Bible Commentaries

Another case in which good words are lost:

Speak not to the ears of a fool,

For he will despise the wisdom of thy words.

To speak in the ears of any one, does not mean to whisper to him, to so to speak that it is distinctly perceived. כּסיל , as we have no often explained, is the intellectually heavy and dull, like pinguis and tardus ; Arab. balyd , clumsy, intellectually immoveable (cf. bld , the place where one places himself firmly down, which one makes his point of gravity). The heart of such an one is covered over (Psalms 119:70), as with grease, against all impressions of better knowledge; he has for the knowledge which the words spoken design to impart to him, no susceptibility, no mind, but only contempt. The construction בּוּז ל has been frequently met with from Proverbs 6:30.

return to '

The following proverb warrants us to pause here, for it opens up, as a compendious echo of Proverbs 22:17-21, a new series of proverbs of wisdom:

12 Apply thine heart to instruction,

And thine ear to the utterances of knowledge.

We may, according as we accent in למּוּסר the divine origin or the human medium, translate, offer disciplinae (Schultens), or adhibe ad disciplinam cor tuum (Fleischer). This general admonition is directed to old and young, to those who are to be educated as well as to those who are educated. First to the educator:

return to '