Classic KJV - Proverbs 14:23

Translation: Labour, Mere Talk

The Hebrew word for “labour,” עצב (ʽĕ•ṣĕḇ, pronounced, “eh-tseb”) does not indicate mere motion or activity. It’s used seven times in the Scriptures, most frequently translated (KJV) as “sorrow,” meaning grievous, painful toil, physical or mental. It means hard work! It’s first used in Genesis 3:16 to describe the pain and labour of childbirth. Having seen my wife give birth to our ten children, I know that labour means agonizing work.

Sometimes real discussion is necessary for profit, but the Hebrew phrase translated “mere talk,” דבר־שפתים (deḇӑr śepā•tӑ•yîm, pronounced “de-var se-pah-ta-yeem”), is certainly not productive deliberation. The NKJV translates it best as “idle chatter.” The English expression “chit-chat” captures the meaning and some of the audible rhyming in the Hebrew, like birds chirping.

Screening Workers

My friend George is a construction superintendent, overseeing many men in his crews. When assessing potential sub-contractors, he avoids the talkative. From his years on the job-site, he’s learned that heavy talkers are usually light workers. It almost seems that the lazy ones use verbal smokescreens to divert attention from their meager output. Happy productive activity always involves at least some pain and discomfort.

This proverb warns against idle chit-chat... like the proverbial water cooler or coffee pot chatter. We can all make real human contact in 30 seconds of friendly greetings and quick family updates, but left unchecked, that can easily grow to ten minutes, twenty minutes—a theft of the employer’s time.

Classic Commentaries

Renowned Reformation preacher Matthew Henry comments:

Industrious people are generally thriving people, and where there is something done, there is something to be had. The stirring hand gets a penny. It is good therefore to keep in business, and to keep in action, and what our hand finds to do to, do it with all our might.... Talking, without working, will make men poor. Those that love to boast of their business and make a noise about it, and that waste their time in tittle-tattle... neglect the work of their place and day. They waste what they have.

Activity IS NOT Productivity

This proverb does not say, “in all activity there is profit.” Some activity is also useless, a distraction from our real purpose. Read more about this important distinction in Proverbs 12:11 with the question, “How can you be busy, yet still end up poor?”

Further, talk can sometimes be productive, necessary, and constructive, if it is focussed on the task at hand. After all, productive deliberation includes the most profitable time-tabling. So the central message here is, sooner or later, if there’s going to be anything profitable in the talk, the talk must stop, and the work must start.

Idle words are a kind of cowardice. It takes courage to start moving on a job, than to talk about the job and never get moving.

Our Maker, Saviour, and Friend

Jesus warned His followers against useless small-talk.

Jesus said, “For every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment,” Matthew 12:36 (NKJV). Note that Jesus does not say, “For every evil word,” but “For every idle word.” Clearly Jesus wanted words to be beneficial and productive.

Useless words can be harmful. They often prevent the words of someone else, who really needs to be heard. Idle words short-circuit productive listening. So as an old saying goes, “Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving us verbose and endless proof of that fact.”