HISTORY OF ISRAEL

HISTORY OF ISRAEL

There are many elaboration on Old Testament teachings about diligence and laziness and all these encourage being diligent and are against lazy persons. These teachings were mainly written to encourage the need of people to work in order to obtain income to sustain their daily living. We are mainly going to focus on the books of proverbs and Ecclesiastes for explanation. (Andreas,2011)

Each society encourages diligence as a virtue and shuns laziness among her natives and this was the same direction that in the older days was being given to the Hebrews who wanted each individual to show diligence in order to be hopeful and to avoid becoming lazy people.

Diligence involves the virtue of hard work and in relation to the Hebrews it entails working hard while having faith and relying in God for help. In contrary laziness occurs when an individual fails to carry out an activity which he is supposed to do by remaining idle. Procrastinate to the work without doing the task that has more value than the one that was to be done or by doing shoddy work. In reference to the book of Proverbs 24:19 -21,”listen my son be wise and give serious thought to the way you live, don’t associate with people who drink too much wine or stuff themselves with food drunkards and gluttons will be reduced to poverty, if all you do is eat and sleep, you will soon be wearing rags”. (Keith,1996) This indicate that diligent people give serious thought about every action that they pursue while lazy people are gluttons and drinks much wine without caring ending up being poor.”Proverb 26:13-16 why don’t lazy people ever get out of the house?

What are they afraid of? Lions? Lazy people turn over in bed, they get no further than door swinging on hinges, and some people are too lazy to put food in their own mouths. A lazy person will think he is more intelligent than seven people who can give good reasons for their opinions”. Laziness makes people to love sleeping the whole day with the desire to remain indoors but the end result is lack of food to eat. “Proverbs 28:19 hard working farmer has plenty to eat, people who waste time will always be poor”. This also indicate that God rewards diligent people like hard working farmer with plenty of food to eat while time wasting people gets negative reward of poverty.

In proverbs 31:10-31 the bible explain about diligent woman as profitable, hard working and long term planner. As hard working woman she makes herself busy making wool and linen clothes, brings home food from out of the way places as merchant ships do, gets up before day light to prepare food for her family and to tell her servant women what to do, she is always busy looking after her family’s needs. In terms of being profitable she looks at land and buys it and with the money she has earned she plants a vineyard, she spins her own threads and weaves her own clothes, she knows the value of everything she makes and works late into night, and she makes clothes and belts and sells them to the merchants. She is a good planner because she is strong and respected and not afraid of the future. In the end she is well known, her children show her appreciation and her husband appreciates her and gains respect from everyone.

In proverb 10:4-5, says that being lazy brings poverty but hard work makes one rich, a sensible person gathers the crops when they are ready, it is disgrace to sleep through the time of harvest. Even now we usually observe diligent farmers planting their crops early and reaping early before the rains destroys their crops while lazy farmers sows late and reaps late and in the end the diligent farmer obtains plenty harvest while lazy farmer gets small amount of harvest or nothing and goes to the market to buy food which leads to poverty in his life. In proverb 24:30-34, I walked through the fields and vineyard of a lazy, stupid person. They were full of thorn bushes and overgrown with weeds, the stone wall around them has fallen down, I looked at this and thought about it and learned a lesson from it: have a nap and sleep if you want to. Fold your hands and rest awhile but while you are asleep poverty will attack you like an armed robber. Therefore it is good to plan and work out each investment that an individual makes to ensure that return on investment is obtained. For example as a farmer should not leave the field with weeds and thorns but should wake up from the slumber and weeds the farm to ensure abundant harvest thus overcoming poverty. In Proverbs12:24 hard work will give you power, being lazy will make you a slave and this can be seen in daily living when those in our society who works hard mostly becomes rich and are usually respected and people usually depend on them while the lazy people are despised because all the time they beg from people making them be like slaves to people that they depend on. In Proverbs 12:11 a hard working farmer has plenty to eat but it is stupid to waste time on useless projects. In Proverbs15:19 if you are lazy you will meet difficulty everywhere but if you are honest you will have no trouble.

In Ecclesiastes 10:16-17 a country is in trouble when its king is a youth and its leaders feast all night long. But a country is fortunate to have a king who makes his own decisions and leaders who eat at the proper time that controls themselves and don’t get drunk. When someone is too lazy to repair his roof, it will leak, and the house will fall in. Most of the households led by lazy parents or society that has lazy leaders mostly end up stumbling with corruption and poverty making the natives to suffer and lack role models to show people the right direction because most of the time much indulgence in eating and drinking is praised and hard work is despised.

In conclusion the books explain that diligent people are motivated by the fear of the lord rather than to obtain rewards. Even in modern economy the diligent get reward in the long run like when there are few job opportunities it is the diligent employees who are likely to be retained or even get new jobs faster. (David,2002) We also learn that to be diligent there is need to good planners ahead and remain humble and rely on God to succeed our plans and also say that being lazy is a sin and results in poverty while being diligent has a great reward.

References

1. How do we live the Christian life? November 4, 2013,at the way back machine, Davis Sper (2002)
2. Keith E. Thurley; Sek Hong Ng (1996) “ The concept of the Work Ethic” work and society, Hong Kong University Press, pp. 136-137,ISBN 978-962-209-391-1
3. GOOD NEWS BIBLE-secobd Edition 1994
4. Andreas, J. Ksstenerger (2011) Excellence;the character of God and the persuit of scholarly virtue, ISBN 978-1-58134-910-8,pp 88-90