And now, O sons, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
Proverbs 5:7 ESV
These are the words of a parent who has traveled further down the road than his child, and thus has seen some of the twists and turns of life that are in his child’s future. Here, the writer wants to get his child’s attention because there are dangers ahead (see 8-14).
In the first clause, listen conveys the idea of “pay attention and do.” Simply hearing what I’m saying isn’t enough; you need to understand and do. I think of a coach calling his team into a huddle to explain what he wants them to do. Often the call to attention in that scenario is, “Listen up!” By that he means “pay attention, I’m about to give you instructions that you need to understand and execute.”
The second clause indicates the expectation of an ongoing commitment to what is about to be said. It isn’t enough to hear and understand; committed application is the expectation.
How often do we read the Bible with the intent to understand and apply? It’s easy to fall into the trap of reading Scripture seemingly for the sake of reading … without listening. At the end of those sessions we can say we read X number of chapters, but we can hardly explain anything that we read. Is that helpful?
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