Proverbs 28:19

The book of Proverbs gives us insights into so many different areas of life. The book gives us instruction on how to live our lives for God. Here is a proverb that gives us insight about the slough vs the industrious person:

Proverbs 28:19 (ESV)

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread,

but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.

Industrious people, in any culture, are typically rewarded over the slough of life.   If you are lazy, in almost all countries, you are seldom rewarded. In the U.S. society, our laws tend to reward the slough more than most societies.   But true freedom and good life typically comes to the industrious, even in our own U.S. culture (often to the objection of the slough society).  In the above passage, Solomon is telling us a universal truth for most nations and cultures.   However, what we don't see beyond the universal piece of the above proverb are the statements about "plenty" of food available for the industrious and the aspect of following "empty pursuits."  In this verse the writer is not simply condemning slothful behavior.   Lazy people are not simply "not planting."   This group is indeed working ... but they are working for things that are empty.   They are pursuing things that will never bring them food, but instead, only poverty.  I am not sure what is worse; those who sit around and do nothing or those who spend their time, talent and treasure in the pursuit of something, that even if they find it, they will be lost and without.   Poverty awaits some of the most industrious people.  They may have all types of belongings and all types of things they have accumulated but in their pursuit of empty things they will end up, in the end, in true poverty.   Are you being simply  slothful or are you industriously pursing things that don't matter anyhow?  Either way you end in poverty.