"The sluggard buries his hand in the dish, but will not even bring it back to his mouth"
sluggard
This is the Hebrew word asel, which means sluggish, lazy, sluggard. Here Solomon is trying to give us insight into a person to avoid – the sluggard. He wants to warn us to not hire this person. He wants to warn us to not become like this person. Fight against the dominant tendency that describes this person: They do not finish what they start.
The sluggard is not the person who never starts something. That kind of laziness is easy to spot. Solomon is warning us about the person who starts things but never completes them. He is warning us to avoid the temptations of sluggardness that will creep up on us. Finish what you start. He uses the picture of eating as a hyperbole to make us remember not to be like this and to make note of this kind of person.
A loose translation of the Septuagint reads: There is one who hides his unrighteous hands in his pocket, but not his loud mouth it is in full supply.
Don't let the temptation to move on to something new keep you from finishing what you really need to finish. Every week there are things that you need to finish. Every week you must fight against the temptation to start something new so that you can avoid finishing something that has lost its glamour. Finish what needs to be finished.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz