Proverbs 24
v.27
Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house.
Get an estate into good order before erecting a house on it. To “build a house” may, however, be equivalent (compare Exodus 1:21; Deuteronomy 25:9; Ruth 4:11) to “founding a family;” and the words a warning against a hasty and imprudent marriage. The young man is taught to cultivate his land before he has to bear the burdens of a family. Further, in a spiritual sense, the “field” may be the man’s outer common work, the “house” the dwelling-place of his higher life. He must do the former faithfully in order to attain the latter. Neglect in one is fatal to the other. Compare Luke 16:10-11.
A man should be financially secure before he starts a family. Before entering marriage one should have a well-ordered life. In general we need to keep first things first.
v.33-34
A little sheep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest - 34and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.
Similar to Proverbs 6:11.
The similitude is drawn from the two sources of Eastern terror: the “traveler,” i. e., “the thief in the night,” coming suddenly to plunder; the “armed man,” literally “the man of the shield,” the armed robber. The habit of indolence is more fatally destructive than these marauders.