24 The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.
4 The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.
5 The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.
10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
The Proverbs reveal a repeated focus on the virtue of diligence, and frequently the virtue is spoken of in connection with one’s work. And further, the Proverbs repeatedly expose the sin of sloth and the sin of idleness, which are the opposites of diligence. A few references are: Proverbs 10:4–5; Proverbs 12:24–27; Proverbs 13:4; Proverbs 21:5. In those references, the naming of the virtue of diligence is common to them.
What is diligence? It is being steady and constant in effort to the accomplishment, the completion of a task undertaken. Diligence is that persevering exertion, applied by the faculties of soul and body, to a task that is mine. It involves carefulness, constancy, and industry. And in the litany of texts named, we can sum them up this way. Such diligence makes rich, Solomon says. That is, normatively diligence yields much profit. The soul of the diligence, he writes, is made fat. It is the language, not of the waistline (Proverbs 13:4), but of abundance. Such diligence advances a man in his profession. The hand of the diligent will rule. The diligent accomplish much through their diligence. The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage. That is, the diligent have a track record of accomplishment. You can tell where they have been. They have left a trail of achievement and progress. They may not be the smartest guy in the office, but often they will outwork those guys.
Solomon writes, in Ecclesiastes 9:10,
Whatever your hand finds to do verily, do it with all your might.That is another way of highlighting diligence. Such should be our maxim in all of our labours. And thus, we must repudiate the mindset of doing as little as possible to get by. In the language of John Murray:The principle that too often dictates our practice, is not the maximum of toil, but the minimum necessary to escape public censure, and to preserve our decency.We want nothing of that.The mindset of conserving our energies lest we fatigue ourselves. We are supposed to fatigue ourselves. We are supposed to be tired. That is why the Lord gave us sleep and the Sabbath. These bodies wear out in the toil of labour. My agenda is not to conserve my energies; it is to wear myself out in my work and be a steward of the night and the Sabbath, to be re‑invigorated to work again.
If we are diligent, we must repudiate performing our work with an eye on the clock, offering goods and services of inferior quality, with the only concern being to get done and get paid. The Christian, as to the manner of his or her work, approaches his task with diligence. The Proverbs 31:1–31 woman looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. That is a way of saying positively she is diligent in looking well to the ways of her household. The Christian man heeds the warning: he also who is slack in his work, is brother to him who destroys.1
George McDearmon
4 A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.