Proverbs 13:4
The sluggard willeth and willeth not: but the soul of them that work, shall be made fat.
Open Proverbs 13:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Vult et non vult piger ; anima autem operantium impinguabitur.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἐν ἐπιθυμίαις ἐστιν πᾶς ἀεργός, χεῖρες δὲ ἀνδρείων ἐν ἐπιμελείᾳ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- מִתְאַוָּ֣ה וָ֭אַיִן נַפְשׁ֣וֹ עָצֵ֑ל וְנֶ֖פֶשׁ חָרֻצִ֣ים תְּדֻשָּֽׁן
Haydock's commentary
Willeth not. Hebrew, "hath not." He only desires riches, or to be converted, and will not labour, chap. xxi. 25., and Ecclesiasticus v. 8.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Rusticus
Graft unfruitful stocks with buds and slips that you may shortly be rewarded for your toil by plucking sweet apples from them. Construct also hives for bees, for to these the proverbs of Solomon send you, and you may learn from the tiny creatures how to order a monastery and to discipline a kingdom. Twist lines too for catching fish, and copy books; that your hand may earn your food and your mind may be satisfied with reading. For “every one that is idle is a prey to vain desires.” In Egypt the monasteries make it a rule to receive none who are not willing to work; for they regard labour as necessary not only for the support of the body but also for the salvation of the soul. Do not let your mind stray into harmful thoughts, or, like Jerusalem in her whoredoms, open its feet to every chance comer.
St John Cassian The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults, Chapter XXI. Different passages from the writings of Solomon against accidie
And Solomon, the wisest of men, clearly points to this fault of idleness in many passages, as he says: “He that followeth idleness shall be filled with poverty,” either visible or invisible, in which an idle person and one entangled with different faults is sure to be involved, and he will always be a stranger to the contemplation of God, and to spiritual riches, of which the blessed Apostle says: “For in all things ye were enriched in him, in all utterance and in all knowledge.” But concerning this poverty of the idler elsewhere he also writes thus: “Every sluggard shall be clothed in torn garments and rags.” For certainly he will not merit to be adorned with that garment of incorruption (of which the Apostle says, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and again: “Being clothed in the breastplate of righteousness and charity,” concerning which the Lord Himself also speaks to Jerusalem by t …
St John Cassian The Conferences of John Cassian. Part III. Containing Conferences XVIII.-XXIV, Chapter II. How the old man exposed our errors
The feebleness of your ideas shows that you have not yet renounced worldly desires nor mortified your former lusts. For as the wandering character of your desires testifies to the sloth of your heart, this pilgrimage and absence from your kinsfolk, which you ought rather to endure with your heart, you do endure only with the flesh. For all these things would have been buried and altogether driven out of your hearts, if you had got hold of the right method of renunciation, and the main reason for the solitude in which we dwell. …