowsing and resting the hands in repose as indulgence in sleep and inactivity that is idleness. Such idleness wastes precious time, and time lost through laziness cannot be recovered, while taking daylight hours for sleep shows a failure to value time. This course is warned against because it leads to poverty and want and ruin. It therefore calls for disciplined, regular habits and diligence in work, with human abilities actively used rather than left inactive.
Disciplined habits include proper rest, since sacrificing needed sleep for pleasurable reading and study weakens health and mental ability and leaves important duties undone, while proper rest enables more useful work. Idleness is not approved in Scripture, and diligent work belongs to true religion. Spiritually, folding the hands like the sluggard means being fast asleep in inactivity toward Christian help work. That condition describes many who know the truth and claim to believe the last message of mercy is being given to the world yet do nothing, while others with less light work actively.
The verse pictures brief extra sleep and drowsing and resting the hands in repose as indulgence in sleep and inactivity that is idleness.
Such idleness wastes precious time, and time lost through laziness cannot be recovered, while taking daylight hours for sleep shows a failure to value time.
This course is warned against because it leads to poverty and want and ruin.
It therefore calls for disciplined, regular habits and diligence in work, with human abilities actively used rather than left inactive.
Disciplined habits include proper rest, since sacrificing needed sleep for pleasurable reading and study weakens health and mental ability and leaves important duties undone, while proper rest enables more useful work.
Idleness is not approved in Scripture, and diligent work belongs to true religion.
Spiritually, folding the hands like the sluggard means being fast asleep in inactivity toward Christian help work.
That condition describes many who know the truth and claim to believe the last message of mercy is being given to the world yet do nothing, while others with less light work actively.