A wise son hears his father's instruction,
but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.
From the fruit of his mouth a man eats what is good,
but the desire of the treacherous is for violence.
Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life;
he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.Proverbs 13:1-3
Once again the emphasis is on the power of words. Wise words from a father have power to shape and direct a young man's life and make him wise - this is the recurring theme of the earlier chapters of Proverbs, as we have seen. It is the scorner who is indifferent and impervious to instruction. The main thrust in 2 and 3 is what we say and how we say it. As Kidner puts it, 'words pass; their fruit remains'. This applies in both directions, good and evil. Good words pass, once they are spoken, but they leave something rich and immensely fruitful behind them. One thinks of the enormous impact that even a chance word spoken by someone in the Spirit can have on a man, changing the whole course of his life, and, in contrast, what an idle, evil, untrue word can do to a whole structure of friendship, in terms of misunderstanding and hurt. The reference in 3 is to rashness of speech, ill-advised and unwise - words spoken in anger that had far better been left unsaid, or words spoken in an expansiveness of spirit with others which betray confidences and disclose private matters that ought never to have reached the ears of others. It is not for nothing that the Apostle James speaks as he does in his epistle (3:2ff) about the tongue. The perfect man is the one who has his tongue in subjection. And it is perhaps significant that he gathers up his teaching in terms of the contrast between heavenly wisdom and that which is earthly, sensual, devilish. His mind is clearly informed by the teaching of Proverbs.