The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer;

The ants are a people not strong, Yet they provide their food in the summer;

The ants, a feeble people, which provide themselves food in the harvest:

The ants are a people not strong, And they prepare in summer their food,

The ants are a people not strong, but they put by a store of food in the summer;

the ants, an infirm people who provide food for themselves at the harvest,

See the marginal reference note. Note the word "people" applied here to ants, as to locusts in Joel 1:6. The marvel lies in their collective, and, as it were, organized action.

The ants are a people not strong,.... Far from it; what is weaker than an ant? a multitude of them may be destroyed at once, with the crush of a foot. Pliny calls it "minimum animal", the least animal; and the Arabians use it as a proverb, to call a weak man one weaker than an ant: and there is one sort of ants called "dsar", so small that one hundred of them will not weigh more than a barley corn (g): they are called a people, because they associate together in great numbers; though small in bulk, and weak as to power and strength; and which is a figure elsewhere used in the sacred Scriptures; see Joel 1:6; and by profane writers, as Homer and Virgil, who speak of bees as a people and nation (h); and of nations of flies, and of flying birds, geese, cranes, and swans (i);
yet their prepare their meat in the summer; build granaries with great art and wisdom, carry in grains of corn with great labour and industry, in the summer season, when only to be got, and lay them up against winter. Phocylides (k) the poet says much the same things of them; he calls them a tribe or nation, small but laborious, and says, they gather and carry in their food in summer for the winter, which is a proof of their wisdom. Cicero (l) says, the ant has not only sense, but mind, reason, and memory. Aelianus (m) ascribes unspeakable wisdom to it; and Pliny (n) discourse and conversation; See Gill on Proverbs 6:6; see Gill on Proverbs 6:7; See Gill on Proverbs 6:8. It is a pattern of industry and diligence both as to temporal and spiritual things, Ecclesiastes 9:10.
(g) Bochart. Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 4. c. 22. col. 598. (h) Iliad. 2. v. 87. "Et populos et proelia dicam", Georgic. l. 4. v. 4, 5. (i) Iliad. 2. v. 459, 469. & 15. v. 690, 691. (k) Poem. Admon. v. 158, 159. (l) De Natura Deorum, l. 3. (m) De Animal. l. 16. c. 15. (n) Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 30.