Verse of the day · September 27

What does it mean to hearken unto counsel in Proverbs 12:15?

A man who has refused no advice may simply never have asked for any.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
Proverbs 12:15

The proverb does not tell us the man's road was wrong. It says the road is right in his own eyes, which is a report on the eyes and not on the road. The verse's own word for him is fool. He has a high opinion of himself and of how much he knows, and he thinks he is in the right in everything he does. He is sure he knows the way and could not miss it, so he never asks anybody for directions. Whether the road he is on is open irreligion or his own goodness, it appears to him the right way, it seems to him very plain, and he finds it pleasant. The other half of the verse has a man in it too, and what it tells us about him is that he listens to advice, and that he is wise.

So the fault the proverb names is not in the road. It is in the eyes. The rule he goes by is to walk in the way his heart is already going. He makes his will his law. And everything he has to go on is his own: his fleshly senses, his reasoning gone corrupt, and a judgment that is false. And in that he is like everybody else: by nature a man's thoughts are evil, and nobody can produce a good one out of himself. He never asks after the right way, and he takes nobody's advice.

He is not short of opinions about other people either. He stands on his own good opinion of himself, and he measures everybody else against that opinion, and they come out of the comparison condemned. That leaves nobody near him whose opinion he rates above his own.

The chapter's very first line had drawn a related divide: Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish. The man who hates a reproof is brutish, which is to say a beast. But that man's fault is what he does with something put in front of him. Our man's fault sits earlier than that. What the proverb has against him is that he never asks, and the reason he never asks is that he does not think he needs to. A refusal is something a man can point at. A question nobody thought to put is not.

Then the verse turns, and its second half hangs on one word. The word hearkeneth sounds like a man being a good listener, and it is more than that. He asks advice, and he takes it: the asking comes first, and the taking after it. And underneath the asking there is something he wants. He is willing to be advised, and more than willing — he wants counsel given him. He does not put much trust in his own judgment, and he sets a real value on being guided by people who are wise and good. He is wanting something, not deciding something, and that wanting is what keeps a wise man from turning into a fool.

The people he goes to are ordinary enough: men of age and experience, of longer standing than he is, and wiser than he is. And he consults what God has written about the way — the right way to live, the right way to worship, and the way of salvation. He treats those written testimonies as the counsel he goes by, and those are the words able to make him wise unto salvation. He listens as well to the counsel of the ministers who preach the gospel. And especially he listens to Jesus Christ himself, the wonderful Counsellor, and to the advice he gives. And the hearing does not stand by itself. He not only hears Christ's words, he does them — and that is the man the proverb is calling wise.

The verse calls him wise, and it is worth being exact about what for. The open ear is a sign, and a sign shows a thing rather than producing it. It points two ways at once: a sign that he is wise now, and a sign that he is likely to continue so. Nor is it one good decision on one good day. His ear is always open to good advice.

So this is where the two of them part, and the verse does not part them by naming one road wrong. They are divided by whether either of them asked after the right way — one got no further than his own eyes, and the other went outside himself, to what God has written, to men wiser than he was, to the ministers who preach the gospel, and especially to Christ. And what keeps the first man from being wise is that his way is right in his own eyes. The second man's doubt about his own judgment was enough to send him out to ask, and a man like that is likely to stay that way. And even so, he is no better by nature than the other man was. Every child of Adam is bad until the grace of God changes his heart. Nobody does any good until something good is put into him. A man who has had that done to him grows in goodness while he walks in the path of obedience. And a righteous man's thoughts are directed and influenced by the grace of God, and framed by the rule of what God has written.

Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, Adam Clarke and the Geneva Bible notes. How these teachings are made

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