Proverbs 13:1 Commentary and Bible Study

In preparation for the responsibilities that the son will soon face in the future, he must be willing to undergo instruction. The proverb pictures a son who perhaps is going to take over his father’s business. The father knows how hard this will be and is aware of his son’s capabilities. He knows that unless the young man has a teachable spirit, he will not be able to pass on the lessons which he needs so urgently to learn. Some of these will involve him acknowledging his ignorance in certain areas, and being willing to learn an entirely different approach. It is essential in these circumstances that the boy accepts his father as his teacher and that he be a pliable student under his father’s instruction. It will be fatal if he simply hangs on to what he already knows and refuses to be told when he has done something incorrectly. Any pride or stubbornness will prevent him learning. He must come to his father as one whose greater experience makes it his normal response to assume his father knows better. The scornful son, or the scoffing son, cannot receive correction or instruction because he treats any attempt to correct him as unreasonable criticism and insulting. He is on his defence in a flash and is without that frame of mind which knows how much he needs to learn, and which thoughtfully processes all instruction so as to profit from it as much as possible. This is a picture of every man in his relationship to God. Those who refuse to be taught by God are guilty of an even greater foolishness, for his wisdom exceeds that of an earthly father infinitely. God stoops to instruct us when he might spare himself the trouble, but his loving kindness does not wish to leave us in our foolishness. Yet there are scorners – and it is the essence of scorn that it values God’s instruction so little that it will not even be taught by him – who reject the rebuke of the Lord and will not listen to a word that he says to them.