Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways, and be wise; which having no chief, overseer, or ruler, provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. How long will you sleep, sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: so your poverty will come as a robber, and your scarcity as an armed man.
⛓ Read Proverbs 6 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The sluggard sent to the ant, who provides her food by labor, and the warning that poverty comes on the lazy, parallels Paul's portrait of the idle who refuse to work. A central sloth-condemning passage in the wisdom tradition.
Medium confidenceEcho3
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The sluggard reproof, urging diligent work to avoid want, parallels Paul's call to industrious self-sufficiency so as to 'have need of nothing.' Proverbial labor ethic; thematic only.
Low confidenceThe manager's frantic foresight against future destitution ('I have no strength to dig, I am ashamed to beg') inverts the sluggard wisdom of Proverbs, where prudent provision against want is praised. The shared topos of provident foresight versus ruinous idleness gives modest coherence, though no verbal contact; faint and contested.
Low confidenceThe condemnation of the 'slothful' servant (v.26) and the praise of diligent gain echoes wisdom's contrast between the industrious and the sluggard whose laziness brings ruin.
Low confidence