The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.

The sluggard saith, There is a lion without: I shall be slain in the streets.

The sluggard saith, There is a lion without: I shall be murdered in the streets.

The slothful hath said, 'A lion is without, In the midst of the broad places I am slain.'

The hater of work says, There is a lion outside: I will be put to death in the streets.

The lazy one says: "There is a lion outside. I might be slain in the midst of the streets."

The point of the satire is the ingenuity with which the slothful man devises the most improbable alarms. He hears that "there is a lion without," i. e., in the broad open country; he is afraid of being slain in the very streets of the city.

The slothful man saith, There is a lion without - But why does he say so? Because he is a slothful man. Remove his slothfulness, and these imaginary difficulties and dangers will be no more. He will not go abroad to work in the fields, because he thinks there is a lion in the way, he will not go out into the town for employment, as he fears to be assassinated in the streets! From both these circumstances he seeks total cessation from activity.

The slothful [man] saith, (i) [There is] a lion outside, I shall be slain in the streets.
(i) He derides them that invent vain excuses, because they would not do their duty.

The slothful man saith, there is a lion without,.... Or, "in the street". This he says within himself; or to those who call out to him, and put him on doing the business of his proper calling, whether in the field or elsewhere, which, through his slothfulness, he has a disinclination to; and therefore frames excuses, and suggests this and that difficulty or danger in the way, expressed by a "lion without"; and which shows the folly and weakness of his excuses, since lions do not usually walk in cities, towns, and villages, and in the streets of them, but in woods and mountains;
I shall be slain in the streets; by the lion there; or I shall never be able to get over the difficulties, and through the dangers, which attending to business will expose me to. Some apply this to the difficulties that slothful persons imagine in the learning of languages, arts, and sciences; as Jarchi applies it to the learning of the law.

The slothful man talks of a lion without, but considers not his real danger from the devil, that roaring lion within, and from his own slothfulness, which kills him.

Frivolous excuses satisfy the indolent man's conscience.

13 The sluggard saith, "A lion is without,
I shall be slain in the midst of the streets."
Otherwise rendered, Proverbs 26:13. There, as here, the perf. אמר has the meaning of an abstract present, Gesen. 126. 3. The activity of the industrious has its nearest sphere at home; but here a work is supposed which requires him to go forth (Psalm 104:3) into the field (Proverbs 24:27). Therefore חוּץ stands first, a word of wide signification, which here denotes the open country outside the city, where the sluggard fears to meet a lion, as in the streets, i.e., the rows of houses forming them, to meet a רצח (מרצּח), i.e., a murder from motives of robbery of revenge. This strong word, properly to destroy, crush, Arab. raḍkh, is intentionally chosen: there is designed to be set forth the ridiculous hyperbolical pretence which the sluggard seeks for his slothfulness (Fleischer). Luther right well: "I might be murdered on the streets." But there is intentionally the absence of אוּלי [perhaps] and of פּן [lest]. Meri here quotes a passage of the moralists: ממופתי העצל הנבואה (prophesying) belongs to the evidences of the sluggard; and Euchel, the proverb העצלים מתנבאים (the sluggard's prophecy), i.e., the sluggard acts like a prophet, that he may palliate his slothfulness.