The KJV reads “He also that is slothful in his work Is brother to him that is a great waster” while the NKJV reads “He who is slothful in his work Is a brother to him who is a great destroyer,” and most modern translations are similar to the NKJV (the NRSV and CSB read “vandal” instead of “destroyer”). According to the OED, “waster” could refer to “One who lays waste, despoils or plunders; a devastator, ravager, plunderer” (s.v. waster, noun1, sense I.2.a.) or “One who lives in idleness and extravagance; one who wastefully dissipates or consumes his or her resources, an extravagant spender, a squanderer, spendthrift” (s.v. waster, noun1, sense I.1.a.). Both senses were current in the 1600s.
Interestingly, the Hebrew word being translated, מַשְׁחִית, is translated in the KJV as “destroy,” “destroyed,” “destroyer” or some variant in 10 of its 20 occurrences. Twice it is translated “destruction,” twice “corruption,” twice “spoilers” (in the sense of people spoiling the goods of an enemy), once “slay utterly,” and once “trap.” Twice the KJV translators rendered this term as “waster.” They did so in this verse and in Isaiah 54:16: “And I have created the waster to destroy.” Given then way that the KJV translators rendered this Hebrew word elsewhere, it seems likely that the sense “one who lays waste, despoils or plunders; a devastator, ravager, plunderer” is what the KJV translators intended here. However, it seems that “waster” was early misread as “an extravagant spender, a squanderer, spendthrift,” since this is the meaning ascribed to the term even in older commentators such as Matthew Henry and John Gill.
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