The Conceited Corpse on the Couch Text: Proverbs 26:13-16
Introduction: The Ludicrousness of Laziness
The book of Proverbs is a book of applied theology. It is wisdom for the street, for the home, for the workshop, and for the king's court. It does not deal in abstract platitudes; it gets its hands dirty. And one of the recurring characters that Solomon drags out for our instruction is the sluggard. The sluggard is not simply a man who is tired. He is a man whose entire worldview has been warped by an idol, and that idol is ease. He is a worshipper at the altar of the couch, and his liturgy is one of procrastination and excuse making.
In our modern, effeminate age, we have a tendency to psychologize this sin. We call it a lack of motivation, or we diagnose it as some kind of disorder. We want to treat it with therapy and medication. The Bible, being far more compassionate and far more realistic, treats it with mockery. The Holy Spirit here employs a biting, sanctified sarcasm to expose the sheer foolishness of the lazy man. The descriptions are intentionally over the top, designed to make us see how ludicrous this sin is. The sluggard is not presented as a victim of his circumstances, but as the architect of his own ruin, and a profoundly ridiculous architect at that.
We must understand that laziness is not a private affair. It is not a victimless crime. A man who is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster (Prov. 18:9). Laziness consumes something precious, it consumes daylight. It consumes God given time and potential. It is an irritation to others, like smoke in the eyes (Prov. 10:26), and it always has public consequences. The field of the slothful is a public testimony, overgrown with thorns for all to see (Prov. 24:30-31). And so, the Bible does not whisper about this sin in a quiet counseling session. It puts the sluggard on public display and points out his folly, so that we might see it, consider it well, and receive instruction.
This passage gives us a four-part portrait of the sluggard. We see his fantastic excuses, his pointless motion, his pathetic inertia, and his impenetrable pride. And in all of it, we see a man at war with the created order, a man who hates the way God made the world to work.
The Text
The sluggard says, "There is a fierce lion in the road! A lion is among the streets!"
As the door turns on its hinges, So does the sluggard on his bed.
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; He is too weary to return it to his mouth.
The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes Than seven men who can respond with a discreet answer.
(Proverbs 26:13-16 LSB)
The Lion in the Street (v. 13)
We begin with the sluggard's excuse-making, which is always creative and never plausible.
"The sluggard says, 'There is a fierce lion in the road! A lion is among the streets!'" (Proverbs 26:13)
The first thing to note is that the sluggard is a talker. He is a man of words, not deeds. "In all labour there is profit: But the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury" (Prov. 14:23). His mouth is the most exercised part of his body. And what does he talk about? He talks about the insurmountable obstacles that prevent him from doing the most basic tasks. He has to go to work, or run an errand, but he can't. Why? Because there is a lion in the street.
Now, this is not a literal lion. This is hyperbole, an exaggeration meant to expose the absurdity of his position. The point is that the sluggard's imagination is employed for one purpose and one purpose only: to justify his inactivity. He sees lions where others see opportunities. He envisions catastrophes where others see a simple task. His fear is a fiction, a story he tells himself so he can remain inert. He has a Ph.D. in catastrophizing. If you solve his lion problem, he will invent a bear problem. If you deal with the bear, there will be a dragon.
This is a profound spiritual diagnosis. The sluggard lives in a world of his own making, a fantasy world where the dangers are always sufficient to justify his sin. He is, in a very real sense, a liar. He is not really afraid of a lion; he is in love with his bed. The lion is just a convenient cover story. This is why you cannot reason a sluggard out of his sloth. His problem is not a lack of information or a miscalculation of risk. His problem is a matter of the heart. He worships comfort, and any command to leave his shrine must be met with a theological justification for staying put, even if that theology involves imaginary predators.
The Hinge Man (v. 14)
Next, the Bible gives us a picture of the sluggard's activity. It is motion without progress, action without accomplishment.
"As the door turns on its hinges, So does the sluggard on his bed." (Proverbs 26:14)
This is a brilliant and devastating simile. A door on its hinges is in constant motion. It swings open, it swings shut. It is never still. But where does it go? Nowhere. It ends the day in the exact same place it began. All that motion, all that creaking and groaning, amounts to nothing. It is movement without translocation.
So it is with the sluggard on his bed. He is not completely motionless. He rolls over. He adjusts his pillows. He turns from his right side to his left. He is active, in a sense. He might even be busy. He might be busy surfing the internet, or busy channel-surfing, or busy scrolling through his phone. But it is the business of the hinge. It is sterile motion. It accomplishes nothing. It does not put food on the table, it does not build a house, it does not advance the kingdom of God. It is simply the turning of a man marinating in his own uselessness.
This verse teaches us that laziness is not simply about doing nothing. It is about doing nothing of any consequence. The sluggard can be a very busy man, so long as the business is pointless. He will expend great energy avoiding the one thing he ought to be doing. He will clean out the garage when he is supposed to be at his desk writing a report. He will suddenly be seized with a desire to organize his sock drawer when the lawn needs mowing. This is the activity of the hinge, a flurry of motion that serves only to keep him right where he is: on his bed, in his sin.
The Intolerable Weight of a Fork (v. 15)
The portrait becomes even more pathetic. The sluggard's inertia is so profound that it overcomes even his most basic appetites.
"The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; He is too weary to return it to his mouth." (Proverbs 26:15)
This is the punchline to the joke. Again, this is sanctified overstatement. We have probably never met a man who literally starved to death because the journey from his plate to his mouth was too taxing. But the picture communicates a profound truth. The sluggard's laziness is a deep, spiritual weariness, a kind of gravitational pull toward non-action that is almost absolute.
He has managed to get his hand into the dish. He has overcome the initial inertia. The food is right there. He desires it. "The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing" (Prov. 13:4). But the final, simple step is too much for him. The follow-through is lacking. He starts things but cannot finish them. He might hunt, but he "roasteth not that which he took in hunting" (Prov. 12:27). He has the chip, he has the dip, but the journey to the mouth is a bridge too far.
This is a picture of a man whose will is paralyzed. Sin has made him stupidly, suicidally lazy. His desires are active, but his hands refuse to labor. This creates a kind of hell on earth for him. He is filled with want, but his refusal to work ensures that his wants are never met. This is not rest. Rest is what prepares a man for future work. This is sloth, and it only prepares a man for more sloth. It is an addiction, and the spiral always goes downward.
The Wisest Man in the Room (v. 16)
We come now to the heart of the matter, the central pillar that holds up this entire pathetic structure: pride.
"The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes Than seven men who can respond with a discreet answer." (Proverbs 26:16)
This is the key that unlocks the whole psychology of the sluggard. Why does he not listen to counsel? Why does he persist in his folly, even as his life falls apart around him? Because he is a conceited fool. He is wiser in his own eyes than a whole council of wise men. The number seven here signifies completeness. You could assemble a panel of the wisest, most discerning counselors imaginable, and their collective wisdom would be as nothing to the sluggard. He has it all figured out.
His "wisdom" is the intricate web of excuses and rationalizations he has spun for himself. The lion in the street is part of his grand, unified theory of why he is right and everyone else is wrong. His philosophy protects his idol. And because he is so invested in this system, he cannot receive correction. To admit that the seven wise men are right would be to admit that his entire life is a fraud. It would require him to get out of bed. It would require repentance. And so, he insulates himself with a staggering degree of intellectual pride.
He looks at the diligent man and sees a fool, a workaholic, a man who just doesn't "get it." He looks at the godly counsel of his pastor or his elders and hears only the buzzing of flies. He has all the answers. His poverty is someone else's fault. His lack of opportunity is due to systemic injustice. The lion in the street was very real, he tells himself. This is the final, tragic element of his condition. He is not just lazy; he is unteachable. His ears are stopped and his eyes are closed, and the fortress of his pride is impenetrable to mere reason.
Conclusion: The Gospel for Hinges
This portrait is comical, but it is also a terrifying diagnosis of a certain kind of spiritual death. The sluggard is a man who has, in a practical sense, denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. He is at war with God's command to work and to exercise dominion. So what is the solution?
The solution is not to give him a motivational speech. The solution is not to enable his sin by making his bed for him. The solution, as always, is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is a gospel of resurrection. The sluggard is a dead man, spiritually speaking. He needs to be made alive.
The gospel comes to us and finds us all to be sluggards in the things of God. We are all too weary to lift our hands to Him. We have all invented lions in the street to excuse our disobedience. We are all wise in our own conceits, convinced that our way is better than God's. And into this pathetic scene, Christ comes. He does not come to negotiate. He comes to command.
He comes to the man with the withered hand, a man who could not work, and says, "Stretch out your hand." And power came with the command. He comes to Lazarus in the tomb and cries, "Lazarus, come forth!" And the dead man lives. This is the power of the gospel. It is the power that makes the lazy diligent, the proud humble, and the dead alive.
If you see the sluggard in the mirror, the answer is not to try harder to roll over in a more productive way. The answer is to cry out to God for a resurrection. The answer is to confess your conceited pride and your ludicrous excuses as sin. It is to believe that Christ died for sluggards, and that He was raised to give them new life, a life of fruitful labor, a life of diligence, a life lived for the glory of God and not the worship of the mattress. He can turn the hinge into a pilgrim, and the conceited fool into a humble servant. That is the glorious hope of the gospel.