The Untapped Field and the Leaky Bucket Text: Proverbs 13:23
Introduction: Two Kinds of Poverty
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It does not speak in the abstract, gauzy platitudes of modern sentimentalism. It gives us the hard, bracing truth about the way the world actually works because it was written by the One who actually made it. And when it comes to the subject of poverty and wealth, we must be prepared to have our modern categories rattled and our political pieties dismantled.
Our age is one that specializes in excuses. We have built a massive, bureaucratic, and very expensive industry around the manufacturing of grievances. We are taught to think of poverty primarily in terms of systemic oppression and to view the poor as a monolithic class of victims. And while the Bible certainly acknowledges the reality of oppression, as we shall see, that is only half the story. To tell only that half is to tell a lie.
The Scriptures diagnose two primary kinds of poverty. The first is poverty that results from calamity, from righteous living in a fallen world, or from genuine oppression. This is the poverty of the godly widow, the orphan, the righteous man plundered by thieves. The duty of the Christian toward such a person is clear: charity, aid, and the pursuit of justice. But there is a second kind of poverty, and it is the kind that Proverbs addresses with relentless honesty. This is the poverty that is self-inflicted. It is the poverty that comes from laziness, from foolishness, from a refusal to work, and from a love of sensual pleasure. To treat this kind of poverty with the same sentimental deference as the first is not compassion; it is enablement. It is to subsidize folly.
This proverb places these two realities side by side in a razor-sharp juxtaposition. It shows us the world as God made it, brimming with potential, and it shows us one of the key reasons that potential goes unrealized. It presents us with a paradox: a field full of food that results in an empty stomach. We must have the wisdom to see both the potential and the problem.
The Text
Abundant food is in the fallow ground of the poor,
But it is swept away by injustice.
(Proverbs 13:23 LSB)
God's Abundant Provision (v. 23a)
We begin with the first clause, which is a statement of glorious potential:
"Abundant food is in the fallow ground of the poor..." (Proverbs 13:23a)
This is a direct contradiction to the Marxist, zero-sum worldview that grips our age. That worldview assumes that the world is a fixed pie, and if one person has a large slice, it must be because he stole it from someone else. Wealth is seen as the result of exploitation. But the Bible begins differently. God created a world of staggering abundance. He placed Adam in a garden, a place of superfluous, overflowing goodness. The command was not to ration, but to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it.
This verse tells us that even the "fallow ground of the poor" contains "abundant food." Fallow ground is untilled ground. It is land that has potential but is currently unproductive. The food is there, latent, waiting to be brought forth. This is a foundational principle of biblical economics. Wealth is not primarily taken; it is created. God has woven potential into the very fabric of the created order. A seed has the potential for a stalk of corn. A block of wood has the potential for a table. An unplowed field has the potential for a harvest.
Notice that this potential is available even to the poor. The raw materials of God's creation are not elitist. The laws of physics and biology work for everyone. This is a profoundly hopeful and dignifying truth. It means that poverty is not necessarily a fixed state. A man may be poor, but he is not without resources, because he lives in God's resourceful world. He has his mind, his hands, and the unplowed field in front of him. The world is not a closed system of scarcity; it is an open system of opportunity, waiting for the application of diligent, intelligent, and righteous labor.
This first clause is a rebuke to every worldview that fosters a victim mentality. It tells the poor man not to look at his neighbor's plate with envy, but to look at his own field with vision. The potential is there. The food is in the ground. The question that hangs in the air is, why is it still in the ground? Why is the man still poor if his field is so full of promise?
The Leaky Bucket of Injustice (v. 23b)
The second clause provides the devastating answer. The potential is real, but it is being destroyed.
"...But it is swept away by injustice." (Proverbs 13:23b LSB)
Here is the leak. Here is the reason for the disconnect between potential and reality. The harvest is lost because of injustice. Now, our modern sensibilities immediately leap to external causes. We think of a corrupt king taxing the poor into oblivion, or a powerful landowner seizing the field. And the Bible is clear that such things are indeed a great evil. A society with a corrupt judicial system, where there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, is an abomination to the Lord. When rulers "frame injustice by a statute" (Psalm 94:20), they are inviting the judgment of God. This is a real and terrible form of injustice that sweeps away the fruit of a man's labor.
However, we must read Proverbs in its own context. While it condemns external oppression, its primary focus is on the moral choices of the individual. The book of Proverbs is a call to personal righteousness, wisdom, and diligence. Therefore, the "injustice" mentioned here is not limited to external forces. The Hebrew word for injustice, mishpat, simply means judgment or a verdict. When it is preceded by "without" (as it is here, lo-mishpat), it means a lack of judgment, a perversion of what is right. This perversion can be external, but it can also be internal.
What is the greatest injustice a man can commit against his own future? It is the injustice of laziness. It is the perversion of God's gift of time. It is the refusal to exercise sound judgment by getting up and plowing the fallow ground. The sluggard who sleeps in during the planting season is committing an act of injustice against the future harvest, and against his own family. He is "sweeping away" the abundant food by his own inaction. His poverty is a direct result of his own lack of right judgment.
This is the hard edge of biblical wisdom. Yes, corrupt governments can steal your bread. But you can also steal your own bread. You can do this through procrastination, through foolish spending, through a refusal to learn, or through a life given over to dissipation. The drunkard and the glutton come to poverty (Proverbs 23:21). The one who loves pleasure will be a poor man (Proverbs 21:17). These are not acts of external oppression; they are acts of internal, personal injustice. They are a failure of self-government, a failure to render a right verdict on what must be done today.
Conclusion: The Two Remedies
So, this proverb presents us with a world of glorious potential that is constantly being undermined by injustice. What then is the solution? The solution must address both sides of the problem.
First, we must work for external justice. Christians are called to be salt and light. This means we must advocate for a civil order that reflects God's law. We must desire and work for a society with honest courts, stable currency, protection of private property, and laws that punish thieves, whether they are petty criminals on the street or powerful tyrants in the government. We must oppose systems that institutionalize theft, whether through crony capitalism or confiscatory taxation. This is part of our duty to love our neighbor.
But this is not nearly enough. A perfectly just external society filled with lazy, foolish people will still be a poor society. The ultimate remedy is not political; it is spiritual. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The gospel addresses the root of injustice, which is sin in the human heart. The fallow ground of the poor is a picture of the unregenerate heart, full of potential but lying dormant and unproductive under the curse of sin. It is a field of weeds.
But then the gospel comes. Christ, the ultimate man of sorrows, became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). Through His death and resurrection, He breaks the curse of sin. The Holy Spirit comes and plows the hard, fallow ground of our hearts. He plants the seed of the Word. He causes new life to spring up where there was only death.
A man who is truly converted is a man in whom the fundamental injustice has been dealt with. God's right judgment has been satisfied at the cross. And because he is a new creation, he begins to live differently. He is no longer a slave to the sins that create poverty. The lazy man learns diligence. The foolish man learns wisdom. The drunkard learns sobriety. He starts to render right judgments in his own life. He gets up and plows his field.
The gospel creates the kind of people who can turn fallow ground into a fruitful harvest. It is the only ultimate solution to poverty, because it is the only solution to the sin that causes it. We must preach a gospel that calls for just laws in the public square, but we must never forget that the foundation of it all is a call for repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can turn a man from a life of injustice to a life of righteousness, wisdom, and fruitful labor, all to the glory of God.