Proverbs 20:4 (BSB)

The slacker does not plow in season; at harvest time he looks, but nothing is there.

From Proverbs 20. Also in the ESV.

Commentary on Proverbs 20:4

• Matthew Henry (Presbyterian), Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Proverbs 20:4: See here the evil of slothfulness and the love of ease. 1. It keeps men from the most necessary business, from ploughing and sowing when the season is: The sluggard has ground to occupy, and has ability for it; he can plough, but he will not; some excuse or other he has to shift it off, but the true reason is that it is cold weather.
• John Gill (Reformed Baptist), Exposition of the Old and New Testaments on Proverbs 20:4: The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold,.... Or, "in the cold"; in the time of cold, as Aben Ezra; in the time of autumn, which is the time of ploughing, when it begins to be cold weather, and winter is drawing on: and this is discouraging to the sluggard, who does not care to take his hands out of his bosom to...
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (Reformed), Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible on Proverbs 20:4: shall . . . beg--literally, "ask" (in this sense, Psa 109:10).
• Keil & Delitzsch (Lutheran), Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament on Proverbs 20:4: Pro 20:4 4 At the beginning of the harvest the sluggard plougheth not; And so when he cometh to the reaping-time there is nothing. Many translators (Symmachus, Jerome, Luther) and interpreters (e.g., Rashi, Zöckler) explain: propter frigus; but חרף is, according to its verbal import, not a synon. of קר and צנּה, but means gathering = the time of gathering (synon.